Descending quickly and silently through the Earth’s atmosphere, their craft landed stealthily in the darkness. It hardly mattered how stealthy there were, though, as the ship’s anti-humanoid cloaking device masked it entirely from the inhabitants of the planet. The first, albeit easiest, phase of their project was a success.
“Now we just need to find a human child,” said mission commander Zeeborg 56-A, communicating in the usual manner of his race, which was by infrared light rays. “That shouldn’t be so hard. We are in the, as the humanoids say, ‘ghetto’. Child abductions are not out of the ordinary in this sector.”
Pilot Kronbub 32-C flapped his cranial membranes in agreement. “Yes. If all goes to plan, we will cause no disturbance. Let me engage the beam generators and we can survey the location.”
Soon, a group of five aliens was patrolling the dark streets of Houston, peering through windows in search of the ideal subject. Many of the humanoid children were too advanced in age to be of use. They needed one that was only recently released from its mother’s birthing chamber, as well as one who possessed the Y-chromosome of its father.
It was deckhand Urgorx 77-Q who finally located a suitable child. “Hey guys, I think I found one! Look how tender it looks,” he exclaimed, prompting his four companions to rush to the residence. As they watched, the child slumbered peacefully, completely and blissfully unaware of the five aliens who were gathered outside its window.
“I deem this human acceptable for our purposes. Porgon, you retrieve him. You are the best among us at defeating their force fields,” commanded Zeeborg. Porgon 18-F obeyed, running a three-pronged hand slowly along the glass of the window, causing it to sublimate into vapor. She then scrambled through the new opening and walked over to the baby’s crib, above which was a sign bearing the name “DeAndre”.
“Urgorx was right. He looks very tasty,” she commented. Extending four of her arms, she picked up the baby slowly from his blankets, attempting not to wake him. The effort was wasted, however, as the child opened his eyes once in the cradle of alien’s embrace. Upon seeing the unfamiliar form holding him, he began to cry loudly and vigorously.
“Shut up! Shut up. God damn it, shut up!” Porgon hissed, her infrared communications not doing anything to soothe the humanoid. “Zeeborg, hand me the dunking solution, I’ll just splash it on him and be done with it. We have no idea how long it will take his caregivers to respond to his alarms, and I would rather not have to make use of this radiation pistol.”
Zeeborg retrieved the dunking solution from his utility belt and elongated his arm by twelve feet to hand it to his colleague. Porgon hastily unscrewed the top of the vial and dumped the contents on the crying baby. “Okay. Okay. Shhh. You can be quiet now. The bad aliens are leaving,” she said, placing the baby back in its crib. Rapidly, the child forgot its tormentors, and returned back to sleep.
Soon the invaders were back on their ship, preparing the wormhole generator for return to their home. Zeeborg smiled as he stared at the rapidly-receding Earth. “I bet that kid will dunk it so hard. It’s kind of poignant. He’ll never know who granted him with such immense ball-slamming power.”
Kronbub scoffed. “I’ve been saying for years, the humanoids don’t deserve our charity. You know, they actually believe that their race is capable of dunking without our intervention!”
A chilling chorus of laughter resounded. The manipulators of basketball would return again, as they had for decades and as they would for untold millennia to come.