Four Balloons

Breaking news: on 4 Feb 2023, the US shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon. In the following days, until 12 Feb at this writing, three more objects were shot down over the US and Canada.

Four of them.

They haven't given out much information about the objects except that they are cylindrical (the latest one is octagonal, a not necessarily incompatible description), about the size of a car, and the last one has strings hanging from it.

Setting aside the possibility of a kid in Hawaii who lost control of his birthday balloons, and alien spaceships, there is only one reasonable possibility:

We are under attack!

Robots from Easter Island have launched these balloons. The payload is a infantile robot (but it will grow like an insect shedding its skin), attached by those strings mentioned above.

They have not directly targeted the US or Canada, but the payloads are programmed to drop when any large land mass is detected below.

Once they have dropped they burrow into the ground and begin subterranean travel toward centers of electromagnetic signals, growing and molting as they go, until they reach Missoula, Toronto, or Los Angeles, where they will emerge, Godzilla like, and declare war on whatever species confronts them.

You will notice that I don't say intelligent species, that would exempt human beings...

Our only hope is to uncover and bleach out these pests while they are still in the pupal stage. This may mean bombing out (nuclear, naturally) large parts of Washington, British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, Montana and Ontario. (The Provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well as the States of Oregon and California will be written off as losses almost from the beginning. As a matter of fact, the robot burrowing toward Los Angeles will be assessed not as a threat, but as helpful.)

This missive is sent from an underground bunker somewhere in Joshua Tree National Monument, where I fled as soon as I realized what was going on. I have collected an arms basement much like the guy in Tremors. Spread the word, we need to defend our world against this new threat.