The infrastructure of the solar system.

There was only one way to view the problem. The sun was at the center, and this planet was orbiting the sun. Or something. See, the object was apparently orbiting a star, but that star was probably not our sun. The elliptical range was a very high ratio, giving the mysterious new object a very large orbit. The extra sun, invisible, must be very far away and very small for us to miss it. But it was very possible a second star was in a two-way orbit with the sun. The implications were astounding.

There was for one, the theory of an alternate society, far different from humanity, springing up on a far-off, earthlike planet in the orbit of this second star. There was a corporation of belief that alien planets housed hostile aliens that had not yet discovered us. Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, an alien race had already become more advanced than us and was controlling our society. This one, however far-fetched, really caught on among the people. They must have felt out of control. Feeling like abductees to a mysterious new race of a different star, the liberals all gave up basic control of their lives over to a bureaucratic overlord's mixed-up governmental nightmare dream. See, there was a loss of the infernal information that went along with everything, lost the deeper you went into the exotic dream-world, where even sentences were given extra words to describe the same events with more verbosity, for no apparent reason.

Who could have been adding this meaningless fluff to all the local papers, newscasters, books, magazines, brochures, sales associates, and everybody else in a society where brevity had never been known to be lacking. The only real explanation was their lives had been made infinitely more complex by some outward entity that was controlling the media at the time of the incident. This must have to be the aliens from the other star. Who else would curse humanity to a life of exceedingly overlong verbose statements that have way too little meaning on their own, considering the amount of words they took up.

It did in fact seem to be the aliens from the other star. They were being paid per word, and humanity was the workforce. A monkeys and keyboards proposition, of course, with no real hope of developing the next great American novel. But we hoped.