One of the most prominent proponents of a “control system” hypothesis, researcher Jacques Vallee, proposed that the UFO phenomenon may be a mechanism acting from a hyperdimensional reality to influence human culture and perception.
Of course the Aliens (crediting the Lesser Gray here) know how to attract their research subjects. Look at that Trailhead welcome. No one believes in Aliens or Sasquatch. Guaranteed to make hikers chuckle all the way to the drop zone.
The Debrief Room
The room is beige. Walls. Table. Chairs with rounded corners and no personality. The man sits on one side of the table with a paper cup full of water he hasn’t touched. Across from him sit two people who look like they belong to different departments that don’t admit knowing each other exists. A recorder rests between them. It is already running.
The woman on the left slides a familiar object across the table. His phone. The screen is dark. “This was recovered at the North Fork site,” she says. “Upright. Powered on. No service.”
He stares at it. “I didn’t drop it.”
“We know.”
The man hesitates, then touches the phone as if it might bite. Nothing happens.
“No cracks,” he murmurs. “No water damage. That’s… actually impressive, all things considered.”
“Describe ‘all things considered,’” the man on the right says.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Tries again. “There was a shaft,” he says carefully.
Silence.
“They told me they were testing something.”
Still silence.
He laughs once. It sounds embarrassed. “Okay, hear me out before you decide I’m inventing this. They wanted to know if humans land on their feet when dropped. Like cats. I swear I did not make that part up.”
The woman makes a note. The recorder light flickers. “And then,” he continues quietly, “something else took me.”
That’s when it happens. The phone vibrates. Once. Everyone freezes. The woman looks down first. The screen lights up. NO SERVICE
Then, beneath it: 1 NEW VOICEMAIL
The timestamp reads: 10:10 PM
“That’s impossible,” he whispers. “That voicemail line was disconnected. My sister stopped calling months ago.”
The phone vibrates again. This time the screen changes. PLAYING MESSAGE… Her voice fills the beige room. Familiar. Tired. Impossibly hopeful but resigned to an uncomfortable truth.
“I don’t know why I’m still calling this number. Habit, maybe. Or stubbornness. Or because the phone keeps taking my messages.”
The message ends. The recorder clicks. No one speaks. The man on the right clears his throat, “That message was logged externally. It should not be retrievable on a device that never reconnected to a network.”
The woman turns the phone over. The battery reads 100%. No explanation field exists for that. Finally, she says the thing that seals the direction of the entire investigation, “We’re going to need to reclassify this return.”
“Return,” the man echoes.
“Yes,” she says evenly. “You were logged as unrecovered.”
“What am I now?”
The man on the right answers without hesitation. “Data irregularity.”
The phone vibrates a third time. No message. Just an acknowledgment. As if something, somewhere far outside their jurisdiction, had just checked a box.
It appears at 3:17 a.m. There are no alarms. A janitor is on his third-floor round with a buffer that whines and the kind of night-shift thoughts that stay carefully unimportant. Until the machine stops moving forward.
His hands stop pushing because his eyes catch up. There, in the middle of the freshly sealed concrete corridor outside Observation Room C, is a footprint. A foot.
Long. Wide. Deep. Pressed into curing concrete that should have been smooth for another twenty-eight minutes. The janitor leans closer. The pressure distribution is wrong for a human. He steps back. And then, because curiosity begs a comparison, he removes one shoe and holds it next to it for scale.
His own shoe looks like a toy. He does what anyone does when reality misbehaves at 3:17 a.m. He calls it in. They arrive in silence. No uniforms. No insignia. Three people in grey coats with identical clipboards and very different temperatures to their voices. One measures. One photographs. One stands there, staring at the footprint.
“Depth exceeds compression expectation,” the first says.
“No entry point located,” says the second.
“Temporal misalignment,” the third says quietly.
No one asks what it is. The first finally says what the room has been circling: “This is the same interference class.”
The third nods once. “Return mechanism confirmed.”
They look down the corridor, toward Observation Room C. Toward the man who should not technically be present. Inside the room, unnoticed by everyone but one blinking indicator, the man’s phone vibrates. Once. He does not check it. Instead, he looks up. For just a heartbeat, he feels watched. From a place that is not on the floor plan. A warmth presses briefly against his awareness. Then it’s gone…
Back in the corridor, something even stranger becomes apparent. The footprint is drying. Too fast. Concrete cures in hours. This impression sharpens in seconds. As though the material itself is being instructed to forget the moment of contact. The edges blur. The depth lightens. Until at last, all that remains is a vaguely shoe-shaped distortion. One of the grey-coated figures closes their clipboard, “Environmental anomaly resolved.”
