REPORTER: So what you're saying is that your kind are checking in on earth, maybe the way humans change the filter in a fish tank?
BARBARA: Not exactly Ken-
REPORTER: My name isn't Ken, it's Robert.
BARBARA: Sure Rob, I apologize, you guys all look the same to me. As I was saying-
ROBERT: Isn't that a bit racist. Saying humans all look the same?
BARBARA: Rob, it isn't about race. It's about species... well technically you and I aren't even in the same 'kingdom' according to the metrics of your taxonomic system. SO it isn't any more 'racist' to say that I think all humans look alike than for you to say that all rhododendrons look alike. Seriously, if you were faced with a thousand starfish could you tell the difference between Ken the starfish and his friend Bob, even when they were sitting next to one another?
ROB: I'm not sure how to react to that...
BARBARA: It's a simple idea Rob. Now, where was I, right, the fish tank metaphor. Pshh! The planet is not a fish tank, it's an entire closed system. We intervene almost none at all. You aren't the nicest bipeds in the galaxy, you know that?
ROB: So all of the sightings and the conspiracy theories are all true, you have been studying us.
BARBARA: Yes, we have... in a sense.
ROB: I guess I have to ask this... are you planning an invasion? Are you going to wipe us out and strip the Earth of it's resources?
BARBARA: Humans. If you could all take a moment, realize where you are, and then pull your heads out of one another's asses, you'd all be better off.
ROB: Thanks for that. But it isn't such an unrealistic question, everybody is worried now that your lot have landed in the middle of Sheboygan.
BARBARA: Robert, try to wrap your head around how much energy is required to travel from here in Sheboygan to our home planet on the other side of the galaxy. Trust me, it's more energy than all of your coal and oil combined. Way more. There is nothing here on earth that wouldn't be easier to get elsewhere.
ROB: Then why are you here? I mean if you can observe us without interacting with us, why have you decided to land here in Wisconsin? Why now?
BARBARA: Well, we have interacted some with your species in the past...
ROB: So the abductees are right! You have been performing experiments on us!
BARBARA: Relax Rob, we haven't done that sort of thing for a long time. But, yes, a few thousand years ago we did some of that. It just left more of a psychic imprint than we had thought it would. That's why we're here. We need to deal with our own unintended consequences.
ROB: I'm confused.
BARBARA: Surprising no one.
ROB: Seriously, what have you done to us? Why did you do it?
BARBARA: Well, we needed a few subjects to inspect, standard procedure. The problem is that your kind really took to the process. The basic neuromimetics of the process itself created a self replicating salience structure in the numino-psychic boundary of your species. 'Abduction' as you call it, turned you creatures upside down. All that rubbish about ascendance and living forever in the sky and revelation...
ROB: Hang on a minute. Are you saying that religion is some sort of laboratory test gone wrong?
BARBARA: Well, more like an side effect really...
ROB: And that's what you lot are here to fix?
BARBARA: Yes. Well, no. Yes actually. It isn't quite that simple...
ROB: You're going to take away God? Is that what you plan on doing? You know they're going to drop every nuclear missile they've got on this midwestern hamlet the moment they hear about this? Take away God! You're off your tits!
BARBARA: Stop being such a baby Ken!
ROB: It's Rob! Not that you care...
BARBARA: I know! I'm just trying to get you back on track before you throw a wobbler on me. Listen, we're sorry, alright? We had no idea that this would get so out of hand. We tried intervening before, but it only made matters worse. It's a terribly resilient viral structure...
ROB: Tried before? What do you mean?
BARBARA: I'm not going to get into that right now Ken. Focus, will you. We aren't going to take anything away, we're going to streamline things a bit, that's all.
BARBARA: Oh I was waiting for this one. Endosymbiosis. We've all done it, even your kind Robert.
ROBERT: Could you remind me? I'm not familiar with...
BARBARA: Endosymbiosis is the process by which a prokaryotic organism is absorbed and incorporated into a larger one. The mitochondria present in the cell of every animal on Earth are the product of a endosymbiotic relationship that started... about four billion years ago. Chloroplasts are the same way, first as bacteria then as algae. Now, my kind have channeled our evolution for a really long time now, and part of that was incorporating chloroplasts into our cellular matrices. So we're all part plant.
ROBERT: Fascinating. So you receive nourishment from light?
BARBARA: Exactly, I mean we can't live off of just sunlight and air for very long. But it does make things easier. You'll all be green someday too.
ROBERT: Huh.
BARBARA: However, there are quite a few steps to learn before we get to that.
ROBERT: Such as?
BARBARA: We're going to start with a collective mimeto-noetic defragmentation, accompanied by a complete neuroempathic spectrum overhaul.
