Invasion

  UNDETERMINED: Well, sir—

  PRESIDENT: And some woman who is apparently the head of the Girl Scouts of America being strip-searched?

  CI RABB: Our no-fly list of terrorists has been compromised, Mr. President.

  PRESIDENT: Compromised! It’s been totally polluted. It’s useless!

  CI RABB: Yes, sir. It has become so, sir. The alien terrorists hacked into it and replaced a third of the names with the names of upstanding citizens—generals, CEOs, clergymen, star athletes, popular singers, people we’re fairly certain are not terrorists.

  PRESIDENT: Can’t you reconstitute the list?

  CI RABB: We tried that, sir, but no sooner had we finished, than three hours later the list had again been changed—another third of the real terrorists disappearing and being replaced by nuns, six-year-olds, and senile grandmothers.

  PRESIDENT: Good God.

  CI RABB: Yes, sir. We’ve decided that for the moment we must abandon our no-fly list.

  PRESIDENT: You mean that right now any terrorist can board a plane whenever he feels like it?

  CI RABB: Yes, sir. But he won’t be permitted to bring a weapon or bomb aboard.

  PRESIDENT: Well, thank the Lord for little things.

  CI RABB: Yes, sir.

  PRESIDENT: Now tell me, Mr. Rabb, what else are these… aliens up to?

  CI RABB: I’m afraid, sir, that they’ve been up to quite a bit. Especially invading internet media and publishing false and damaging material linked to certain people and institutions.

  PRESIDENT: Exactly what are you referring to?

  CI RABB: Well, sir, to name one example, the terrorists have appropriated the NSA Twitter and Facebook accounts and are using them to publish whatever they want—stuff that is harmful to our public image.

  PRESIDENT: What are you talking about?

  CI RABB: Well, sir, thanks to the terrorists the NSA Twitter account posted:

  “We are now able to monitor all internet and phone communications of every American. No terrorist will ever bother you without our knowing it”

  PRESIDENT: Are we doing that?

  CI RABB: Well, yes, but since that is technically illegal we don’t wish to advertise it.

  PRESIDENT: What else?

  CI RABB: Well, sir, I’m afraid your own Twitter account has been compromised.

  PRESIDENT: No.

  CI RABB: Yes, sir. I have three of your recent tweets right here: “Sorry I and my team are lying to you all the time. That’s just the way our system works. I’m sure you understand.” “If you really knew what your government does you’d refuse to pay taxes and vote to throw us out of office. Very undesirable.” “We’d love to build schools and hospitals, but our first priority is billion-dollar fighter bombers to protect you from terrorists.”

  PRESIDENT: Can’t you stop this?

  CI RABB: Well, yes, sir, and we have. We’ve closed down your Twitter account, along with all government systems that have been invaded and undermined.

  PRESIDENT: They’ve made us do this!?

  CI RABB: And major companies are having to close down their social media accounts.

  PRESIDENT: Same sort of thing?

  CI RABB: Yes, sir. Here’s a press release that was taken to be real by most all Americans who read it:

  EXXON ANNOUNCES HUGE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PROJECT.

  Dallas, Texas.

  Exxon announced today that it was investing over nine hundred dollars in a new alternative energy project. This new solar energy project will involve pulling up the shades on over fifty of their south-facing windows, thus saving over $23 a month on their heating bills.

  MINOR OFFICIAL: (Snickered.)

  EVERYONE ELSE: (Silence.)

  PRESIDENT: And what about the rest of the world, Mr. Rabb? What are these ingenious Proteans up to there?

  CI RABB: Actually, sir, in terms of governmental and economic institutions, most of the damage seems to be being done here, and in the UK.

  PRESIDENT: What are the Proteans doing in other countries?

  CI RABB: It’s hard to describe. In Russia they seem to be doing things that help the dissidents and are causing the Russian spy agencies a lot of frustration. Except for that, the aliens mostly seem to be… well, playing, intermingling with the local people in a friendly way.

  PRESIDENT: Playing… There’s that damn word “playing” again.

