(Flash fiction) A message from the Laundry public relations office

We have verified that the Queen is not, in fact, a Reptoid. Neither is Prince Philip.

Reptoids cannot interbreed with humans. The idea that the Royal Family are Reptoids is alarmist nonsense.

However ...

Reptoids can, under unusual circumstances, masquerade as human beings and on occasion have been known to infiltrate human governments and government agencies. (The best defense against Reptoid infiltration is to keep a close eye on your colleagues for unusual behaviour — swiveling eye turrets, snatching insects out of the air with a quick flick of the tongue, a cold-blooded focus on achieving total world domination.)

Reptoids did on one occasion, come close to the seat of power in the British government: Lord Louis Mountbatten was kidnapped, eaten, and replaced by a Reptoid infiltrator in 1968. The substitution was only discovered four months after the event and remained a major embarrassment for some time. The situation was finally resolved to everybody's satisfaction in August 1979, by deniable MI5 assets embedded in the Provisional IRA.

It is believed that fear of Reptoid infiltration may have been the root cause of the CIA-sponsored assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. Certainly the affinity of Reptoids for the west coast of Ireland is noteworthy ....