I’d Like The Sales & Ego Upgrade Package, Please

Could the President be an alien android spy who has gone rogue and slipped his programming? Only Wilaru knows for sure.

By David Wilaru* (Dwilaru@gmail.com)

In my long career as a reporter for The American Inquisitor Weekly News Magazine I’ve had more than my share of secret rendezvous – clandestine meetings at anonymous fast-food joints, strip clubs, waffle houses, and bowling alleys where the cacophony of the flying pins masked my contact’s whispered revelations. I’ve done it all, but this was the first time I had met a double-secret, confidential informant in a hospital waiting room.

Well, not exactly a hospital. More like a drop-in liposuction outpatient clinic in the strip mall across the street from the Northern California Sex Toys Museum.

Out front, the center’s orange neon sign promised, “We Cut While You Sleep” with smaller blue script beneath it that said, “Butt Lifts Our Specialty.”

My contact was a doughy, white man with hanging jowls and moist, sad eyes seated at the end of a row of plastic chairs, scrunched into the corner opposite the front door. I recognized him by the drooping red carnation pinned to his label.

As I approached I discretely waved last week’s copy of The American Inquisitor folded to display my featured story: Is The President Secretly In Contact With Alien Agents?

The question mark was our clever way of getting around the fact that we didn’t have any actual evidence that the President had ever been any closer to aliens than a Blu-Ray re-release of Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers.

If we had simply said that the President was in contact with aliens then we would have had to have sources, witnesses, documents and all the other tedious elements of actual proof. But by posing the headline as a question we got to avoid all that nonsense.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Inquisitive minds want to know.

“Mr. Wilaru?” Carnation Man asked in a throaty whisper.

“Mr. Flapbill, I presume,” I replied, barely moving my lips. He gave me a little nod and I settled into the adjacent plastic chair that was shaped like half a butternut squash.

“Thank you for meeting me here,” Flapbill said. “My muffin-top-ektomy is set for one-forty five and I thought . . . .” Flapbill glanced toward the sliding glass window at the far side of the room.

“Two birds with one stone?” I suggested.

“Well, one is so busy these days with one thing and another.” Flapbill paused for a moment and frowned at the headline resting in my lap. “But now I wonder if I’m not just wasting your time.”

“Because?”

“You seem to be way ahead of me,” Flapbill said, nodding toward the paper. “You already know.”

“That the President is in contact with Alien spies?” I asked. Could Flapbill have the proof that we had been hoping for?

“Well, not ‘in contact’ exactly, but well, you know.”

“Of course I do, Mr. Flapbill, but I’m a reporter, after all, so you must tell me so that I can, you know, report it.”

Flapbill’s face went blank for a moment then he gave me a nod of understanding.

“Of course, of course. Where shall I start?”

“I find that starting at the beginning is often productive.”

“The beginning, well, all right. Let’s see, have you ever heard of the PBS series, Spy in the Wild?”

“This is your story, Mr. Flapbill, so let’s pretend that I haven’t.”

“Oh, all right, well, the producers asked themselves, ‘How can we photograph wild animals in intimate detail?’ Their answer was to build camera robots that looked like real animals and other objects in the wild. For example, they created a life-like baby Langur monkey that was able to display facial movements and make monkey noises.

“The BBC producers went on to create cameras hidden inside robotic baby crocodiles, prairie dogs, wild dogs, wolves, chimpanzees, hippos, otters, and a tortoise. The scheme was a smashing success. The real animals never suspected a thing and the robot imposters succeeded in capturing hundreds of hours of up close and personal footage of wild creatures at play.”

Flapbill paused and looked at me expectantly.

“Do go on,” I said. Flapbill frowned as if he had asked a dull child how much two plus two was and had been rewarded with an outstretched hand and the shouted reply, “Squirrel!”

“So, Mr. Wilaru, if, ummmm, visitors, wanted to secretly observe humanity, one way they might do that would be to . . . ?” he prompted.

“Hide cameras in robots designed to look like people?”