  CI RABB: Yes, sir. They’re not just playing with children but also getting adults to play games with them: creating events where people gather and dance or sing or drink or play games or go rushing off to invade some office or Times Square or a park and do silly things. They get people to do things for the hell of it.

  PRESIDENT: Ah, that’s what the Forthehelluvit movement is all about, then.

  CI RABB: Yes, sir.

  PRESIDENT: But what about the reports of the aliens abducting people or causing accidents? Do you think it’s possible the Proteans took down Delta Flight 888 as some have claimed?

  CI RABB: Of course it’s possible, sir, but there’s really no firm evidence to confirm or deny it. That baggage handler who claimed he saw a hairy basketball in a suitcase turned out to be a pretty unreliable witness.

  PRESIDENT: So most nations are not having any real trouble from the aliens, is that right?

  CI RABB: That’s right, sir.

  PRESIDENT: All right then… Now, Joe [the President is referring to Secretary of Defense Joe McKain], what is your present assessment of the danger to our country represented by these aliens?

  SENATOR MCKAIN: I believe the danger is substantial, Mr. President. I think the alien terrorists have the power to destroy our civilization as we know it. Any day now we may wake up and find that all the data the NSA and our other intelligence agencies have collected over two decades has disappeared. Their ability to hack into bank and corporate accounts means they can, if they choose to do so, ruin our banking system and our economy. The danger is mortal, Mr. President.

  (A long silence in the room.)

  PRESIDENT: Well then, apparently they can destroy our nation. I guess the next question is this: is that their purpose?

  (Another long silence.)

  AGENT JOHNSON: Mr. President?

  PRESIDENT: Yes? Excuse me, remind me of who you are, young man.

  AGENT JOHNSON: I’m Agent Michael Johnson, the Special Agent of Unit A in charge of the investigation of the Protean named “Alien 6,” or more popularly “Louie.”

  PRESIDENT: Ah, that’s the Protean we believe is most responsible for the hacking of our databases and banking system.

  AGENT JOHNSON: That’s right, sir.

  PRESIDENT: And as I recall now, you have actually talked with this creature.

  AGENT JOHNSON: I have, and that’s why I’d like to say a few things about the FFs, ah, the Proteans.

  PRESIDENT: Go ahead.

  AGENT JOHNSON: Well, first of all, I don’t think we’re dealing with an invasion of aliens who have a shared goal or purpose. We have no firm evidence that the Proteans around the world are communicating with each other or are colluding in any way. This Louie is working with two or three other aliens, but we have no evidence that he’s communicated with any alien outside of his Long Island operating area.

  My point is this, Mr. President, I think the danger to the United States comes solely from this Louie and a few other Proteans who may be working with him.

  PRESIDENT: I see. Senator McKain?

  SENATOR MCKAIN: I see no evidence that this Louie has only a few helpers. For all we know he could have fifty. And he could be in contact with every other Protean in the world and we might not know it.

  PRESIDENT: Mr. Johnson?

  AGENT JOHNSON: The senator is quite right, Mr. President. That’s possible. But so far all the damage done to us seems to have come from this Louie. Until there is firm evidence otherwise, I believe we should concentrate our forces on him.

  PRESIDENT: And what’s his purpose?

  AGENT JOHNSON: He may
have no purpose. I know this doesn’t make much sense, but he may be playing—play that may be destructive to us—but playing and only having fun nevertheless.

  SENATOR MCKAIN: Utter nonsense.

  AGENT JOHNSON: Most all the other… non-destructive or non-threatening FFs, ah, Proteans, seem to spend most of their time playing, hacking around, doing things for fun, and trying to get human beings to do things for fun. It’s possible that Alien 6 is doing the same thing, only on a larger scale.

  SENATOR MCKAIN: You shouldn’t listen to this, Mr. President. When someone is doing destructive things, his purpose is to destroy. Let’s cut this crap about play and fun. If we don’t stop these aliens we’ll be drowning in their fun and games.

  (Silence)

  PRESIDENT: Well, in either case it seems to me that we should try to capture and interrogate this Louie and his companions.

