LONG HAD Omron wished to learn the details of the original mission and why anyone would try Plan 9. While painfully obvious how flawed a plan to control dead bodies was, he could not wait to hear the details of its failure.


“Your excellence, may I ask, what happened when we arrived at Earth? Why have we never established communication with the earthlings here?”


“We did communicate. We sent messages in our language which they did not understand at first. Then somehow, in mere days, they learned to create a language computer and were able to understand our messages.”


“We did not think to use our language computers, sir?”


“I guess we lost interest in talking when we flew our ships over their cities, and they shot at us. Plus, those humans refused to accept our existence. Even after they had seen us, heard our messages, they still refused to accept us.”


“We always say we came in peace those seventeen lectons ago. May I ask, what did the message say, the ones the earthlings translated?” A thought hit Omron from his own words, why not call the language computer a translator?


The high commander lifted his data pad. “Eros identified himself as a space soldier. Here is a partial transcript of his message: ‘Did you think you were alone? How can any race be so stupid? If you resist our landings, we will have to destroy you. You are on the verge of destroying the entire universe.’ Direct and to the point.”


“Sir, if I may, calling the earthlings stupid and saying, ‘we will have to destroy you’ does not sound all that peaceful to me.”


“He said if, Sergeant. You see, we gave them the choice.”


“How did they respond?”


The high commander swirled his head to say, I do not know. “Eros returned to the mother ship before they could reply.”


“So, knowing we could now communicate, and having come for this very purpose, we stopped trying to communicate and went right to Plan 9?”


“I will never forget the speech I gave Eros after he suggested Plan 9. ‘The earth people are getting closer to that which we fear. Since they will not listen or respect our existence, they cannot help but believe our powers when they see their own dead walking around again, brought about by our advancement in such things… Their own dead will be used to make them accept our existence and believe in that fact.’”


“Stirring, sir.”


“They were so frightened by our animated dead, the few humans who saw them screamed and could not move, they simply stayed where they were as the ridiculously slow-moving zombies approached.”


“I heard we had some issues controlling them.”


“We animated only three corpses.” The high commander held up the three fingers on his left hand. He had once tested the earthlings’ original explosives and did not realize he should not have lit the firecracker while holding it. “They pursued a terrified woman who scurried past the same small plot in a cemetery many times and they could not catch her until she sat in a car. Again, she did not move, only screamed, when the animated dead man slowly approached.”


“As I recall, one tried to kill Eros.”


“Animated dead bodies ended up being a terrible idea.”


“Who could have guessed?” Omron could have.


“Did you know one of those corpses just kept walking out of the woods and opening his cloak?” Omron tilted his head no. “Then back in the bushes until the next time, repeating it on a cycle like a raging lunatic. I think some humans call it peekaboo. I ordered its termination. Be glad you were in soil-shorts and missed that fiasco.”


“Sir, if they knew about us and we wished to present ourselves and talk to the humans all those lectons ago, why have we not enacted Plan 1?”


“They had seen our ships and showed them on the front page of every newspaper on the planet, yet they refused to respect our existence, so we made no further attempts to communicate. But we have tried other plans as well, and some are working quite effectively. Our earthling problem may end soon.”