“Very good, Mr. Wilaru. I knew you could do it if I gave you enough obvious clues.”

“So, you’re saying that the President is being observed by an alien robot designed to look like an actual human? Who is it? Sean Spicer? Kellyann Conway? Bannon! It’s Bannon, isn’t it? I knew there was something off about him, but I always thought it was just the right-wing, entitled-hatred and messianic-xenophobia,” I said with a smile which slowly slipped away in the face of Flapbill’s disappointed frown.

“So close,” he whispered. He gave his head a little shake. He stared at me expectantly as if waiting for his dog to perform an especially difficult trick– Come on, Orville, I know you can do it. Pick up the paper. That’s it. That’s it. Now, bring the paper over here. No, not into the kitchen. Here, boy. Bring the paper here. That’s it. No, don’t look at the squirrel! Forget about the squirrel. No! Bad dog! Bad dog!

Apparently, I was the bad dog that had become distracted by the squirrel. Time to concentrate. The President. Artificial devices built to gain an intimate knowledge of the human race. . . Could it be?

“The President?” I asked in a shocked whisper. Flapbill gave me a somber nod. “Oh my God. The President is an alien robot!”

“Ssssshh!” Flapbill hissed as he glanced at the man with six fingers sliding his credit card through the little glass window.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen!” Flapbill said in an agitated hiss. “He started out as a normal J16 Model Drone but then those idiots in Lifestyle & Programming got the idea of giving him their experimental Sales And Ego package.”

“The Sales and Ego package?”

“All our drones are programmed for specific occupational functions,” Flapbill said as if explaining basic arithmetic to a slow child. “A drone who’s going to be inserted into the sports culture would get the enhanced reflexes and improved muscle-coordination package. One selected for what you call ‘science’,” Flapbill gave a little snort when he said the word, “would receive eidetic memory and augmented symbolic manipulation skills.

“This particular J16 was supposed to go into finance. We wanted to have someone on the inside who could give us the lowdown on hedge funds and investment banking.

“We were all set to insert the drone when Fleebburg 973JBK11 let his curiosity get the better of him. ‘Think of how great it would be if we could get this drone to the top levels of CAS** finance,’ he said.”

“CAS?”

“Oh, it’s what we call humans,” Flapbill said with an embarrassed flush. “A term of affection, I assure you.”

“Of course it is. Please go in.”

“Well, Fleebburg gave us this speech about how a big ego and super-salesmanship would be vital qualities for any drone who wanted to rise to the top levels of Wall Street and, well, everyone was tired and it was almost time for the molt and he promised us that they had worked out all the bugs so, well, we let him install the package.

“Of course, he never told us that it was all experimental or that in order to get it to fit into the limited cranial capacity of the J16 he had to eliminate the honesty, integrity and empathy subroutines. By the time we found that out it was too late.

“You would have thought that Fleebburg would have learned his lesson with Hit– well, no need to go there. Let’s just say this wasn’t the first time he got a little overenthusiastic with his experimental drone upgrades.”

“You’re saying that too much talent can sometimes be worse than not enough?”

“Exactly right, Mr. Wilaru. Exactly right. But, there’s no point in wasting time assigning blame. What we have to do now is fix the problem.”

Flapbill looked at me expectantly.

“Can’t you just give him new orders or something?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Flapbill snapped.

“Perhaps if you explained how it does work . . . .”

He paused for a moment then frowned and gave me a little nod of surrender.

“Well, as I’m sure you’ve already surmised, our drones are purely organic. Based on ethnicity, social position and the like we choose a likely family and wait for a child to arrive. After acquiring a biological sample we grow a suitable clone drone and when the time is right, sometime before the first birthday, we make the switch.

“To all outward appearances the ‘child’ matures normally. On a roughly weekly basis he or she enters a pre-programmed meditative state and sends us a full audio-visual memory upload. From time to time we send back general instructions — apply for a job here, accept or reject this sexual partner, that sort of thing. Whatever is needed to keep the drone’s life course pointing in the right direction.”

