~ the phlegom

Scientists are outraged at the lack of quarantine employed by Australian security services at the first official meeting between an Earthly leader and ambassadors of the alien race calling itself The Phlegom. Dr Amelia Rogerson of MIT claimed, ‘such a wanton display of sheer ignorance could easily lead to the extinction of the human race. Has Mr Rudd not seen The War of The Worlds?’

This aside, the meeting was deemed a success. Though the Phlegomatic language remains impenetrable to linguists, [some even claiming that the entities’ constant wet squeezing sounds are not vocalisations at all, but a simple by-product of their physiology,] some communication seems to have been achieved through simple mathematical exchanges involving coloured blocks. When presented with a laptop computer, their leader became profoundly alarmed and - in what we are told was a benevolent act of mutual defence - obliterated the device with the enormous bone that designates his authority. When confronted with a pencil and paper, his reaction was similar but xenobiologists warn not to make the mistake of judging The Phlegom by our standards. Dr Rogerson said that ‘to underestimate The Phlegom merely because they appear obtuse or perhaps absurd would be a grave, potentially fatal mistake’.

Although the Phlegomatic craft, which landed in Central Australia on Tuesday, remains at the epicentre of a tight military cordon, some second hand reports have filtered through. There is general agreement that it is constructed of a material resembling leaves and that it has visibly decayed over the past days with huge cracks appearing in its fuselage. There is also said to be an accompanying odour variously described as that of decaying food scraps and burning hair.

Dr Jackson Smith of Parkes Observatory in NSW has suggested that it may be a single-use vehicle and that if The Phlegom decide to depart they may simply construct another. Other sources have suggested that the race appears to lack the necessary scientific and cultural sophistication to have developed a star-faring culture – although this is somewhat belied by their astonishing ability to raise vast rotating donuts of wet mud high into the atmosphere by power of thought alone.