Invasion

  (A long silence)

  AGENT JOHNSON: Then there won’t be a deal.

  TERRORIST LOUIE: Seems that way.

  AGENT JOHNSON: I might as well add that there are other conditions my government has asked me to put to you. We will not have our democracy undermined. You must cease destroying the nation’s PACs and other democratic entities formed to express the opinions of their founders and to support candidates of their choosing.

  TERRORIST LOUIE: Come on, Mike, even you know that’s ridiculous. It’s the massive fundraising political entities that are undermining your democracy. In fact, they’ve so undermined it already that democracy in your country ceased to exist a decade ago.

  AGENT JOHNSON: Well… maybe…. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

  TERRORIST LOUIE: We’ll pay up front five billion dollars each for the six Proteans and your leaving my Morton friends alone. We’ll stop all our hacking except for Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. We’ll reduce our stealing to a half billion dollars a month. Finally, we’ll agree that no FF will ever again within the sight of humans bounce more than six feet high.

  AGENT JOHNSON: I’ll forward your proposal to my government, which we both know will reject it.

  TERRORIST LOUIE: So I go to trial.

  AGENT JOHNSON: You will, Louie, and I wish it weren’t so. I really do.

  TERRORIST LOUIE: You ought to consider changing sides, Mike. We’re in a bit of trouble these days and could use a good player like you.

  AGENT JOHNSON: In America we call that treason.

  TERRORIST LOUIE: In Ickie we call it changing sides.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  (From THE OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE ALIEN INVASION, Volume II, pp. 176–182. Being the transcript of the meeting between the President of the United States and Alien 32, alias “Molière,” on July 27th.)

  (Before the meeting, the president’s personal security team disabled the six video and audio recording devices installed in the Oval Office by various spy agencies. However, we have footage of the event because the president’s security team left their own device in place. In any case, unbeknownst to the security team, the CIA made sure that a listening device was installed in the president’s belt buckle each morning, so in effect every word the president spoke in his years in office was known to the CIA, except when he left his pants and belt at a distance from a bed.)

  The president stands beside his desk when a door opens and the Protean Alien 32 known as Molière rolls into the room. He rolls up to the president, assumes a more or less human shape and extends a limb and hand. The two shake hands.

  PRESIDENT: Thanks so much for coming, Mr… Molière.

  MOLIÈRE: My pleasure, Mr. President.

  PRESIDENT: I’m going to sit in this rocking chair. Please make yourself comfortable wherever or… however you like.

  MOLIÈRE: Thank you, sir. If you don’t mind I’ll just sort of wander about as we talk. When I sit still I usually fall asleep.

  PRESIDENT: I understand you’re quite a celebrity.

  MOLIÈRE: Was quite a celebrity. But authorities around the country are forbidding or closing any new performances of the play. They’re also trying to get the videos removed from YouTube and other sites. My fame is receding pretty fast.

  PRESIDENT: The NSA was very disappointed when they heard that the… Protean who was to visit me was you. They told me they didn’t feel it would be politically wise to arrest and torture you until after your fifteen minutes of fame were over.

  MOLIÈRE: A sense of humor!

  PRESIDENT: Only when I’m alone—at least from human beings.

  MOLIÈRE: That’s sad. It’s when you’re with other humans that you most need a sense of humor.

  PRESIDENT: I’m afraid we’re getting a bit away from the important matters I’d hoped we might discuss.

  MOLIÈRE: No, Mr. President, a sense of humor is the most important thing we could possibly discuss. You humans always think that if you talk seriously about serious problems that you can find serious solutions. But most of the problems you think are serious are so minor that the deaths of five fleas would match in seriousness what you spend years trying to deal with.

  (The president stares at Alien 32, who in his sphere shape is momentarily settled on the couch.)

  PRESIDENT: I’m afraid I can’t conceive of what you’re talking about.

  MOLIÈRE: Probably not. So let’s try it your way. Let’s play at being serious.

  (Alien 32 assumes his more or less human form, sitting on the couch and crossing his legs. He produces a couple of ping-pong balls and stuffs them into his “head” as eyes.)

  PRESIDENT: I think that’s best. Your Protean friends are destroying our nation, and we have no choice but to fight you in every way we can. Will you and your people consider stopping your subversive activities?

  MOLIÈRE: Exactly what do you have in mind?

  PRESIDENT: Well, to begin with, stop interfering in our efforts to stop the Muslim terrorists.

  MOLIÈRE: Agreed. We will work to stop some of those you call terrorists.

  PRESIDENT: You will?

  MOLIÈRE: We already are. We’re blocking their military efforts whenever and wherever we can. Of course, you and your papers and television shows call half the world terrorists, so we can’t promise to try to stop all of them.

  PRESIDENT: That’s true, but you’re blocking our military efforts even more.

  MOLIÈRE: And that too will help you stop the terrorists.

  PRESIDENT: How?

  MOLIÈRE: For every five terrorists you kill you create ten. At your present rate of bombing and killing, our computers indicate that in another five years you’ll have converted the entire Muslim population of the earth to wanting to fight against you.

