In comparison, and, in fact, by any standards, the object on his table was quite mundane. It was a videotape, with a note attached. What Sam found disconcerting about the situation was the fact that his apartment had been securely locked immediately prior to his entry. He made a cursory examination of the rest of his abode, but found nothing out of place.

Returning to the living room, he picked up the tape and read the note, which said "Watch in private" in letters that looked as though they had been written by someone with only a rudimentary idea of what writing should look like. He shrugged, popped the tape into his VCR and sat back on his favourite couch.

What came up on screen could best be described as a large green fuzzy thing with bug eyes and antennae.

"Sam Seaborn," it boomed theatrically. "You are in a great deal of trouble."

"I am?" Sam said, nonplussed.

The fuzzy thing beeped softly to itself before continuing. "Your friend, Joshua Lyman, has committed a grievous crime," the fuzzy thing intoned, "and vengeance will be had. Since he unexpectedly survived the shooting, we are unable to confront him directly. You," and here it pointed a fuzz-covered tentacle at the screen, a severe look on its, er, face, "will finagle from him a written apology. A grovelly one," it added, somewhat petulantly.

"For what?" Sam wondered.

Naturally, Fuzzy Thing ignored him.

"Do not fail, Sam Seaborn, lest an evil fate of far worse proportions awaits you!"

"Er," said Sam thoughtfully, as the screen went black. "I write better than that drivel on my worst days. Far worse than what?"

The screen un-blacked, and Fuzzy Thing reappeared. "This tape will self-destruct in 30 seconds," it warned smugly, and then the screen blanked out again, while Fuzzy Thing voice-overed some evil laughter.

Good FX, Sam mused as he ejected the tape just in case. But rather cheesy premise, he added to himself, pulling the tape out of his VCR.

To his horror, the tape began to smoke. He dropped it hurriedly and leapt back, watching in part astonishment and part annoyance as it melted into a sticky blob of black goo on his carpet.

"Oh, come *on*," he groaned. "I'll never get that out!"

****

The next day, Sam forced Josh to commiserate with him over the ill-fortune of his ruined carpet.

"And it's your fault," Sam admonished, stealing a doughnut from the box on Josh's desk. Josh tried to slap his hand away, but missed.

"My fault? You mean, according to the fuzzy blue thing?" Josh asked, poking mournfully at his one remaining doughnut, trying to finish the one he was busy with so he could nab it, regretting the unspoken office Doughnut Code that prevented him from taking two at once.

"Green," Sam corrected. "Yeah. It said you committed a heinous crime and owe it a grovelly written apology."

"A grovelly one, you say? What for?"

"Didn't say," Sam said, around a mouthful of doughnut. "Mentioned the shooting."

Josh looked up sharply. "What'd it say?"

"That it can't confront you directly 'cause you survived it. They. It used the plural form."

"So it – they – sent you a tape? How very odd."

"Odd, shmodd. You owe me a new carpet."

Josh laughed. "Keep dreaming, Boy Wonder. Now get out of my office. I have work to do."

"You're blowing this off?" Sam asked, wiping his sticky doughnut-fingers on Josh's desk.

"Sure. What else is there to do? Y'know, unless you want to take the fuzzy green thing seriously. And you haven't exactly shown me any evidence."

Sam sighed heavily. "Yeah." He grabbed the last doughnut as Josh was reaching for it, explaining, "For Cathy," before he high-tailed it out of the office.

****

"Cathy! Brought you a doughnut!"

"Is it a chocolate doughnut?" Cathy asked, glancing up from her computer.

Sam glanced at the sugar-covered non-chocolate doughnut and shrugged. "Yes?" he said, doubtfully.

"Thanks!" Cathy snatched it and frowned. "Hey-"

"Any messages?"

"No, but-"

"Thanks." Sam slammed his office door behind him, sat down at his desk, and paused. He knew he had work to do; he just couldn't think of any just then... He looked over his desk, searching for a task of some kind. Did that, dealt with that, done that... His hunt was interrupted by the phone.

"Yep," he said.

"Sam, there's this guy on the phone and he won't give his name and he keeps talking about smiting." Cathy sounded annoyed.

"Uh..." Sam glanced over his desk once more, and shrugged. "Put him through."

"'Kay."

"Sam Seaborn."

"Sam Seaborn!" a booming voice announced.

"No, I'm Sam Seaborn. Try again."

"You have not elicited an apology from your friend Joshua Lyman!" the booming voice boomed.

Sam blinked, but showed no other sign of surprise. "Oh, it's you. Hey, you guys owe me a new carpet," he said firmly.