“So, the person, the ahhh ‘drone,’ isn’t under your direct control.”

“No, we have to give them a certain amount of autonomy, just like any other CAS. We don’t have the time or, frankly, the desire to monitor their every move. How tedious would that be! No, they’re like your robot vacuum cleaners. We give them a set of navigation rules and turn them loose. Then, every so often they come back and we examine what they’ve collected.”

“But with this drone something went wrong.”

“It was that damn Sales & Ego package. It was too powerful, you see. It wiped out not only the empathy, integrity and honesty directives, it started taking over the whole system. It just got stronger and stronger, rewriting any subroutines that got in its way. We tried to slow it down, reign it in, but that just provoked it more. On some level it realized that we weren’t going to let it go unchecked and, eventually, it wiped out our communication, command and control routines.

“The fact is,” Flapbill said with an angry frown, “it went rogue years ago.”

“And you did nothing?”

“It didn’t seem that important then. I mean, so what if he bankrupted a few businesses, went through a series of wives? In the grand scheme of things what did it matter?”

“Until now,” I said.

“Yes, until now. In our defense how could we have known he would end up like this?”

I thought about that for a second then gave a mental shrug. What was done was done.

“All right,” I said, turning back to Flapbill. “What’s your plan?”

“That’s where you come in, Mr. Wilaru.”

“Me? How am I supposed to fix this?”

“We’ll give you enough of the details on his design so that a functional magnetic resonance image scan of his frontal lobe will reveal that he is not a run-of-the-mill human. That should sufficiently prove his extra-terrestrial origin so that he can be removed from his position of power.”

I stared at Flapbill with frank astonishment.

“We want you to publish a story revealing that the President of the United States is an alien, organic drone sent here to spy on the human race,” Flapbill concluded.

“And then what?”

“And then, well, the authorities will take appropriate action to, well, fix the situation.” After a long pause, a confused Flapbill said, “You seem reluctant. Surely, Mr. Wilaru, you’re not going to turn down the biggest story of your career.”

“Of course not,” I replied immediately. “Of course I’ll expose the President as an alien android sent to spy on the human race. I made my name in this business, after all, by publicizing UFO babies. But I don’t understand how you expect that revelation to change anything.”

“But, once people find out that he’s an android spy, surely–”

“Firstly,” I interrupted, “from what you’ve told me he’s no longer communicating with you so the spy stuff doesn’t apply. Sure, if we could prove that he was actually delivering reports to his alien masters, that’s you, then we could get him for espionage or treason or something but that ship has sailed.”

“But, he’s not human, not really,” Flapbill sputtered.

“Show me where in the Constitution it says that the President has to be human. Species doesn’t enter into it at all. The Constitution only requires that the President be a native-born American. Human, Vulcan, Klingon, so long as he’s got a U.S.A. birth certificate, he’s in. What else have you got?”

“He’s defective!” Flapbill almost shouted. “He has no empathy. He’s functionally dishonest. He’s an extreme narcissist egomaniac who will do anything to aggrandize himself and destroy anyone who criticizes him. All that makes him completely untrustworthy.”

“That’s old news. Everybody knew that before they voted for him. Heck, that’s why most of them did vote for him. They figured that he’d do anything to get them what he promised. They knew he was a bastard. They just thought that he was their bastard.”

“But, but . . . .” Flapbill sputtered. “You can’t have a person like that as your President!”

“I’m just a reporter,” I reminded Flapbill. “I don’t get to tell people who they can and cannot elect.”

He stared at me with vacant eyes and I wondered if he wasn’t just then communicating with his alien masters, as I was certain that when you got down to it Merle Flapbill himself was just another alien drone.

“Look, Mr. Flapbill, people get the government they deserve. If they want to elect a lying, deceitful, mean, vindictive, dishonest, egomaniacal, narcissist to lead them, them then that’s what they deserve.

