by Mark Speed
Their first invasion of Earth had been a mixed success, taking place in around the year 235AD. The Roman Empire had reached a size and level of sophistication that had triggered their sensors, and they’d moved in. Within a few generations the population of Rome had swollen past a million – most of whom were unemployed and sustained entirely on free wheat hand-outs and grisly entertainment. The presence of a million idle freeloaders was a knife to the throat of a terrified government.
The Praetorian guards had been there to maintain the status quo but operated by nonsensical Dolt rules. They were paid to protect the Emperor but would offer the position of Emperor to the highest bidder, murder him a few months later, then hold another auction to line their pockets. Fifty years later they had their ideal candidate in power: the emperor Diocletian. Eventually taxation rose and productivity fell to the extent that the currency had to be debased. Hyperinflation set in and the whole Roman Empire collapsed. Other, less advanced civilisations without Dolts filled the void. The Dolts were victims of their own success.
A few centuries later the Dolts had regrouped, but the best they could do was to instigate the Crusades; a triumph of stupidity over reason and sanity. A few hundred years after that, Western civilisation had recovered and experienced the Renaissance. For a time, it had looked like the Spanish Empire would triumph, as they conquered new territories in South America. The Dolts had remained scattered throughout the imprint of the Roman Empire, and had made their move. As they exerted their influence on the Spanish, wealth from the new territories was used to subsidise pointless public buildings, rather than invest in a meaningful economy. Like the Roman Empire beforehand, it began to rely on plunder and conquest just to sustain itself. An expensive Armada was formed to invade England, with the signature Doltish idea of having more priests on board the ships than soldiers. A cargo including forty thousand barrels of olive oil and eleven thousand pairs of sandals had ensured that their gunners didn’t even have room to use their cannons, which were vastly superior to those used by the English fleet. The Armada had been doomed before it set sail, thanks to the Dolts.
Then came the Enlightenment. In Britain, the Industrial Revolution had begun with a vengeance – there began the biggest migration of humans from country to city yet seen. New technologies were invented and exploited. Science and innovation made rapid progress. The British defeated the dictator Napoleon and their empire stretched to every corner of the globe. The first professional and independent civil service in the world was born. Standards were unified from one end of the British Empire to the other, and enforced by an army of highly trained civil servants.
And then the Dolts had moved in. First to go was Brunel’s wide gauge railway. His seven-foot gauge enabled faster, larger, safer, and more efficient railway transport. In 1846 a parliamentary commission influenced by submissions from Dolts ruled that the standard gauge of four feet eight and a half inches made more sense – if only to themselves. It was game over for the British Empire from that point forth. No colonial outpost was safe, and with the independence of India in 1947 the Dolts had nearly a fifth of the world’s population in their stranglehold.
Outside of any civil service, a one-party state was ideal for the Dolts. In the absence of either of those, MBA programmes and Economics degrees were the next best bet to infect ordinary humans with Doltish ideas about the way the world should be governed. Since the Second World War, the host societies had been spewing out over-confident graduates from these programmes to stem the inexplicable decline in their economies. It was a feedback loop gone haywire – the worse their economies became, the more graduates with Doltish ideas were demanded. The more Dolt-influenced MBAs and Economists were appointed, the faster the economies were clogged up with Dolts, or humans with Doltish ideas. One had even reached the lofty height of President of the United States, managed to offend two billion people with his inappropriate use of the word ‘crusade’ and launched an unwinnable and unaffordable war against a noun.
This, at least, was the Doctor’s own hypothesis about Dolts. He couldn’t prove it, but that’s what it looked like to him, based on the evidence he’d seen with his own eyes. One day he’d write an academic paper about it.
Dolts were known for their complete lack of empathy and their inherent lack of imagination. His supervisor, Dolt, was no exception – indeed, he was the archetype for the species, unable as he was even to think up a humanoid surname for himself other than Dolt. The University’s confused and over-polite administration staff had at first documented his name as D’Olt – as the President of Imperial College was Sir Keith O’Nions at the time of his appointment, and one didn’t make the sort of mistake one made with O’Nions’ name more than once. Dolt’s loud protest of “I’m a Dolt. A plain Dolt; nothing more than a Dolt!” had passed into institutional lore.
The Doctor himself had been at the university since before its amalgamation from several different institutions. It was always far easier to inveigle one’s way into an organisation at its foundation, and even more so when it was formed from so many varied constituents. He’d nudged Prince Albert towards forming the Royal College of Chemistry by private subscription back in 1845 and been awarded a role in supervising the transfer of technology from research into industry. A knighthood had followed, as well as the role of visiting professor, though he never let himself be called anything other than Doctor. Imperial College had been born from its predecessors in 1907 and it had taken a further 79 years for its human overseers to form its world-class Technology Transfer department, which he happily let do its job – just so long as the technology had passed the transmission guidelines.
