I`m here to reveal the greatest secret of our age. Not the opening of new burial chambers within the eternally enigmatic Great Pyramid, nor the lost manual which explains how to get more bandwidth out of that choked Telkom line. It`s the great mother of all conspiracy theories, the UFO cover-up.

Now I know it`s a sensitive point after all, the amount of work and number of person-hours it`s taken to keep all of that stuff concealed for over fifty years probably comes close to the calories that were sweated away when building that pyramid in the first place. That`s not to mention the fact that nowadays, since all that stuff is pretty much out in the open, all those guys in the CIA who`ve been chastely sealing their lips in honour of a long-dead president (well, whose secret is it?) would be out of a job. But Greys have become an industry, and so has the conspiracy itself.

Let`s face it, those Greys are everywhere, and nowhere more than cyberspace. To deal with smaller mysteries first, it`s those millions of Alien Abduction and Pleiadian Message pages which are probably hogging all that bandwidth that`s preventing you having decent cam-sex with your friend in Moscow. As it turns out, they couldn`t have chosen a better home, the strange virtual world which is somehow an interaction of a little technology and a lot of imagination and opinion.

To get back to the Great Conspiracy, we need to look at where it started: post-war America. Now I know that you`ve been told that the aliens noticed us because of the nuclear technology (mass destruction, of course) that we had developed and thought to save the day, but that`s probably another conspiracy to distract you from the real truth. As with all wars, killer technologies caused an economic boom, and we`ve all heard about the post-war one. It was in precisely that climate that the ultimate manifestation of the American Dream happened. The sugary pastel Pleasantville fifties that we all see as so quaint (and dangerous) clustered around the ultimate icon of the modern era: the home appliance. Think about it, all those cheesy retro fifties ads and fashions you see show quite plainly that the era was a homage to human inventiveness and vanity. People tried to invent machines to do just about everything and it hasn`t changed much today, except that they`re now trying to give them little Windows-powered group minds, just like those Greys.

We seek the ultimate machine, really. Since at least the time of the Greeks human beings have looked skywards for a deus-ex-machina, the hand of the gods, to reach down and fix the terrible trash we have made of things. (Only goes to show, those Greeks 2 500 years ago feared their own stupid civilisation just as we do in the shadow of Y2K.) Of course the idea that UFOs are just another need for that divine intervention is not new and quite besides the point.

Here`s the point: just look at the average 50s appliance: sleek, curvaceous (rounded, actually, like a saucer) and bright chrome. If possible, silent and with lights. The inspiration of those flying toasters that flew across everyone`s screen savers some years back. Has it occurred to anyone that UFOs look just like all the other machines of their generation? They are the original flying toasters! Personally, I don`t think that all this secrecy is doing us any good. We`re still worshipping these icons of an alien generation!

Since aliens don`t seem so intelligent after all, stuck in the same pointless pretence and weird ritualistic behaviour (not to mention their fifties style vehicles), I somehow doubt they are intelligent overlords. I think it is time for us to accept that they are something else, some inner reality or quantum warp, a parallel world or another dimension, but not a great big machine that will appear and sweep us into appliance heaven, the future, where everything is done perfectly without any mess just as all those corny ads promised us. I`m sure that if UFOs had first been spotted today, they`d have interchangeable skinz and morphable, sharp-edged features.

The secret is out: appliances won`t save us, our own proud inventiveness is not the answer and nor is any other machine from the gods. No. We must look to inner space to find the truth that is so seemingly out there. For years we have been told to look outside for answers, but I say that the truth is in there, and those shiny chrome appliances you see flying silently in the night are just mirrors, mirrors to help you see the greyer side of yourself, and through that fog, the bright beam of light that is always so compelling.