MANITOBA

'Pick up some crested newts on the way home!' she yelled as he finally departed the house, late as usual.'A big packet!'
'What if they don't have any?'
'They will.'
'But, what if they don't?'
'Something amphibious.'
'OK - bye!'
He pulled the door behind him.  It was raining half-heartedly as it had been for hours. Here and there, the late morning sun made ineffectual attempts to stab through the cloud cover before giving it up as a bad job.
At least there were seats on the bus, so he settled down with a copy of 'The Snippet' as the number 47 rattled its way through  damp, grey suburban streets edging its way towards the financial sector.
The easy su doku despatched and the difficult one exuding an aura of invincibility, he took a look around at his fellow passengers. There were two shopping robots, evidently on outward journeys as their receptacles were empty, a sharp-chinned woman with a boy dressed in a stegosaurus costume perched on her lap, and a handful of ghosts displaying various degrees of transparency.
He hopped off at Canal Street where most of the vortex management companies were based, entered one of the anonymous glass buildings and with a swipe of his card and a swish of a barrier disappeared into the innards of the corporate apparatus.
On his left hand, in blue ink, he'd scrawled the word 'newts'.
Yes, the aliens were now in control, but were things really so different?