PLAN 5 HAD been underway before Omron joined the earth mission. While he did not watch much of their video entertainment beyond Tom & Jerry, he knew of the large variety in the planetary catalog.


Plan 5’s objective was to ‘Produce video entertainment in all major countries to indoctrinate a fear of space travel and aliens.’


While some optimistic visions of meeting aliens had gained popularity in human storytelling, the majority showed evil creatures, sometimes hideous monsters, who would conquer or occasionally eat the earthlings. Omron found that funny, never thinking he or any alien he knew of would ever eat a human. He thought again about them mistaking the snordvark on their fleet logo for his people. If that little critter grew to two or three meters, he would be frightened of them eating him, too.


He read directly from the report.

 

In continuous adaptation of Plan 5, we implanted an agent to design a creature for a film about an alien [cleverly entitled, 'Alien']. Fleet artist Volimack snuck a drawing of a little mouth coming out of a bigger, more menacing mouth into the film's creature design sketchbook. While he did this as a joke, they loved it and included it in their design.


Humans are strange creatures, fearing a tiny set of teeth more than a wide mouth full of razor-sharp fangs that could tear someone's head off just because it was different from anything they had seen before.

 

Omron could not argue humans being strange creatures. He could not imagine a civilized species becoming so engrossed in video entertainment. That reminded him to finish the episode where that vile jerry creature pretended to be a French swordsman to terrorize poor Tom. When he had to switch it off to meet the high commander, that evil jerry was teaching another rodent to engage in the same malevolent behavior.

There was a recent addendum to the report.

 

In continuous adaptation of Plan 5, we infiltrated production studios who owned previously utopian science fiction franchises to make them dark and scary. One of our great successes was on a program where humankind had been depicted as solving all their problems and trekking among the stars with something like our Galactic Union, except their hubris had its federation capital on earth. [Its creator may have been a scientist who modified a fruit gene and invented an unidentifiable new variety of berry he named rodden.]


In our corrupted new version of these programs, we showed a future with the same problems humans have had throughout their history not being resolved. We added wars, gratuitous violence, foul language, and social issues that humans would likely solve in a few years as persisting hundreds of years in their future. With its success, we continued dismantling many other formerly beloved science fiction franchises.

 

It surprised Omron to see such proficiency by anyone involved in the earth project.


“You see, Sergeant, we are not completely inept in our efforts to stop the earthlings.”


“Yes, sir. I never meant to imply—”


“Your earlier comments were not wrong. The success of one of these plans, finally a decent one, motivated us to jump to Plan 11. It seemed a natural follow-up as human technology miniaturized their communication and entertainment devices. Of course, we helped them do that.”


“You refer to the jobs side project to propel their technology to have advanced devices in handheld form, roughly the size of their fruits, like… an apple.”


“Look over the Plan 11 report and see how its great success has surpassed my wildest hopes.”

 

Plan 11 Status Report

Earth date: September 16, 1997, to present.

The Plan 11 effective date saw the human we needed returned to the company we would use to accomplish the plan's objective: 'Create a means for earthlings to occupy themselves on devices they can carry everywhere with them.' Several earth corporations have been used to copy the invention since the January 9, 2007, announcement of our new technology ironically called the smartphone.


It took several earth solar cycles to grow what the humans now call social media to become an addiction and all-consuming global distraction. From video entertainment they can watch for hours to the shortest ones they like to see one after another, we have successfully reduced billions of minds to slovkol pudding. [Delicious, but useless as brain matter.]


These earthlings are so addicted to their handheld devices and so distracted by them, they can walk across a street teeming with traffic or pilot their land vehicles into each other. We have reduced the human attention span to the point where any concept that takes longer than a few earth seconds to explain will be ignored or immediately forgotten.

 

“This is… genius. By creating a means for people to occupy themselves on these handheld devices, we have effectively destroyed their society.”


“Correct, Sergeant. It does not seem likely they will be able to recover from this corruption. Plan 11 alone fills me with confidence we have solved our human problem. We shall soon depart this deplorable planet of theirs.”


“Then, sir, respectfully… Why bother with Plans 10 and 12?”


“Insurance, Sergeant. Plan 12, the last added to the list, is working quite well, do you not agree?”


“Of course. To shift focus of space exploration from carefully regulated government agencies to outlandish billionaires with massive egos created the perfect storm to stall their efforts while making people think it will advance the same.”


After a hearty chuckle, the high commander said, “You know, one of those eccentric dimwits made a rocket that resembles a gocklung?”


“Yes, I recall jokes about the male reproductive organ penetrating outer space. I think that hairless man from the earth’s most famous river did it to copy an entertainment video called Austin Powers… That leaves Plan 10, sir.”


“Plan 10 is our ticket home.”