"Okay, Steven," Mike replied and the map appeared on the flat screen.
"You see that the galaxy is mostly separated into two regions. This yellow part is controlled by the Lumpeyins. And the Grays control the green part. Mike calls the Grays the Teytoonis, by the way," I explained.
"Sounds to me like they bought too many vowels," Al, one of the original Huntsville members of Anson's cadre, said.
"Notice how the x's are all inside, deep inside, Gray territory," Tatiana pointed out. "And also note that all of the x's have a two-hundred-light-year quarantine around them. The Grays are afraid of these planets for some reason."
"That's right. And Mike and I figured out that only these quarantined planets and all of these quarantined planets have isolated abductees on them. This is too blatantly obvious a correlation to overlook. Tatiana . . ." I nodded for her to take over.
"I think the Grays fear the isolated abductees for some reason and that is why the quarantine is there. Perhaps these Lumpeyins caused something or did something to us that the Grays do not like. I'm not sure."
"Boobytrap!" Tabitha said.
Anson looked at her and replied, "A boobytrap, sir?" Then he started laughing and chuckling to himself and in a very badly imitated Russian accent he continued, "Ha, ha, ha . . . It was so obvious!" And he slammed his fist on the table.
Jim and Tabitha must have understood the joke because they started laughing. I wasn't sure if it was a joke on Tatiana or not with the Russian accent and all.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
"Nothing is funny, really, Steven, not about our situation any way. But this moment mimics one of the anime cartoons from the 1980s that we've studied," Anson said.
"That you've studied?" Tatiana asked.
"Oh yes, studied. I've always been a science fiction fan, but a few years ago when we realized that we were actually being attacked by aliens we conducted a brainstorming session for ideas and training regimen. The outcome of that conference was that we needed a language from which to compare possible alien attack scenarios. Since there was a wealth of science fiction books, television shows, movies, and so on, we decided to make alien-oriented science fiction a training requirement for the W-squared group. This gives us a common language to use. That is why we all understand the Boobytrap reference." Anson's explanation made a lot of sense.
"Okay, I get it. So, what about the cartoon?" I asked.
"It was called Robotech and this is similar to what happened there. An alien spacecraft crashed on Earth and when other aliens showed up to get it the thing turns its big guns on and starts plastering away at the incoming aliens. The humans figure out it's a boobytrap. That's all. But doesn't it seem that this is what is happening here?"
Mike, download all info on Robotech to Tatiana and me.
Okay, Steven. There are books and television shows.
Download them all. In fact, download any and all science fiction relating to alien attack, Tatiana thought to Mike.
Okay. Mike downloaded the television series, all of the director's stories and cuts and then the books. The books were very impressive and by the third or fourth chapter in the first one I understood the boobytrap reference. It took a few seconds more to download all alien attack related science fiction.
"Actually, the parallels are thin here. This seems more like landmines to me like in Screamers or that episode of Deep Space Nine where Nog got his leg shot off," Anne Marie said. They all seemed to have impressive knowledge of the pertinent science fiction. My first guess had been that they all liked impressing each other with their knowledge of the classical science fiction and that they tried to outdo each other with their knowledge of useless trivia. I soon realized that I was wrong and that such obscure knowledge does seem to come in quite handy in their day jobs, which appeared to now include defending the human race from alien attackers—much like in many science fiction stories. Too bad nobody ever wrote a serious textbook on how to defend against an alien attack; it would have been useful. Maybe someone did, perhaps it's classified and I never had access to it. I would have to ask about that.
"That's right, Annie, landmine strategy is the same thing though. It's a boobytrap scenario." Tabitha smiled approvingly at her daughter. "If you are a retreating force that is being overrun or forced out of a territory, if there is time, you leave behind hazardous things like landmines and spiked pits and other nasty surprises to slow down an advancing enemy. They might also try to create a long-term strategy to give you an edge in future battles. Perhaps we and these other isolated civilizations are more than just boobytraps."
"How so?" Al asked.
"Haven't you ever played Risk?" Jim asked. "It's simple! If you can keep a small country like New Zealand, as well as your main portion of the globe, you can win the game. What you do is attack on the main lines and this makes your opponents forget about the little country on the bottom corner of the planet because they are fighting for their lives back at the front. You grow the military might of New Zealand, which is behind the enemy lines. Once you start weakening slightly on the main front lines, then you come sweeping up through China and in behind the enemy with your war machine that you built in New Zealand. That's it! All of these little quarantine zones are New Zealand and, let me think, what were the other strategic locations . . . Oh yeah, there was Madagascar and Greenland and Japan. That is exactly what this looks like on the map. It's galactic Risk!"
"Yeah, but we aren't in cahoots with the Lumpeyins. And we aren't building an army for them," Sara said.
Anson shooed a big fat cat out from under his feet and finished taking the steaks off the built-in gas grill at the far end of the sunroom. He set the still-sizzling steaks on the table before us. They smelled good. "Are you so sure about that, Sara? Mike, could we be in cahoots with these here Lumpeyins?" he asked in his stereotypical Southernese.
"I do not have enough data to come to that conclusion, but the suggestions that have been made thus far are quite plausible," Mike replied.
"I just thought of something," 'Becca added. "Perhaps we have been building an army for these Lumpeyins. Look at the graphic of the abductions. The numbers of abductions increase every time there is a war of major proportions. And the abductions spiked again here in 2011—they spiked by an order of magnitude. Does that year mean anything to any of us, Anson. . . Jim? She made a point to look at Anson and Jim and emphasize their names.
"I don't see . . . Holy shit!" Anson said.
"The first warp experiment we did where the electrons disappeared!" Jim exclaimed.
"That is exactly it!" Tabitha said. "You are onto something here, 'Becca. The Grays got very interested when the warp era started. And look at the big spike during the Warp War with the Asians!"
"Not only that," 'Becca continued. "We have, with Steven and Tatiana's help, developed a way to shoot down and maybe destroy the Gray ships."
Anson pulled the rest of the corn on the cob off the grill with his tongs and arranged the food in the middle of the table just to the left of the speaker.
"Dig in before it gets cold, folks." He pulled his apron off. "Y'all know that this is bad news. If the Grays realize that we have a means of really becoming a threat to them, what are the odds that they will wipe us out? And why didn't they do that already?"
"We can't tell Senator Grayson about any of our further advancements. We will slow roll him and lie if we have to from now on," Tabitha said as she loaded her plate with a steak, baked potato, and corn on the cob. She took a swig from her beer and sat back down on her side of the table. "We need to go see the President, soon."