The voice paused, then muttered resignedly, "I can see this is going to take a personal visit."

"Sorry, you'll have to make an appointment for-" Sam stopped, and stared at his phone. "Or you could hang up on me." He shrugged and put down the phone, reached out a hand for a file, and paused. There was a haze hanging over his desk that he could have sworn hadn't been there a second ago. It started to expand.

"Um," Sam said, watching in fascination.

The haze grew more hazy as it expanded, until it covered his entire desk, and then vanished.

"Hmm," Sam said decisively.

Something beeped at him.

His eyes were drawn almost against their will to the centre of his desk, where there stood the green fuzzy thing from the video. It was two inches tall.

"Hello," Sam said.

It beeped.

Sam stared.

It beeped again, impatiently, then sagged as much as a two-inch tall bug-eyed thing can, and leapt onto Sam's sleeve.

"Yipe!" Sam promptly started reeling around the office, frantically trying to shake the thing off. It climbed relentlessly up his arm until it reached his shoulder, where it reached up and smacked him on the head.

"Ow!"

"Stop running around!" snapped Fuzzy Thing.

Sam stopped, frowning. He was reasonably sure it had actually beeped, as opposed to speaking, and yet he had understood it.

"You hit me," he said. "Help, the alien hit me! There's an alien in my office! Cathy?"

"I'm busy!" came Cathy's muffled reply.

Fuzzy Thing rolled its eyes; quite a frightening effect. Or at least, it would have been, had it been larger. "We want an apology, or else," it sulked, jumping off Sam and back onto his desk.

"Or else what?" Sam had decided that he was delusional, that was all, no biggie, and maybe if he acted nonchalant the weird hallucination would go away.

"Or else we shall rain down terrible punishments such as ingrown toenails, smelly fungus feet and bad breath," Fuzzy Thing intoned, dramatically.

"Right," Sam said. "But... I have a date on Friday."

"All the more reason to get us our apology!" Fuzzy Thing shouted.

Sam swallowed. "Sure," he said, lifting a conciliatory hand as he started backing toward the door. "Sure, sure, I'm just gonna go and-" He turned and bolted, slamming the door behind him.

****

"Help, help," he breathed, leaning briefly against the door.

"You okay?" Cathy was staring at him suspiciously.

"Sure. Yeah. 'Cause, you know, I... yeah." Slowly at first, then more rapidly, he walked away from his office, backwards, so as not to lose sight of his door.

"Sam!" Josh frowned as he saw his friend speed-walking backwards through the corridor.

Sam jumped and spun around guiltily. "What?" he muttered, casting a fearful look back at his office.

"Where were you? I've been looking everywhere for you!" Josh gave Sam a friendly clap on the shoulder as he caught up.

"...Ouch," Sam said, reprovingly.

"Sorry."

"I was, I was just..." Sam licked his lips nervously. "Look, c'mere for a second." He dragged Josh over to his office, pushed the door open quietly, and pointed inside. "What do you see in there?"

Josh glanced inside, and gave Sam an odd look. Noting the urgent expression on his friend's face, Josh sighed heavily and gave the office a more detailed scan. "There's a desk, and a chair, and some shelves," he said, sounding annoyed.

"Anything, uh, sitting on the desk?"

"Well, there are some papers and a phone, but I wouldn't say they're *sitting*, as such, more sort've –"

Sam ignored Josh's explanation of what the items were doing, and peered carefully into his office. "Gone," he said, his tone a mixture of relief and worry. "I must have fallen asleep or something. Unless it's hiding behind my inbox..."

Josh frowned slightly. "What's wrong? You look freaked."

Sam hesitated for a second, then dismissed whatever was bothering him with a wave of his hand. "It must have been a dream."

"About what?"

"Nothing. You'll laugh."

"Try me."

"Nah, really... Nothing."

Josh sighed. "Okay. Come on, we can be early for the staff meeting."

*****

"I can't believe it!" Josh exclaimed as Leo entered his office. "I can't believe he jumped the fence!"

"Don't jump to conclusions until all the evidence is in," Sam advised sagely.

"Traitorous bastard," Josh muttered darkly.

Leo scowled, eyeing the two staffers, who were pouring over a document he couldn't see.

They turned the page. "Told you," Sam crowed triumphantly. "Dick would never do something like that."

Leo shook his head. "What are you two talking about?" he snapped anxiously. "Tell me it's not 517."

Josh looked up, and blushed. "Er, well, no. It's, uh..."

"A Batman comic," Sam finished, holding up the item in question.

