The alien invasion problem

I was woken at 6.05 one morning by a frantic hammering on my back door.

 

I quickly dressed and rushed downstairs, to find Alun in an unusually anxious mood.

 

“It’s aliens, Jed,” he said, “They’ve invaded the mainland.”

 

“Are you sure?” I said. It seemed unlikely.

 

“Yes Jed, it’s on the radio. Aliens have invaded the mainland and seized control of the capital. There’s total chaos.”

 

“I’ll put on the radio, to hear the latest news,” I said, expecting to find his wild announcement unfounded, but sure enough there was the voice of Simon Mayo describing the chaos and slaughter in the mainland capital as alien invaders took control of the city. “The aliens are merciless and are killing all in their path. The mainland council are advising people to avoid the capital city until it is back under human command. And now the latest from the Floozies,” he said. I switched the radio off.

 

“You’d better put this wet towel on your head,” Alun said.

 

“Put a towel on my head? This is a real invasion, not a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy alien party.”

 

“It’s to protect against alien gas attacks, Jed. Simon Mayo said it would help.”

 

“I’m not putting a wet towel on my head just because Simon Mayo said.”

 

“You fail to heed Simon Mayo at your own risk, Jed.

 

“I’ll take my chances without the towel, thank you all the same. What are we going to do?”  

 

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Alun said, “We’ll go and meet the morning boat and see what the Boatman has to say about things.” 

 

Like so many island communities, we rely heavily on our daily visits from the boatman to provide both essential supplies, equally essential gossip from the mainland and sage advice on what to do in the event of alien invasion, or whatever the crisis happens to be on that particular day.

 

We waited at the dockside for the for morning boat to arrive.

 

And waited.

 

And waited.

 

“The boatman’s late,” I said.

 

“The boatman’s never late, Jed,” Alun said, “It must be because of the alien invasion.”

 

“But they said that the aliens have seized control of the capital, the boatman’s nowhere near the capital.”

 

“The invasion must have spread, Jed,” he said. “We’d better prepare for attack.”

 

Happy Island takes the threat of alien invasion seriously. Every year, on 30 October, we rehearse our alien invasion strategy, in honour of the day when my great, great, great grandfather (also called Jed) single-handedly fought off an alien invader that had attacked him on the beach (or possibly, if you believe Alun’s great, great, great grandfather’s version of the story, the anniversary of the time when Jed got really drunk and became entangled in a clump of seaweed, from which he took half an hour to escape).

 

“Go and fetch the signs,” Alun said. The first part of our alien-repellent strategy was to circle the island with signs saying ‘No aliens here’, ‘aliens go home’ and ‘Donald Trump keep away’ in English, Romulan and Klingon.

 

“What if the invaders aren’t Klingon or Romulan?” I said. “They won’t be able to read the signs.”

 

“Don’t be silly Jed,” he said, “Klingon, Romulan and English are the three most common languages in the universe, any alien invader will be fluent in all of them, no matter where he, she or it is from.”

 

It took us less than an hour to put up signs all around the island, thus demonstrating the benefit of regular practise. They even pointed out to sea, where the aliens could see them.

 

“What do we do now?” I said.

 

“You should know this Jed, we rehearse it often enough. It’s time to leave the seaweed traps.”

 

Of course, how could I forget, the seaweed traps. My great, great, great grandfather (also called Jed) had rebutted rumours that he was merely drunkenly entangled in a clump of seaweed, by claiming that he had in fact, defeated the alien invader by use of a seaweed weapon of his own devising, entangling the alien in a seaweed trap, before giving him a jolly good spanking and sending him back to his spaceship. 

 

We set a generous number of these seaweed traps on all the beaches on the island, as well as around the dockside. We then armed ourselves with spanking sticks and waited.

 

And waited.

 

And waited.

 

The aliens never came.

 

“They must be planning to attack at night Jed,” Alun said. “We’d better retreat to the alien-invasion shelter, as we can no longer see to spank them.”

 

“Alien invasion shelter? We don’t have an alien invasion shelter.”

 

“The well, Jed. It’ll make the perfect shelter from aliens.”

 

“The well Coldplay left behind? It’s hardly suitable as a shelter. It’s just a deep, dark, damp well.”

 

“It’s fine, Jed. I’ve kitted it out with beds, a month’s supply of food and drink, even a toilet.”

 

“You installed a toilet at the bottom of a well just in case we were invaded by aliens?”

 

“Yes Jed, and now you can understand how wise I was to do so.”

 

In fact, Alun had understated the extent of his refurbishment of the well. He’d connected the well to the electric mains, installing lights, heating, a radio and video surveillance cameras (“just in case anybody tries to break in”). He’d also built an extension, which included two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and a snooker room, complete with a full-sized snooker table, pool table and trampoline.