There was a knock at the Doctor’s door; precise, measured, and exactly the same as every other knock Dolt had made on it. It raised the Doctor’s blood pressure in a Pavlovian response.
“Come in.”
Dolt opened the door and stamped in. The stamping wasn’t Dolt’s fault – he came from a high-gravity environment, after all – but after five years he should have been able to adjust to local conditions. Having evolved on a high-gravity planet, Dolts were short – about five feet and three inches, or one point six metres – and squashed-looking, with almost no neck. Something about them always reminded Doctor How of Humpty Dumpty, but without the associated jolliness. And, for one, he’d never bother to put Dolt back together again should he fall.
“Ah, Doctor How. Are you well?”
“As can be expected, Mr Dolt. Is this a social visit?”
“You know very well that we Dolts never make social visits, Dr How. Yet every day you ask me this, and every day I explain this to you. Your species is famed for its intellect and memory. I find it peculiar that this one fact never seems to lodge in your brain.”
“Extraordinary, isn’t it? Now, how may I assist you?”
Dolt thudded down into one of the two chairs in front of the Doctor’s desk. He sat like a diagram of good posture. The Doctor was convinced Dolt had seen an illustration and interpreted it as prescriptive. “You have submitted forms to take on a new human assistant.”
“Correct.”
“I have checked my records. You have not had an assistant since the end of hostilities in the human Second World War.”
“Correct.”
“Why the need for an assistant now? The threat level is currently low. Human development of the first phase of digitalisation of their culture increases the risk of exposure of our operations. The choice of a human assistant at this juncture is all risk and no gain.”
The Doctor stretched back in his top-of-the-range office chair and glared at Dolt, who remained expressionless and oblivious to the hostility oozing from his colleague. “As you are well aware, Mr Dolt, article eleven of the Galactic Cooperation Treaty stipulates that I am allowed an assistant.”
“Yes, but the second paragraph stipulates that there must be compelling reasons to do so. Hence the reason that you and your… your colleagues, have always picked them up ‘on the fly’ as
humans would put it.”
“For your information, I did pick him up ‘on the fly’.”
“Incorrect, Doctor. You intervened in the life of this one some years ago.”
“I intervene in many lives. That’s my job. And it was very much on the fly – he was an unwitting proxy in an attack on my systems, and then he turned up on my doorstep.”
“You were out, and he couldn’t get in. You sought him out.”
“To intervene positively. I saved him from a beating. And if I’d not undone the third-party hack that had set him up for it, he’d probably have lost his life.”
“But I still see no emergency that would warrant an assistant, Doctor. Indeed, these last five years I have been wondering whether you and your kind are really necessary at all.”
“I do see an emergency, you Dolt. It’s my job to see these things and I sense something big.”
Dolt harrumphed. “This is most irregular. The young man is unsuitable. He has a criminal record for petty offences such as shop-lifting and handling stolen goods.”
“Yes, that’s what makes him such a good candidate.”
“What?”
“He was much too good to get caught for the bigger crimes. And yet he is loyal and trustworthy.”
“Trustworthy?”
“You will never understand humans, Dolt.”
“He also has a poor education record.”
“Which counts for nothing. He has a hungry mind.”
“But you are in one of the great universities of the human culture, and you are a man of considerable education yourself, Doctor. How can you dismiss education in such an offhand manner?”
“He’s not had the same chances as many of our students.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dolt, despite the fact that he clearly wasn’t, “but I’ll have to reject the application. There is no clear threat at the moment.”
“A threat to me is a threat to the Earth.”
“A minor hacking event.”
“Possibly a major hack of one of my – as you would put it – ‘colleagues’. Or, as I would put it, ‘cousins’.”
“Have you contacted him?”
“We haven’t spoken in decades. As you know, we are all somewhat… estranged these days.”
“It would seem somewhat lax of you not to have contacted him, Doctor. There must be a directive.” Where there was a Dolt, there was a directive, a guideline, a procedure, a rule, a protocol.
“No. There isn’t. And we’re not in communication.”
“For how long?”
“Since the Sixties.”
“Some fifty sidereal years? That is unacceptable. Come, we must draw up a set of protocols. A weekly management meeting, perhaps. Or a monthly team-building session and an annual away-day.”
Dr How held his head in his hands and spoke slowly through gritted teeth. “Given that my cousins and I have spent most of our lives travelling the length and breadth of the Pleasant universe, spanning almost its entire timeline, I hardly see the need for an annual away-day.” He heard Dolt open his mouth to speak but cut him off. “Or a biennial, triennial, quadrennial – or, for that matter – once-a-decade weekend. If you’ve read your files you’ll know very well why we’ve not been in touch since the Sixties. And, being a complete Dolt, I know you will have read them meticulously.” Mr Dolt nodded with satisfaction. The Doctor continued. “I really don’t have the time to draw up protocols. Now, please just approve my assistant and let me go back to my work.”