Leo's face went dangerously blank. "A Batman comic?" he repeated, his tone calm.

Sam scrambled to cover. "You know, we have that, uh, conference later on with the thing, and we wanted to be prepared in case that thing happened, which would, you know, cause a thing."

"And said preparation required you to read a children's comic book?" Leo inquired, actually understanding what Sam was getting at.

"Actually, Batman is timeless, and... yes."

Leo nodded. "Kindly repeat your reason without using the word 'thing'," he ordered.

"Uh, can't," Sam replied quickly. "Have to save my words for the, you know..."

"Thing?"

"Exactly." Sam beamed happily, and Leo raised his hands in defeat.

"Whatever. CJ!" he added as CJ made her entrance. "How's it going with the thing?"

"Nice save," Josh whispered, elbowing Sam in the ribs.

"You can get away with anything around here if you use the word 'thing'," Sam responded with a smile.

****

Sam entered his office later that day feeling relatively good about himself, his job, his friends and his country, only to stop dead the moment the door swung shut behind him.

Fuzzy Thing was back on his desk, and had brought an equally tiny, somewhat furry friend.

"Yipe," he said, instantly turning to leave.

"Not so fast, Sam Seaborn!" Fuzzy Thing declared.

Sam stopped and turned back to them. "Call me Sam," he offered. "While I run away."

Fuzzy Thing and Furry Thing assumed expressions which Sam interpreted as "surprised", then quickly changed to "businesslike".

"We want our apology," Furry Thing sulked.

Sam rolled his eyes. "For *what*, already?!"

Fuzzy Thing explained.

Sam sighed. "If I see Josh, will you go away?"

Fuzzy Thing waved a tentacle in what appeared to be agreement.

"I'll talk to Josh," he muttered. Or possibly a therapist of some kind, he added to himself, trying not to think of the fact that he was talking to two-inch aliens in his office as if such a thing were actually possible.

****

"Josh!"

"What?"

Sam looked around furtively before entering Josh's office, closing the door behind him. "Can I talk to you for a second?" Sam whispered.

Josh looked at the file on his desk, which he needed to finish reading in half an hour, and shrugged. "Sure," he whispered back.

"Uh... You remember... when you got shot?" Sam murmured.

"Yes?"

"I have... there's..." Sam stopped.

"What?" Josh breathed, then frowned. "Why are we whispering?" he added, speaking normally.

Sam shrugged. "It seemed appropriate."

"You have what?"

"...new information..."

"Such as?"

"Uuuuuh... it may not have been entirely... due to those kids."

"Oh? What was it then?"

Sam coughed, clearly uncomfortable. "An alien conspiracy."

Josh sat back in his chair. "Say what?"

"Aimed directly at, uh, you."

"Why?"

Sam buried his face in his hands, so that his reply was slightly muffled. "Uh, apparently you once... stood... on one of their leaders..."

"I did what?"

"They're pretty small... Really small."

"I stood on a really small alien, thereby causing them to engage in a massive conspiracy against me?"

"Um, it wasn't all that massive, actually."

"What was the alien doing in a place where I could stand on it?"

"I don't know!"

"This isn't funny," Josh admonished his friend.

"I know," Sam said soberly.

"That's the worst joke you've ever come up with. And frankly, I'm not that fond of the whole, 'make fun of Josh getting shot' aspect."

"Remember the video?"

Josh's scowl deepened. "Yeah?"

"It wasn't special effects."

"You think we're being threatened by an alien invasion because I stood on a little... fuzzy thing?"

"Yeah. Well, no, they're just going to smite us with, with, halitosis, and possibly athlete's foot..."

"The aliens?"

"Yes!"

"There are no aliens."

"There are, and they're in my office."

"You ever listen to Don Henley, Sam?"

"What?"

"They're not here, they're not coming," Josh explained. "Don Henley sang that song, Sam. Go listen to it."

"But-"

"They're not here, Sam."

"But-"

"And they're not coming."

"But-"

"Not in a million years."

"But I –"

"You may see the heavens flashing, you may hear the cosmos humming, but I promise you, my brother-"

"Josh."

"I tell you what, I'm going to give you the number for my psychiatrist. You can talk to him, and, you know, maybe-"

"Ah, forget it," Sam snapped, and stomped away. Thirty seconds later, he stomped back, grabbed a protesting Josh by the ear, and said, "You're coming with me."

****

"Ow! Let go! Sam! Cathy! Make Sam let go!"

"Sam, let Josh go," Cathy ordered, unenthusiastically.

"No."

"Okay."