  AGENT JOHNSON: Yes, sir.

  SENATOR MCKAIN: And wipe them from the face of the earth.

  NINETEEN

  (From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 138–144)

  After my first stint as Vice President of Operations at APE I was demoted to laundry man. Lita too. Louie and Molière had arranged for Lita to assume her own false identity and fly separately down to the Caymans to help them launder money. I was to go with a rat’s-fur toupee as Robert T. Walton. They wanted us to open a lot of bank accounts that could receive money without the bankers tracing the flow of cash. And we’d also be opening bank, stock, and bond accounts in the US under false names. I was looking forward to an adventure until I remembered that looking forward to anything is always a mistake.

  * * *

  I was right to be doubtful. The trip to the Caymans to begin building a financial empire around me and Lita didn’t begin too well. Lita and the boys were taking a flight from JFK on one day, and me from Newark on the next. They were traveling under the false identities of Leah Klein, widow of wealthy sweatshirt magnet Abraham Klein, and her two sons, Noah and Joel. The boys got to wear skull caps, which they thought was pretty cool. They each spent a lot of time trying to steal the other’s cap. After they’d flown off on a Monday, the next day I went to catch my flight out of Newark Airport. Everything was going as smooth as ice until I went through the metal detector. I was acting cool and calm and very businessman-like when I sauntered through the detector, but when the thing began bleeping as if I was carrying an atomic bomb in my belly, I lost a bit of my cool. I got stopped as someone possibly carrying a hidden weapon, taken aside and felt up by a guy who acted as if he didn’t like sexually molesting me any more than I liked being sexually molested.

  This bit of trouble was happening because there were two little oversights on the part of my genius FF friends. First, I’d had a hip replacement back in ’06 that had metal in it. And since I hadn’t flown in an airplane since 9/11, I didn’t realize that people with artificial hips were usually terrorists. So when I tried to pass through the airport’s metal detector and it began bleeping away, and the sexual molester couldn’t find what was causing it, within seconds I was surrounded by four security men. I was too stupid to know that I had metal in my hip so I just blustered away that I didn’t know why their machine was bleeping away, maybe it was a cheap model and needed replacing.

  They seemed unconvinced by that answer and took me to a small room off the main terminal that had blood on the walls and long chains hanging from hooks. Well, not exactly, but I can assure you that the chair they gave me was extremely uncomfortable.

  But before that, they brought in a guy to do a thorough body search. “Body Search” is a synonym for rape: it means that no matter what your sex is you’re getting penetrated. Gals have two holes down there so when body searched they get double raped.

  Well, I’d had docs’ fingers up my ass a few times in the army, and in more recent years during a colonoscopy, but at least with a colonoscopy they give you a huge dose of Valium so you barely feel the rape. And if you do, you feel so good you want to say “Yes! Yes!” In fact the last time I had a colonoscopy I got so stoned on the Valium that on the way home I insisted that Lita stop at a garden shop so I could look around. Now I have never bought a plant in my life—Lita is the gardener in our family—but that day I bought a $300 river birch tree. Lita was too stunned to stop me. It’s in our backyard to this day; we call it the Colonoscopy Tree.

  But this guy looking for nuclear bombs didn’t give me any Valium, and he poked and prodded with a long tube as though if he found something he’d get a huge prize. All he found was a lot of shit.

  Meanwhile, since I was now under serious suspicion, someone entered my name into additional sections of their computer, and within twenty minutes they had discovered that back in the sixties I had belonged to Students for a Democratic Society and the NAACP, and in the eighties had voted once against Ronald Reagan, and had visited the Soviet Union for more than a month just before it collapsed into being just Russia, and in 2006 and 2008 had visited both Pakistan and Iran. Twice. They clearly had me nailed.

