The Yeti Plan.

As he concentrated his mind on that of the human scientist, Dr. John Rollason, the Elder took full advantage of the human's hypnotised state to read through his mind, and within seconds Dr Rollason's mind was, as the humans said, "an open book." Not only to the Elder, but to every single member of his community as well.

The Elder had little trouble keeping Rollason locked in space like this while he stepped closer to the human scientist; the human was tired after recent events, and his mind was even easier for the Elder to deal with while the rest of his kind picked out the human's memories and his knowledge, like they did with every single human explorer and scientist who visited the mountains they called the Himalayas in order to comprehend the human ways and to determine when they were on the verge of destroying themselves.

While the Elder stood there, he had a moment to reflect.

For hundreds of years, his people - whom humans so imaginatively named Yeti, or Abominable Snowmen - had been waiting patiently for the day where the human race would destroy itself so they could claim the planet for themselves. They had the right, after all; like the humans, the Yeti had discovered the basics of science, technology. At the same time they had discovered they had the means of harnessing the power of the mind, and for centuries they had studied the mind until they had discovered how to read minds when they weren't in direct line of sight, which had proven to be of enormous benefit to his people.

But the Yeti wanted the Earth.

They saw it as their world, not the humans. The Yeti Elder felt a degree of pity for the race which were cousins of his own people, but truthfully the humans were more violent. They had engaged in wars and other terrible, brutal practices…. Over the centuries, the Yeti had learnt of other human cultures which had been separated from one another by hundreds of miles - the practice was similar to the Yeti's own practice, but where in the Yeti's case, it was to ensure resources were more widespread and were in fact mobile after a certain amount of time, would meet other communities to allow matings periodically - that had been destroyed over the centuries, either down to war, or other factors like disease, natural disasters, or simply because they had not advanced enough to change.

With that in mind, the Yeti had no doubt one day humanity would die out, or more likely they would wipe themselves out. Once that happened, the Yeti would emerge from the Himalayas, and claim the planet as their own. It would be so simple, and after the last World War which had encompassed virtually the entire planet until the Yeti, who lived in the mountains, could feel it. The Elder had been alive for seven hundred years, and he had never felt carnage like that on such a level although a few human conflicts had come close. The Napoleonic Wars had been similar in many ways, and it only showed just how barbaric the humans were. The Yeti remembered collectively reading the minds of the travellers who had ventured close to the mountain range, and they had been horrified.

But for hundreds of years, the Yeti had been living in the Himalayas, some of them living in small communities close to the human dwellings in the remote areas. His people used their powers of the mind to telepathically influence the humans into not venturing into the mountains, to ignore the foreign travellers and explorers from seeking out the Yeti, to claim the Yeti were a myth since, logically, the Tibetans would know far more about the Yeti than the foreigners, but if the Tibetans hadn't seen them then the rumours and myths surrounding the Elder's people, then wouldn't seeds of doubt creep into the minds of those so-called explorers?

At the same time, the Yeti would be free to look into the minds of the Tibetans, whom they had instilled a subconscious desire to know more about the outside world to give the Yeti the answers they needed in order to truly understand the humans. And the Tibetans made amazing guards, and even though their weapons were disgusting, they were effective enough. More than one 'scientific party' looking for signs of the Yeti had died, or had been driven out by the belief they'd been attacked by bandits.

Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't, and while the Elder could see and understand the effectiveness of the tactic, he didn't like the thought of his people manipulating the minds of humans, especially children. But it had to be done.

And now the humans had weapons capable of destroying entire cities while poisoning the local air and water, the Yeti had concluded it was only a matter of time before humanity destroyed itself, but whether the humans were aware of the long term dangers or they had merely fooled themselves into thinking there was no threat, the Elder had no way of knowing.

Weapons that destroyed cities, poisoning air and water, the very thought of what the humans' nuclear weapons could do sickened the Yeti Elder, and he knew the rest of his peace-loving people felt the same way, and it proved to them all that the humans would eventually wipe themselves out at some later date.

But, the Yeti were patient.

They knew it would only be a matter of time before the humans killed themselves.

But as he stood in front of Dr Rollason, the Elder could see clearly this human was one of the more uncommonly intelligent ones. Yes, his mind possessed the same seeds for violence like all humans possessed, only he used his brain to discover knowledge. What made it worse was despite his fights with the human Friend, the Elder could not detect any sign that this human was what he and his people had come to expect.

This was what he hated the most; while he believed humanity was better off gone, there were a few human minds which he touched which reminded him there were some individuals who merely wished to lead their lives the way they wished without conflict. More than once, the Elder had encountered humans more like Rollason, but more often than not he encountered some whose minds weren't too dissimilar to Friend, who had wanted to shoot one of his people or capture them.

The Yeti had been aware the entire time of the group made up of Rollason and Friend, with McNee also involved. Friend and his associate, Shelley had extremely noisy minds, and they had broadcasted their narrow minded ambitions for every Yeti to hear. It was child's play to avoid them, and all they needed to do, really, was to simply listen for their minds, and stay out of the way and to keep their younglings out of reach of their human traps.

But still, the loss of one of their own, an Elder…It was almost unheard of.

The Elder let a silent, sad thought cross his mind, more than aware of the fellow Elders behind him sensing the thought. It was extremely rare whenever his people had to kill humans, but all of his people were still nonetheless prepared to telepathically plant suggestions and illusions into the weaker minds of the humans (it never failed to amaze the Elder about how weak minded humans tended to be; he had no idea if it was a quirk of theirs, or something that had never occurred to them to develop and explore on their own), and they had, but with the shocking death of another Elder whose wisdom and experience had guided their people for many centuries, they had wanted to retaliate.