The janitor stares at the floor. No one responds. They leave him with the buffer still humming uselessly at his feet. And somewhere far beyond concrete and corridors and clipboards, a forest exhales.
Later, the sister passes the faded missing cat poster on the tree without knowing it was the first return.
This implies the experiment started with animals.
Scene: Sasquatch Watching Humans Ignore Warning Signs Like a Bad Dating Show
Sasquatch has the best seat in the forest. High on a ridge where the trees part just enough to see the trailhead, the warning signs, the steady parade of questionable decisions. He settles in the moss like someone clocking in for a shift they did not apply for but somehow still takes seriously.
Below him, a large sign reads: PRIVATE LAND — NO ENTRY. Directly beneath it, in smaller font: LOOSE GRAVEL — FALL HAZARD.
Sasquatch squints. “Alright,” he mutters to no one. “Show me what you’ve learned.”
CONTESTANT ONE
A man in brand-new hiking boots approaches the sign. He reads it carefully. Nods. Then checks his phone and steps around the sign. Sasquatch exhales slowly through his nose.
“Classic,” he rumbles. “Didn’t even pretend to struggle.”
CONTESTANT TWO
A woman with hiking poles stops, takes a photo of the sign. She posts it and steps past it. Sasquatch tilts his head.
“That one’s going to narrate her own disappearance,” he sighs.
CONTESTANT THREE (OVERACHIEVER) AND FOUR (A two-fer)
Two guys standing in front of the sign argue loudly.
“I think it means don’t enter with vehicles.”
“No, man, it’s like suggested danger.”
“What is danger, really?”
They high-five and step over the rope. Sasquatch removes a pine needle from his shoulder with deep disappointment.
THE ALIEN OBSERVATION FEED (OVERLAY, UNSEEN)
“Self-selection rate remains robust.”
“Warning comprehension continues to underperform.”
Sasquatch watches another hiker step past the line while loudly saying, “DON’T WORRY, I’VE GOT GPS.”
Sasquatch closes his eyes. Counts to three.
THE CATERPILLAR TEST (WHAT THE ALIENS DON’T UNDERSTAND)
A different man approaches. Stops short of the rope. Almost steps forward… Then notices a caterpillar inching across the gravel. He kneels. Moves it into the weeds. Apologizes to it. Out loud. The aliens log this as: “Irrelevant organic delay.”
Sasquatch does not. He straightens slowly. “That,” he says quietly, “is new.”
ALIEN CONTROL VOICE: “Subject qualifies as volunteer. Initiating sequence.”
Sasquatch cracks his knuckles. “Not today, clipboard.”
REMOTE OFFICE CREW
The control room does not look sinister. That upsets everyone who eventually learns about it. Just a perfectly reasonable open-concept workspace floating several dimensions above the forest. Rows of curved consoles display live metrics. Data scrolls. Status lights pulse in soothing compliance colors.
The Drop Zone Project principle: If it can be quantified, it can be justified. A massive holographic screen dominates the room: DROP ZONE PROJECT — PERFORMANCE OVERVIEW
- Active Zones: 47
- Volunteer Acquisition Rate: 92.4%
- Warning Sign Disregard Index: “Encouraging”
- Vertical Release Success: Trending Up
- Unauthorized Returns: Irritatingly Non-Zero
A smaller line blinks beneath it: SASQUATCH INTERFERENCE: 0.03%
STATUS: Statistically Negligible MOOD: Insubordinate
ANALYST ONE (CLIPBOARD TYPE)
Analyst One gestures to a bar graph. “Volunteer yield is excellent this quarter. Humans continue to self-select with minimal coercion.”
Analyst Two nods. “They interpret restriction signage as a personal challenge. Which was an unexpected but welcome development.”
THE EMPATHY SPIKE
A red blip pulses on the dashboard. ANOMALY DETECTED:
VARIABLE: EMPATHY
LOCATION: Zone 14-B
TRIGGER: Caterpillar
The room stills. “…Did it say caterpillar?” Analyst Three asks.
“Yes,” says Analyst Two. “Again.”
A groan ripples across the chamber.
THE VOLUNTEER METRIC
A smaller side panel reads: SUBJECT STATUS:
Approaching Drop Threshold
Device in Hand
Signal Bar: 1
Awareness Level: Suboptimal
Survival Odds: Entertaining
Analyst One smiles. “Look at that posture. He thinks he’s just hiking.”
THE SASQUATCH ALERT
The screen flickers: WILDCARD ENTITY — PROXIMITY WARNING
A blurry silhouette icon appears near the subject’s location.
Analyst Two pinches the bridge of his face. “He’s not supposed to be that close to the activation perimeter.”