"Cathy!" Josh complained, as he was dragged into Sam's office and firmly made to face the desk. There was a pause, during which Sam closed the door.

"Sam," Josh said, eventually.

"Yes?"

"There's two little thingies sitting on your desk."

"Oh, thank God, it's not just me."

"They're, ha, they're waving their antennae at me."

"Yes."

"And their, er, tentacles."

"Yes."

"So you're not crazy?"

"That's debatable."

"Huh."

Pause.

Finally, Fuzzy Thing beeped.

"Shut up," Sam snapped.

"I didn't say anything," Josh protested weakly.

"I was talking to it." Sam waved a hand at Fuzzy Thing, who beeped again.

"You understood his beep?"

"You didn't?"

Sam and Josh stared at each other for a moment, then turned back to Fuzzy Thing. "It said," Sam said, "that bringing you here is a violation of their law, since they're not allowed to confront you directly because they failed to kill you. And I'm an intermediary, so there's no direct confrontation, so shut up," he added, to Fuzzy Thing.

"I stood on one of them? I think I would have noticed." Josh sounded close to hysteria.

Beep, went Furry Thing.

"It says their leaders are about half their size," Sam translated.

"And an apology would make up for stepping on one? Just that? I mean, they try to kill me, but suddenly an apology will suffice, thank you so much, we will now avoid shooting you and smiting you with bad breath?"

Beep, explained Furry Thing.

"It says that, uh, in their culture having to apologize is so shameful that many of them would rather face death than do so."

"Bet they have a lot of petty wars going on then, huh?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "You guys might want to look into that."

Beep.

"It says if you would please apologize now, they can go home to their wives and hatchlings and never again have to bother with this worthless planet. Or, if that's too dishonorable, would you kindly set yourself on fire. Either way, all debts are paid. Get on with it, please, because they're very late for dinner and they'll be in the doghouse for sure if they don't leave soon. Also, their favourite TV show is on."

"You got that from 'beep'?"

"Just say you're sorry!" Sam shouted.

"I'm sorry," Josh said, solemnly, addressing Furry Thing and Fuzzy Thing, who waved their tentacles and vanished.

****

Sam and Josh stared at the empty desk.

"That was a bit disappointing," Josh grumbled. "All that whining for an apology, and then they just leave?"

"Something of an anticlimax," Sam agreed.

"Do they have a number to call and complain or something?"

"I dunno."

"I have a suggestion."

"Let's never tell anyone this happened?" Sam guessed.

Josh threw him an annoyed glance, but nodded. "I don't want to be locked up in a looney bin."

"Yeah."

"Yeah." Josh paused. "I feel like I should call a tabloid or something."

"We'd probably get fired. Or have to have a psychiatric evaluation. Or both."

"Which would totally clash with my evil master plan to win Donna's-" Josh shut his mouth with a snap, and stared at his shoes, a flush creeping up his cheeks.

"Donna's what?" Sam asked, amused.

"Uh..." Josh scuffed at the ground with his shoe like a little boy, and shrugged. "Her... Money, at our weekly poker game."

"Donna doesn't play in our poker game. And you always lose."

"That's why I need an evil master plan," Josh explained, looking up. Sam smirked at him. "Whatever."

****

Presently, Josh spoke again. "I'm gonna go now, and forget this whole thing ever happened."

"Easy for you to say. They didn't replace my carpet!"

Josh grinned uncertainly. "I'm sure the whole thing was just a joke, you know."

Sam gaped at him. "A joke?"

"You know... a prank. Everyone knows there aren't really aliens."

"They're not here, they're not coming?"

"Exactly!" Josh beamed. "It's a cold-times-eight post-post-modern world."

"What the hell does that mean?!"

Josh gave a shamefaced look. "I was, er, quoting the song again."

Sam shook his head. "You're saying the aliens in my office, small as they were, weren't real? What were they, then?"

"Uh... hologram?" Josh hazarded.

Sam remembered something he had read about humans always trying to rationalize what they couldn't explain, and sighed. "Hologram. Right."

Josh smiled tentatively. "So, staff meeting in five."

Sam glanced at his watch, and was surprised to note that Josh was right. "Better get going."

"Yeah."

Josh left the office without looking back, while Sam stared over his shoulder at the desk.

"I wonder," he sighed, "if Toby would consider letting me get a different office."

"Just come to the damn meeting," Josh snapped, as Sam lingered at Cathy's desk.

Toby would doubtlessly ask the reason for the move, and his expression at the answer filled Sam's mind. He winced. "Not bloody likely," he muttered to himself, and went to the damn meeting.