UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK (Rooters agency) – The UN Secretary-General has released the provisional translation of the mysterious message that arrived from space last week.
Nearly everyone on Earth has by now seen a video of the apparent “meteor” hurtling towards the UN building, then abruptly halting its descent before slowly descending to the roof of the building. The titanium scroll inside the small space vehicle was immediately turned over to the world’s most accomplished linguists, who were aided in their task of translation by a number of pictures labeled in the aliens’ script.
The results of the translation effort were today released in the UN’s official languages. This is the text of the English translation:
To the inhabitants of planet Earth:
We apologize. Although the damage we have done was unintentional, we were neglectful of our responsibility to protect you from the small number of evildoers among us.
Although our civilization is a million years older than yours, there still exist among us a few equivalents of the mad scientists we have enjoyed observing in some of your motion pictures. One of these, who was particularly devious and secretive, was able to evade our rule of not interfering in other planets, a misdeed that we have only recently discovered.
Several decades ago, our mad scientist secretly sent to your planet a bionic robot in the form of a human being. This robot was programmed to create disruption and discord wherever it went. It was to convince human beings that what they know is really false and that the most ridiculous nonsense is true. Our mad scientist wanted the robot to create hatred and violence everywhere among you and to destroy the natural environment on which you depend for life.
Unfortunately, our rules of non-interference prevent us sending a space vessel to remove that troublesome robot from your planet. (Even sending this message required a special dispensation to relax our rules.) But we are confident that, now that we have alerted you, you will be able quickly to identify the robot and disable it.
In coming years, when your space travel abilities have increased such that you can pay us a visit, we will instruct our mad scientist personally to apologize for the harm he has caused you. His name is Covfefe.
News From Somewhere 