 

“A trampoline, in the snooker room?”

 

“I could hardly build a Trampoline Room Jed, this is the bottom of a well after all. You need to lower your expectations; most alien shelters don’t even have a snooker room.”

 

Although we were sheltering from merciless aliens at the bottom of a well, we were entirely comfortable. We had one of Alun’s infamous Don’t Worry It’s Only a Curry curries (so called after one of his earlier attempts was mistaken by the mainland military as an attempted nuclear attack), followed by a bottle of wine from the wine cellar Coldplay had installed when they had built the well for meditation purposes. (Clearly, in Coldplay’s eyes, meditation involved drinking large quantities of expensive wine at the bottom of a deep, dark well.)

 

After the wine we played three frames of snooker, all of which I lost, and I left Alun to do the rigorous thirty-minute trampoline routine he performs every night before bed.

 

Just before lights-out, we turned on the radio, to hear about the latest developments. A strange noise filled the air, an inhuman hiss, a ghastly alien rasping, mangled vowels and constantans in a language that sounded light years away from the human tongue.
 
“Aliens must have taken over mainland radio,” I said. 

 

“No Jed,” Alun said, “It’s Bob Harris, he always sounds like that.

 

We slept well, the beds were comfortable, and the next morning I lie undisturbed until after seven – there was no point our getting up earlier, all normal services had been disrupted by the alien invasion.

 

We broke our fast leisurely and played a few more games of snooker, there no point hiding from aliens if you can’t at least enjoy the facilities.

 

“Right Jed, let’s get up on the beach and get ready to spank the aliens. They must have walked into our traps by now.”

 

“We know nothing about the aliens,” I said, “They might not have legs, they might be hyper intelligent beings capable of avoiding our seaweed traps.”

 

“Nonsense Jed, no species is so intelligent they could outsmart seaweed. However, I’ll grant you they mightn’t have legs, but they must have walked, crawled, slithered or conveyed themselves by some means alien to the human mind, into our traps by now.”

 

We climbed up the rope ladder to the top of the well and started inspecting our beaches for entangled aliens. We didn’t have to search for long, for there on the south beach we saw three figures wrestling hopelessly with the seaweed in which they were buried.

 

“Right Jed, let’s spank these aliens back to whichever galaxy they came from.”

 

“Careful,” I said, “we don’t know what weapons these creatures have, they might have poisonous tentacles, heart-piercing fangs, anything.”

 

We approached the first figure cautiously, spanking sticks at the ready. The creature, whatever it was, was waving seaweed tentacles around frantically.

 

“Wait a minute,” I said, “That’s not an alien,” I said. “It’s Lord Trumpington Stumpington, the leader of the mainland council.”

 

“And these aren’t aliens either,” Alun said, pointing to the other two wriggling clumps of seaweed, “They’re Simon Mayo and Bob Harris from mainland radio.”

 

“You’re not aliens I said, to Simon Mayo and Lord Trumpington,” (I wasn’t sure about   Bob Harris). “You’re the leader of the mainland council and the man from the radio.”

 

“Yes,” Lord Trumpington admitted, “We wanted to find out how people would respond to an alien invasion, so we used your island as a trial. Because you’re cut off from the mainland all we had to do was send you special radio broadcasts, bribe the boatman not to visit you and watch to see how you responded.”

 

“You mean that the whole thing was staged, there was no invasion. You,” I pointed angrily at Simon Mayo, “You played the Floozies.”

 

“It was all his idea,” the DJ said. “I don’t create the playlist, nor write the links, I just say the words.” I noticed that he was reading this from a script.

 

“Can’t you say anything without a prompt I asked him.

 

He looked about helplessly, unable to think up a reply.

 

“Page 196, paragraph 3, possible question number 4,933,” Lord Trumpington prompted.

 

Mayo hastily turned to the correct page in his script. “No,” he said eventually, “I’m a vocal artiste, not a free thinker.”

 

With the plot exposed, Alun and I took out our spanking sticks and happily dispatched Trumpington, Mayo and Harris back to the boat they’d arrived in.

 

“Well I’m glad that’s over, Jed,” Alun said. “In spite of all my improvements the well isn’t a great place to spend months on end hiding from aliens.”

 

“I thought it was fine,” I said. “I’ve slept in worse wells.”

 

“Yes, but the cut of the cloth on the snooker table is terrible, the balls just stop dead for no reason. And the trampoline is an iota too sprinky, and the fizzy pop machine just isn’t fizzy enough.”

 

“Fizzy pop machine? I didn’t see a fizzy pop machine.”

 

“I’ll show you the next time we’re invaded by aliens, Jed,” Alun said.

 

“Erm, are you going to take the wet towel off your head?” I said.

 

“Not yet, Jed. You can never be too careful. I’ll wait until Simon Mayo says it’s safe to remove it.”