Analyst Three checks the file. “According to the agreement, he’s classified as a natural deterrent, not an intervention unit.”
“Well, he’s deterring our data again.”
A large, ridiculous button glows: EXECUTE VERTICAL RELEASE
Analyst One raises a finger. “Proceeding.”
The caterpillar blip flashes again: EMPATHY EVENT CONFIRMED
“Ugh,” Analyst Two mutters. “Why do they apologize to small things?”
“Faulty scale calibration?”
“Annoying.”
SASQUATCH GOES OFF-SCRIPT
The dashboard alarms: SUBJECT EXTRACTION — NON-AUTHORIZED
The subject icon disappears sideways instead of down. The drop button fades back to idle. The room erupts in overlapping commentary.
“That’s not a trajectory!”
“He stole a live subject!”
“Again with the moral override!”
“He didn’t even sign out the asset!”
PERFORMANCE SUMMARY AUTO-UPDATES:
DROP SEQUENCE: CANCELED
SUBJECT STATUS: RETURN TO SENDER
DATA GAIN: ZERO
OPERATIONAL MOOD: Petty
A footnote auto-populates: Empathy remains a statistically disruptive variable. Recommendation: Continue pretending it is not.
A junior technician quietly raises a hand. “Technically… the system still performed correctly. The subject was removed from the field.”
Everyone turns slowly. Analyst One exhales. “…I hate that you’re right.”
The dashboard zooms out. New volunteers continue to approach warning signs. New phones lift skyward. New one-bar hopes flicker on and off. The system recalibrates.
THE LESSER GRAY PROBLEM
Not all aliens are created equal. Some arrive with myth, majesty, and merchandising potential. Some get murals. Some get documentaries. Some get blamed. And then there are the Lesser Gray.
They are not the tall ones. They are not the glowing ones. They are not the ones humans put on T-shirts. They are the ones who do the work. The Lesser Gray occupy a deeply inconvenient position in the extraterrestrial hierarchy. They are technically advanced, administratively burdened, chronically overshadowed.
Their more famous kin, the Tall Grays, the Nordics, the Light Beings with better PR, handle: Diplomatic contact. Mythic encounters. Carefully curated “first impressions”.
The Lesser Gray handle: Long-term monitoring. Behavioral research. Containment failures. And anything that smells like fieldwork. They did not choose this. They were assigned.
The Lesser Gray are tired of being footnotes. They want a breakthrough, a paper that gets cited, a discovery that can’t be quietly attributed to “the usual ones”… So they run projects. Projects that rely on a crucial human flaw: Humans do not believe in them.
Humans believe in the classic Gray, the benevolent Nordic, the terrifying Reptilian, the angel and the demon. The Lesser Gray live in the blind spot between credibility and dismissal.
Which makes them perfect researchers. When something goes wrong (and it often does) the protocol is simple, attach the face of the famous other and allow human mythology to do the rest. Close the file.
Crop circles too obvious?
→ Blame the Tall Grays.
Abduction too traumatic?
→ Must have been the Reptilians.
Witness gets media attention?
→ Psy-op, sleep paralysis, or “the usual aliens.”
The Lesser Gray never correct the record. They don’t need to. Humans argue amongst themselves beautifully.
And they fly under the radar of human interest because they lack flair. They are shorter, paler, more administrative, less interested in spectacle. They appear: In bedrooms at awkward angles, in moments no one films properly, in memories that feel “off” but unspecific.
They do not inspire cult followings. They inspire confusion. Which is safer.
What they failed to anticipate was legacy code. The planet already had a protection system. Not diplomatic. Not interested in data. Something older. Something ineffable. Sasquatch was not on the charts. Classified as folklore, misidentification, environmental noise. A perfect blind spot.
Sasquatch is not an entity. He is a function, a planetary immune response. A moral checksum. He does not interfere often, but when an external system begins treating conscious beings as expendable variables… He intervenes. Personally.
THE CURRENT STALEMATE
The Lesser Gray now operate under several uncomfortable truths. Their research is sound, their visibility is low. Their projects are technically permitted, and their interference rate is “acceptable”…
And yet… Some subjects keep getting returned. Some memories refuse to erase. Some dogs don’t go home. Some forests don’t cooperate. And Sasquatch remains unlocatable, unblameable, and uninterested in hierarchy.
In private logs never shared with their more famous kin, the Lesser Gray have begun to annotate files with a single, unsettling phrase: “Planetary ethics subroutine active.”
They do not know how to disable it. Hoping it is temporary. Sasquatch has never been temporary.
To be Continued – Part 3 in the next post.
Conscious Living & Wendy's Coffeehouse 