"This could be the only way to explain how they manage to understand and communicate with each other, and how their language and alternative use of English words evolves in unison around the World," said perplexed programmer Stan Balding.

"You look at any document written by a Business Analyst," Balding explained, "and to me it doesn't make any sense. And yet you often see them go into meetings, talk to each other for hours in the same language and turns of phrase that they put in their documents, and they appear to understand each other perfectly. In fact they seem to be... feeding off each other."

Mr Balding leaned closer to me, as he lowered his voice and confided: "I think they're sort of like the Borg out of Star Trek, only more insidious. I think they're trying to... take us all over, or something. Man, I'm like really scared..."

"One time," he continued, his voice sounding strained, "I stumbled into one of their meetings by accident. And they were all just sitting around the meeting-room table, like in complete silence... I mean, there wasn't any sound at all. But their mouths were moving, and they were nodding as if they were agreeing with each other. Then one of them noticed me standing in the doorway. He stood up and pointed at me, and let out this horrible sort of high-pitched screeching noise. I ran."

Balding proceeded to recount a number of apparently unrelated incidents at the high-tech consulting firm LapdogSoft where he has worked as a programmer for the last 20 years. LapdogSoft CTO Helen Squeezes described Balding as "slightly unstable, but we tolerate him." She explained that he worked for fifteen years as a COBOL programmer, but failed to make the jump to a more contemporary programming language when the company modernised its operation five years ago. "These days he just sort of hangs around the place, and we just sort of tolerate him really," clarified Squeezes. "He just makes people cups of tea, and clears up the mess after meetings and things. He hasn't had a pay rise in almost seven years."

She hesitated, then added: "Once we caught him putting a fish head into someone's tea."

We later returned to speak to Balding, who refuted these claims. "That's crazy man," he responded. "They're trying to ridicule me, you know, because they know I've stumbled onto something like really big. And for the record, I don't know how that fish head got in there."

John Chives, Web Designer, NY:
"I'm not sure whether to laugh at him or be worried. You can never really tell whether these guys are telling the truth, you know?"

Let your fellow Millers know what you think of this story. Talkback here:

Lance Paulo, Cornwall:
Maan, I think you can give me this guys' adress!! I have simlar experien you know what I min?

Lance Paulo, Cornwall:
Cancelled: Lance Paulo would like to recall that last message.

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