“If they want a leader who tells them that all their problems were caused by Muslims or Mexicans or people who can’t afford their own health insurance then that’s the leader they get.

“If they want a leader who will spend their tax money on guns and walls and wars and immigrant round-ups and religious blockades, that’s the leader they both get and deserve.

“Every time they applaud when he promises that their lives will improve after he kicks out the people who pick their food, cut their grass, and wash their dishes, they’re letting everyone know that’s what they want.

“Every time they cheer when he tells them that making rich people richer will improve their lives, then that’s what they want.”

Flapbill stared at me for a moment then his face went blank and his eyes slowly closed. Two minutes went by and finally they opened again with an almost audible snap.

“So, Mr. Wilaru,” Flapbill said in another man’s voice, “there is no hope of undoing this terrible mistake?”

“Mistake? The American voters went into this election with their eyes wide open. They knew what he was, what he wanted, and what he stood for.

“Who the hell are you to tell them that he can’t be their President just because he’s a soulless, alien android, created without ethics or empathy whose programming has run amuck?

“This is America, Mr. Flapbill. We always get the government we deserve.”

— David G. Wilaru

** — Crazy And Stupid

David Grace is Mr. Wilaru’s alter-ego (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)

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All 50 of David Wilaru’s columns are collected in The Wilaru Chronicles available at: www.Amazon.com/dp/B01AGTD0Q0

*David G. Wilaru, A Brief Biography

David Wilaru’s early employment was in the creative paperwork allocation and re-allocation sector, but he always knew that his true calling was to be a Wordsmith.

After his divorce from his wife, Sharon, whom Mr. Wilaru once described as: “…as frigid as a penguin in a KitchenAid,” he pursued his dream of a writing career with a stint drafting product manuals for Godzilla Brothers, Inc., penning the user manuals for such cutting-edge Godzilla Brothers’ products as the Delilah Magic Hedge Trimmer, the Trident Electric Fork and Wordbuster, the world’s first solar powered fountain pen.

After leaving Godzilla Brother following his unfortunate involvement with Dr. Werner Buick’s Thirty Day Plan and overcome with ennui, Mr. Wilaru founded SCRAP, The Surrender Company Representing All People, a project that, unfortunately, led to his brief confinement in the Feldman-Margolis Memorial Psychiatric Ward where he edited the patient newsletter, Four Soft Walls.

After his release from the Feldman-Margolis Center, Mr. Wilaru accepted a position as a slogan writer with the 1001 Adult Greeting Cards For All Occasions Company of East Los Angeles, Inc. where he diligently honed his creative talents.

Thereafter, Mr. Wilaru went on to hold a senior public relations position with the Silicon City medical appliances company, BodySpares, Inc. where he directed the marketing effort for the Mirage Artificial Pancreas 690 RG.

After BodySpares’ unfortunate difficulties with the SEC, Mr. Wilaru joined the start-up, Xcitement, Inc., where he designed the marketing campaign for the Xcitement Confidential Adviser (popularly known as “The Brain Box”) and single-handedly coined the slogan “Get Sane At Warp Speed.”

After Xcitement’s sudden bankruptcy, Mr. Wilaru took over as the head of Marketing and Public Relations for Memories-R-Us, Inc. where he directed the advertising strategy for The Dog Box and other Memories-R-Us products.

It was during this high-tech marketing period that, in his spare time, Mr. Wilaru wrote his first paperback novel, the moderately successful Grip Melman, Garbage Detective: The Case Of The Hostess In The Can.

After the unfortunate litigation generated by the book’s Second-Printing Party, Mr. Wilaru obtained a position as a free-lance writer and later as a staff reporter for The American Inquisitor Weekly News Magazine, a post which he still holds today.

A self-described obsessive-compulsive Wordsmith, Mr. Wilaru regularly writes about subjects of topical interest including Gay Marriage, Hollywood Culture, the rapid growth of Amnesiaiology, the Patriot Act, Middle East Developments, and his specialty, UFO Babies, together with other matters of broad general appeal.