That Elder had been a dear friend, and he had only gone with one other to the campsite of the humans; their minds were so noisy with screams of their own greed, and their plans to broadcast the existence of the Yeti across the entire human world by taking that mountain monkey with them. They had freed the monkey, upset and angry with how it had been treated.

Everyone had begged the Elder to be careful despite their sympathies lying with the monkey. And now he was gone. Hundreds of years of wisdom, gone.

The Elder felt the mental prod from one of his fellows, and he realised he had been doing nothing for some time. He pulled himself up to his full height, barely avoiding the ceiling of the cavern, and he looked down at Rollason. If it wasn't for one or two similarities, he would find it virtually impossible for his people and the humans to be related.

Rollason was simply tiny, and it was amazing to the Yeti Elder someone so small and so fragile had managed to ascend to the mountains and survive, especially considering what they knew of the human inability to breathe up here without support.

The Elder calmly and gently entered Rollason's mind; memories of childhood flashed through the Yeti's mind, memories of adulthood, his career as a botanist, his earlier expeditions until he had developed a good and strong reputation in the academic profession, his marriage, and lastly his emotions over discovering Friend's true purpose, and his horror over what Friend and his associate had done to the Elder they had killed that night.

But what concerned the Yeti Elder the most was how the Lama of the Monastery had hinted that his people, the Yeti, would one day rule the Earth. Indeed, Rollason had not understood at the time what the other human was saying, but as time passed and more proof of the Yeti's intelligence became obvious, Rollason had come to see the prophecy hinted by the Lama.

That was intolerable, but the Yeti Elder had more important things to do right now. The rest of the Council would need to consult each other about the Lama's prophecy, and they would need to find a way of acting accordingly.

You are tired, Doctor Rollason. That is understandable. You have been under intense strain recently, pressure…. You came here to discover plants growing on the mountains, and you were also drawn into Friend's wasteful expedition. Nothing has been achieved, Doctor. Nothing.

Once the message was delivered into the human scientist's mind, the Yeti Elder set to work with the dedicated experience and precision of a human surgeon.

Gently and with enormous care, he went through Rollason's memories of the expedition; he saw the first days, and feel Rollason's ingrained anger and disgust over what he had learnt about Friend and his plans to capture one of the Yeti's even if at the time Rollason would not have known that if it had happened, then the Yeti's would have attacked the group and wiped them out even if it attracted the wrong sort of attention in the long term. The Elder didn't touch those particular memories, but it wasn't until the night where the Elder had been killed that he made revisions to the memories.

He kept the monkey being captured, and he also kept the conversation held during the night before the sound of the cage the monkey was stuffed inside being torn open by the Elder, and then he began rewriting the memories.

However, the Elder needed to spend a few moments trying to seek inspiration for what should implant next. And then he found it; by all accounts Friend and his associate had been under huge amounts of pressure, so the Yeti Elder took a few moments to suggest to Rollason that McNee had gone mad and had begun hallucinating for some reason although the Elder implanted a suggestion into Rollason's mind to make the human 'guess' the cause was the thinner air, and he had fired a shot when he had seen something during an argument with Friend and Shelley which had caused an avalanche.

No-one would suspect anything. From what Rollason had uncovered about McNee, the other human was known to be nervous, jumpy…not the mentally sound type of individual to be burdened with the stress of climbing up through the snow and be forced to breathe the thinner air.

Once the Elder was finished, he implanted fresh suggestions into Rollason's mind while at the same time working to block the humans' knowledge of the Yeti, and the belief that they didn't exist since he hadn't seen anything, no proof whatsoever that the Yeti existed. The suggestions were fairly simple enough; the Yeti Elder had forced Rollason to fall asleep once a certain mental command was issued, and he would sleep for a certain amount of time until another telepathic command implanted beforehand would wake him up and then he would begin walking exposed around the mountains. Lost. Alone.

While he was trying, other Yeti would mentally guide him back to the monastery where he had set off for, with all his memories locked away in his head. Inaccessible. He would also never want to come to this part of Tibet ever again. Instead, he would go to other countries to conduct his expeditions since he had witnessed the avalanche which had caused the deaths of three other people, and he had been lost, but the main reason was so then there would be no mental 'triggers' where Rollason would remember anything. The Yeti Elder knew that despite their mental abilities, there were some things they could not count or anticipate on, and several times over the centuries they had sent away humans to remember nothing of an encounter, they would remember a glimmer of something, and several of them would return to the mountains to discover the truth.

The Yeti Elder did not want that to happen here. Rollason already knew, deep in his head, the Yeti were intelligent and were poised to take over Earth when humanity was gone, and even the smallest trigger might make him come back for proof. Unfortunately the Yeti knew there were bound to be other triggers around the world, outside of their control, but the Yeti knew if he returned, as Rollason was liable to do since he wasn't foolish enough to believe anything he said would be taken seriously since he had no proof, then their existence would be threatened which was why he was being suggested to look for other places to conduct his scientific studies.

Once the Yeti Elder was finished, he sent the telepathic command and the human scientist collapsed to the ground and went to sleep.

When he was sure the human was asleep, the Elder turned to the others.

We should go now.

You have done well, my friend.

The third Yeti in the cave seemed less content. How did that Lama deduce our long term plans?

I don't know. But we shall have to bring it to the attention of the Grand Council. Come, we should go; there is no worse trigger than physical proof of our existence.

Yes.

The Yeti acknowledged the suggestion and they left the way they came silently. The Yeti had been living in the Himalayas for centuries, and each of them received the telepathic wealth of knowledge of their surroundings, so each of them soundlessly left the cave like they had entered.

They left Dr Rollason asleep where he lay.