  Now you realize that the old geezer Billy Morton had never been to any foreign nation in his life except Vietnam in ’65, and that had cured him of any desire to visit any other. This record they had dug up on me was actually that of Robert T. Walton, who my brilliant FF friends had found to be my new identity. They had picked Bobby because he was a successful businessman, although why he didn’t vote for Ronald Reagan the first time is a mystery to this day. Since he was a successful businessman we figured he’d be right at home opening hidden bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. The FFs didn’t bother to see if he had a checkered past filled with joining the NAACP and taking business trips to Russia, Pakistan, and Iran. Of course, Bobby had also gone to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and the island of Bali, countries not quite radical enough to arouse my questioners’ attention.

  My first instinct when they pushed me into their torture room (four walls, one table, six chairs, no whips or chains, but a suspicious box against one wall that I knew must contain razors, pliers, and whips), was to play it cool. But as they began firing questions at me, and I realized that they’d soon catch me in more lies than I even knew I was telling, I adopted a new tactic: I began to play the role of doddering senile old fool. It’s a role that I have to admit was becoming increasingly natural to me in recent years.

  “Is it true you voted for Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election?” one guy says to me.

  “1980…” says I. “When was that?”

  That slowed him down a bit, but then he barks: “Why did you spend two weeks in Karachi and Islamabad in 2006?”

  I blink blankly for five or ten minutes and then say: “Karachi? Is that near Kalamazoo?”

  “Pakistan. Why did you visit Pakistan?”

  “That’s outside the United States, right?” says I.

  “You fucking well know where it is, wise guy. Why did you go there?”

  “Does it have nice resorts?” I ask.

  “It has nothing of interest to Americans except Muslims and terrorists. Who did you meet there?”

  I blinked for another six minutes and then tried: “Tourist agents?”

  Imagine trying to interview a terrorist who has an advanced case of Alzheimer’s. He might or might not remember a bomb he set off twenty years ago, but as for the names of terrorist friends and associates and passwords and hideouts, you’d be lucky if he came up with the name of his own mother. As the four tough guys shot question after question at me, my Alzeimer’s got worse and worse, until by the end I was replying to everything they asked with “Can you please repeat the question,” or “Who are you guys did you say?” After two hours they had to send in a new team because three of the four guys on the starting squad were close to killing me or themselves.

  The new team talked to the first team and they had a long discussion about whether to airmail me to Egypt to be tortured—the Egyptians having better torture facilities than the poor CIA and thus could more quickly find out w
hich buildings or airplanes I was planning to blow up. But after a bit, they decided that if I answered the Egyptians’ questions the same way I was answering theirs, the Egyptians would strangle me to death after less than an hour.

  Finally they sorted it all out. They concluded that the likelihood of a seventy-two-year-old American businessman, who was as senile as Methuselah in his late hundred and forties, being an effective terrorist was somewhat low. They concluded that they’d much rather have me fly out to the Caymans than have to ask me a single additional question. And hear the answer.

  When they marched out, not one of them said “Have a safe trip.” I think the lead guy was planning to look into planting a bomb on my plane.

  As we left, I saw two security guards hustling a man in the white collar of a priest or minister toward the room I’d just left.

  “But I’m Cardinal Richelieu of Chicago!” the man was shouting. “You must have the wrong man! I swear I’m not a terrorist!”

  Yeah. Right. As they manhandled him into the torture room I thought how thankful I should be that our country was being kept safe from people like him and me.

  ITEM IN THE NEWS

  THE NRA PROPOSES LAW REQUIRING ALL AMERICANS TO BE ARMED

  Fairfax, Virginia. Dec. 12th

  Saying it was “time to take action against the rising gun violence in America,” the National Rifle Association issued a statement today proposing new legislation requiring all citizens to be armed before being admitted into movie theaters, schools, malls, or churches.

  The NRA’s official spokesman, Horace Bloom, said that the NRA had taken this extraordinary step because it “could not stand idly by and watch loonies shoot innocent unarmed Americans. Had there been several NRA members in that audience in Aurora or at that school in Newton or at that Springfield massacre the killers would have been nailed before they’d even raised one of their guns.”

  The law, although not yet written, has already been sponsored by 210 Republican congressmen, seventy-four Democratic congressmen and forty-seven senators.