ROBERT: What? I've defragmented my hard drive, and as I recall defragmentation involves taking all of the little individual chunks of data apart and sort of rearranging them... scrubbing out the redundancies and broken bits... hold on... that sounds like brainwashing again.
BARBARA: Well, in the most literal sense, I'm afraid it is. But it's for your own good.
BARBARA: Defragmentation won't take more than a few minutes, so quit whining about it.
ROBERT:: Quit whining? You're going to relieve us of our belief in God because that was some sort of slip up on your part... and life before limb is all you can say when I ask just what the hell you mean by defragmentation? Quit whining? Do you have any idea how people are going to take this news.
BARBARA: Robert, you need to understand that people aren't going to get that chance.
ROBERT: Why the hell did you pick me, another random journalist out of the thousands who descended on Sheboygan, just to tell me that I'm not even going to tell the people this? None of it makes sense!
BARBARA: Listen Rob, you know how a doctor will tell a kid to look at a poster of a kitten or something right before he gives them a booster shot?
ROBERT: Oh dear God I don't care for where this is going...
BARBARA: Frankly, we asked you aboard under false pretenses. Admittedly, we chose you because our initial reads did show you to be a bit more integrally connected to the noetic strata of your species. That and you look nice in a pair of chinos. But it isn't your work that got you inside the krillia field. We needed a single subject to prime the defragmentation process.
ROBERT: Oh shit. I knew it was something like that.
BARBARA: See. Now you're being a big boy. If we had asked some bible swinging fundamentalist aboard their internal psychomimetic architecture would interrupt the signal. Yours didn't. Which is good for everybody.
ROBERT: 'Didn't.' Well that's past tense. I'm not quite sure how we've passed that first hurdle where you use me as some kind of test monkey.
BARBARA: Robert *sigh* what you should know at this point is that you came and left, properly defragmented days ago. This conversation is taking place outside the body you think of as yours. This you, the pre defrag Robert Mitchens, is just a recording. A copy of a pre defrag human. We need you to sort of 'take the pulse' of the noeto-mimetic strata of humanity as the process sets in. Without a persona recorded and suspended in a coherent phase stasis we can't connect and calibrate our work.
ROBERT: Dear Lord...
BARBARA: There. That sort of response is indicative of the kind of mimetic atavisms we keep seeing. Here you are, an irreligious man, an agnostic, yet, when confronted by the possibility of losing your personal attachment to four dimensional sensory input, you panic.
ROBERT: Well, I'd be remiss to say that you've trapped this me in a sort of limbo. This is a kind of balmy Hell, even though there is lemonade. Do you realize that?
BARBARA: Of course! But try to remember that you, the real you who is still out there exploring and living out his timeline, is very much free. 'You' are just a shadow of him, a transparency. Don't get so upset, there isn't anything that can change that.
ROBERT: So you're telling me not to panic. You've got me trapped in what appears to be a small parlor in a victorian home with a lovely view of Lake Winnebago having a chat with a disembodied voice who calls herself 'Barbara' for the rest of eternity and my best bet right now is to stay calm? Are you serious?
BARBARA: Robert, my 'species' is significantly more advanced than that of mankind. The difference in evolutionary progress between humans and squid is roughly equivalent to the distance between my kind and your own. You won't even know the difference once I'm no longer speaking with you. It will be just like a deep sleep. When I return, you will only remember as much of this chat as I choose you to. It's not eternity, it's just another night.
ROBERT: Well, that's a relief, Plato was right once again. May I ask how things are going back on earth, assuming I'm not there... or anywhere really?
BARBARA: Things are picking up, finally. The nonsense bits of delusion and dissonance that individual members of your species have been carrying like viruses are more or less scrubbed out, and the empathic channel throughput has multiplied tenfold. On the whole we've got you out of the woods. I think your kind will come through it with only a few million more casualties.
ROBERT: A few million more! What are you saying? Millions more? How many have died in this, this, this genocidal surgery of yours?
BARBARA: Oh don't misunderstand. We aren't killing anyone. These are people killing one another as the effects of dissonance stripping leave them essentially psychotic with wayward zealotry and homicidal indifference. It was already going on. Do you think the past hundred years of war and genocide was normal? No, Robert, we're just streamlining that process, believe me, half as many will die doing this our way. And in the end the planet will actually survive the evolutionary step you have been faltering at for about two thousand years.
ROBERT: You didn't answer my question.
BARBARA: Bob, about six million are dead or dying right now. The process should be over in another five days. If it weren't for us, you shaved apes would have done yourselves in and taken ninety percent of the Earth's biodiversity with you. You would have set the planet's evolution back another one hundred and ten million years. Think about that.
ROBERT: You make it all sound so quaint. A few million dead. Am I out there somewhere, dead or dying?
BARBARA: You are doing fine. Now get some rest. Good night Robert.
