"General Thud! General Thud! Wake up! The aliens have landed. We must surrender!" General Thud's assistant Fred turned on the lights and opened the curtains to help Thud wake up and confront the situation. Thud was groggy because he had stayed up late supervising an ultimately successful mission carried out by remotely piloted vehicles in some small country on the other side of the world. Thud mumbled, "Aliens? How many? Where are they? What are they doing?" General Thud looked out the window, expecting to see giant tripods walking around and destroying buildings with death rays. He saw his lawn, a bright blue sky, and hummingbirds hovering near his bird feeder.

Fred was trying to bring Thud up to speed as quickly as possible. "Thousands of them, General! 2376, to be precise. They gave us a map; we know where they all are. They aren't doing anything overt, but the problem is their computation! I have one here, if you'd like to look." Fred removed a black sphere two inches in diameter from his pocket and gave it to Thud.

Thud sat on his bed holding the small sphere and staring at it dumbfounded. "Okay, you think we should surrender to a few thousand small spheres. Why is that, exactly?" The sphere seemed a little flexible in Thud's hand. As he experimented a few seconds to see just how flexible, it collapsed in his hand, converting itself into a loose clump of alien sand that landed in his lap and started to dribble onto his bed and the floor. Thud stood up and brushed the rest of the sand off of his pyjamas and bed, and thought for a moment about where he left his vacuum cleaner bags. He was not impressed with these aliens.

Fred said "I don't think you wanted to do that, sir. Their ultimatum states that for every alien we destroy, they'll manufacture two in the outer reaches of the Solar System where we'll never find them!"

Thud said, "Okay, so now you think we should surrender to 2375 small spheres, and two or more small spheres that are out of the battlefield for the moment. Why is that?"

Fred said "Well, you remember a few years back when some people copied their brain state into a computer and posted it to the Internet? Apparently somebody copied the data across an unencrypted wireless link, the aliens picked it up with their radio telescopes, and now they are simulating those poor people in these black spheres and torturing the simulations! They sent us vide...

Brad Helin

Brad Helin