“Not without further evidence of an emergency.” Dolt got up from his seat. “Good day to you, Doctor,” he added, without appreciating that it was a phrase which had a meaning.
“Good day,” said Doctor How.
Dolt’s clunking footsteps echoed down the corner. The Doctor sat and seethed for a few minutes, studying a document on the use of graphene in microprocessors for consumer products. It had been little more than a decade since he’d decided, as head of Technology Transmission, to let humans have graphene at all. They were quick on the uptake – he had to give them that. He anticipated some close questioning over the matter at the next meeting of the Galactic Council’s Technology Transmission sub-committee. His argument would be that the rate of development of mankind’s technology was now beyond the point of retardation; never mind control – particularly since he was apparently the only one of the six doing his job properly. Further to that, there was the ethical question as to whether it was moral that the rest of the Pleasant universe should retard or control the Earth’s citizens at this stage at all.
He heard the clumping of Dolt’s footsteps approaching again. It was too much to hope that he was taking a natural break and, sure enough, there was the familiar knock at his door. If he hadn’t dropped his internal body temperature down to thirty degrees Celsius in preparation, his blood might have boiled.
“Come in.”
“Excuse me again, Doctor How.”
“Is this a social visit?”
Dolt regarded him blankly. “I understand that you might think that, given that I was with you a quarter of an hour ago. No, it is not a social visit.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Protocol dictates that I tell you about an incident. Or rather, a series of incidents that have alerted the system.”
“You mean we have an emergency?”
“We have an alert, Doctor.”
“Because an emergency would allow me to have an assistant.”
“We have an alert that needs to be assessed. You are the only person capable of assessing it under the present circumstances.”
“Excellent. Show me.”
They went along the corridor to Dolt’s office. The Doctor still found the silence slightly disconcerting, but he had learnt thousands of years before that there was simply no point in small talk where Dolts were concerned. Conversation to them was a meaningless concept – spoken communication was strictly for the conveyance of information or orders. Dolt motioned him to join him behind his desk. He leaned over Dolt and looked at the LCD screen. All Higher systems run by the Galactic Council were, by law, ordered to interact with local systems to help mask detection. The LCD was displaying data not from Dolt’s primitive laptop, but from a Higher system.
“One of our human-facing websites has reported something of merit. Our algorithms have cross-referenced it with human law-enforcement chatter and raised an alert.”
“Let’s have a look.” The Doctor took the keyboard from Dolt and tilted the screen in his direction. “So we’ve got an off-duty taxi hitting an invisible object and having its fuel tank cut, then some tracks and a giant molehill. Hmm. The molehill’s the weird bit, isn’t it? Then just a few days later a big hole in the diesel tank of a filling station. So that’s reported on an anonymous website reserved for emergency personnel. Is this ours?”
“Yes, our site. We gave the idea to a retired member of the British constabulary. Mostly it’s UFO reports.”
“So these are credible reports of UFOs by members of the British police service?”
“Oh, yes. You won’t find a more credible source of information about such phenomena. It’s perfect – it lends just the right amount of authority for human minds to dismiss it.”
“I see. Very useful for keeping tabs on just how much they think they know about us.”
“That was the intention. However, the Enforcement section of the Galactic Council finds it invaluable for issuing prohibition notices on malfeasants, and issuing penalties.”
“Hang on a second. So we gave this retired copper the idea of setting up a website to enable serving officers to report anonymously the weird stuff they see, risking their careers and reputations in doing so?”
“Yes.”
“And you use it mostly to issue traffic tickets to joy-riding aliens?”
“Yes.”
“Brilliant, Dolt. Just brilliant.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” The Doctor’s sarcasm bounced off his colleague’s concrete
view of the world.
The Doctor wondered how much ire he could swallow in a single morning. “And… this is cross-referenced to the destruction of five London Hackney carriages in a secure compound three days after that filling station incident. Each was turned over on its back and had its fuel tank severed.”
“Exactly.”
“And this is being flagged up as an emergency?”
“Well, if it isn’t an emergency, Doctor, I can stand the system down with a manual override.”
“I’m not inclined to think it’s an emergency.”
“Oh, then I shall have to de-authorise your assistant.”
“What?”
“If it’s an emergency, you get your assistant. Those are the rules. But, since it’s not, I shall have to de-authorise that action with immediate effect. It is a binary decision.”
“No, no. It’s an emergency, Dolt.”
“But you said it wasn’t, Doctor.”
“I said I wasn’t inclined to think of it as an emergency. Of course, it is actually an emergency.”
Dolt eyed the Doctor. “Why are you now inclined to say it is?”
“These are each low-probability events. The odds of three such events happening within a week are miniscule.”
“But a series of low-probability events is bound to happen more often than most of us believe. I shall issue a manual override.” Dolt reached for the keyboard.
