Eight and a Half Light Years from Home By: David White A spaceship with corrupted software crashes on a cold February evening in front of a Coast Guard helicopter. Immediately, the incident is reported to the Secretary of Defense who orders the craft and beings on board to be transported to Area 51 by a NASA exo-biologist roused from his sleep in the middle of the night. “I became an exo-biologist because there were so few exos that nobody could prove me wrong.” The exo-biologist and the aliens discuss human oddities for eight and a half light years, before their software is corrected. They leave, only to return to obtain a nuclear weapon to destroy the hated Mouse people.