Like, you always wondered about the space aliens. Okay … - Denyse O’Leary

(My try at science fiction:)

Shhh!!

When the Luminarians began exploring Earth some 150 years ago, they had to develop a strategy for ensuring that they remained undetected.
uminarians are somewhat more intelligent than humans but are also much more modest. Also, they had noted that very intelligent humans often cannot see the obvious.

Thus, a strategy occurred to them that, properly executed, would enable them to carry out their research without interference.

Having first made sure through biotechnology that they looked and acted like humans, they became psychiatrists - focusing on institutions where most of the patients are on involuntary committal orders. They had no reason to fear exposure from such persons in the event of a security slip-up.

A number of their other strategies were similarly wise. They associated with crackpots. They persuaded them to accuse NASA of hiding the bodies of space aliens. This ensured that the whole notion of the Luminarians' possible existence attracted easy public derision.

The Luminarians took no offense at this; indeed, they did everything possible to encourage it.
What was even better was that crackpots who accidentally stumbled onto the facts immediately seized the opportunity to phone NASA with the news that one of their own number was in fact a space alien … .

Which had the effect desired by the Luminarians, if not necessarily by the crackpots.
Some Luminarians infiltrated astronomy and space exploration (including NASA) and encouraged nonsense wherever possible, behaving coolly, sometimes even hostilely, toward expressions of good sense or reasonable interpretation of evidence.

Despite being deists themselves, the Luminarians have encouraged the new atheist movement as much as possible. It promotes a view of cosmology that makes facts like fine tuning of the universe for life undiscussable in science. And when facts aren't discussable, what can be/?

They promote any alternative nonsense instead.

An early Luminarian coup was to spread the (false) news that thousands of people had panicked when they heard the radio broadcast of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds in 1938. This alerted generations of social science researchers to the study of why people believe “things that aren’t true” (in other words, things not believed among the researchers who got soc sci grants).

It sometimes became necessary to take a human being up to one of the high tech labs in their invisible spacecraft, for a detailed neuroscience examination. They were careful to follow a critical policy:

Never abduct anyone likely to be believed by persons with any authority. It made no difference to their study of specific still-puzzling features of human neuroscience whether the research subject was likely to be believed by such persons.

In fact, the authorities co-operated without even knowing they were doing so.

"World's smartest scientist" types helped immensely by saying things like "Why on earth would the extraterrestrials abduct the least believable people. Haw! haw! haw!"

These smartest scientist types were very intelligent, thus could not see the obvious. It never occurred to them to turn their own question around: Why would the extraterrestrials abduct someone who would be believed by persons in authority? How would that help them continue their work undetected in peace?

Far from it, when the Luminarians wanted to study human embryology, they abducted women who had become pregnant under questionable circumstances. The women later claimed to have been impregnated by space aliens. The human embryology project continues unhindered to this day.

I discovered all this quite by accident when I formed the impression that one of my neighbours was in fact an extraterrestrial, based on things about his life that I had stumbled on.

I quietly prepared to turn myself in to a mental home when he came up to me in the common area out back of our townhouses and said, "O’Leary, can we talk?"

He explained that, as a Luminarian, he was here to gather data. In his case he was stuck in a minor, frigid outpost (Ottawa) that he rather disliked, and was hoping for a promotion. Maybe my good opinion would help.

Because the Luminarians knew that humans would eventually make contact with them, they had decided that the best policy was to make sure that we knew as little as possible about them. But they now know a great deal about us - even if it means enduring a winter in Ottawa.

He explained their methods, as outlined above.
I thought about what he said and replied: Okay, let's cut a deal: I'll continue to dump on the space alien stuff, and you leave me and mine alone. ... But you had better keep your part of the bargain.

We’ll see. ;)

The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).? br> Also published here.

Denyse O’Leary is a Canadian journalist, author, and blogger.