  (The president stops rocking.)

  PRESIDENT: I fear you and I are not on the same wavelength, Mr. M.

  MOLIÈRE: What if you declared next month “National Celebrate the Aliens Month”?

  PRESIDENT: I’d probably be impeached.

  MOLIÈRE: By half your population. The other half would cheer.

  President: Half our population might cheer perhaps, but ninety percent of the House and Senate wouldn’t. I’d be impeached.

  MOLIÈRE: Ah, well, your House and Senate have embraced a policy of Eternal War for two decades now. By adopting that policy your governments are always looking for military solutions, and have spent fifteen years with your bombing and invasions creating hundreds of millions of Arabs and others who hate you and will resist you. And now with your aggressive actions against us you’re turning most of us against you. Do you think your government will ever question the wisdom of the disastrous policies you’ve been following for so long?

  (The president sighs.)

  PRESIDENT: I doubt it.

  FORTY-NINE

  (From LUKE’S TRUE UNBELIEVABLE REPORT OF THE INVASION OF THE FFS, pp. 229–236)

  CI Rabb was happy when he was notified that his limo had arrived to take him to the NSA Unit Leaders Meeting. He walked down the steps of his Washington town house, happy to let the driver open the limo door, and happy to slide into his seat and let the door softly shut after him.

  Then he noticed another man was already in the car. He turned and saw that the man was dressed exactly as he was. Even more amazing, he looked absolutely identical to CI Rabb. The only difference was that this twin was wearing gray suede gloves.

  “We’re late,” the man said.

  “Who… who… are you?”

  “I’m Chief Investigator Rabb of Unit A,” he answered. “I assume that’s who you think you are too?”

  “Stop the car!” CI Rabb shouted.

  The car simply drove on, and when the driver turned around to smile at him, Rabb was horrified to see that the driver was new and although he was dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform, his face looked exactly like Rabb’s too.

  “What… what’s going on!?” he asked the man in the back seat.

/>   “One of us is due at the eleven o’clock Unit Leaders Meeting. Do you want to handle it, or shall I?” The man’s voice sounded exactly like Rabb’s own.

  Rabb reached over to claw at the other man’s face, but his arm was easily clutched and held. With his other hand the new Rabb took a needle out of his suit jacket breast pocket and jabbed it into Rabb’s arm.

  “What are you doing!?” Rabb shouted.

  * * *

  “Gentlemen,” CI Rabb began at the meeting that morning. “Today I’m going to give you a different report from the ones I’ve been giving you over the last half year. I’m sure some of you will be upset with what I’m going to say, but I have to say it.

  “I believe that our policies in relation to the aliens are failing. I believe that our aggressive rounding up of the Proteans on any charges we think we can use, and kidnapping Proteans and taking them to black sites when we have no charges, have been turning hundreds of Proteans against us. I believe it’s a major mistake that we’ve neglected to bring more Proteans into our corporations and government agencies to work for us rather than against us. As far as I know, there are presently only five such Proteans, one working in the Department of Human Services, one with Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, one with an NSA unit in charge of cyber security, one with Google, and one with the National Council of Churches. We use as a reason for this neglect that no Protean can be trusted, but in each of the five cases where an agency or company has used a Protean he has been of great service.

  “We know that these creatures use a computer more powerful than humankind can ever conceive of, and yet we’ve made minimum effort to get them working for us rather than against us.

  “We must acknowledge that most of the original aliens who arrived here on our planet had no interest in playing games that would damage our economic or military systems. That the vast majority of them were really here just to play, that most—”

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Rabb,” said the FBI director. “Let’s not hear anything more about their damn play.”

  “You must admit that in the last few months getting people to play seems to be what most Proteans are trying to do.”

  “And those Forthehelluvit events are almost as destructive of our systems as their cyberattacks are on our agencies,” said the FBI director.

  “Nevertheless, most of the increase in the number of our Protean enemies has been created by our aggressive actions against the few who from the first were doing things that damaged us.

  “Therefore I propose that the US Government declare an amnesty for all Proteans for anything they have done—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said someone.

  “And invite all Proteans to come and work for our government in any way that they think they can be of service.”

  “Invite the foxes into the hen house!” said CIA Director Hilly Klington.

  “The Proteans are not all foxes,” said CI Rabb. “We’ll find that most of them are chickens, and if we invite them in we may find they will roost and begin to lay eggs that will help feed our population.”

  “We’ll convert Protean terrorists into chicks!” said Director Klington. “Maybe you can also tell us how we can convert Muslim terrorists into chipmunks!”

  “The point is,” said CI Rabb, “that we can’t know if they will work within our system rather than against it unless we invite them to do so!”

  “It’s too late!” said the FBI director.

  “You’re suggesting surrender,” said Hilly Klington.

  “I… I…” Suddenly CI Rabb stood up.

  “I’m afraid I’m feeling unwell,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

  And CI Rabb ran on his short stubby legs from the room, seeming to shrink with every step he took.

  A brief silence.

  “Fire him immediately,” said the FBI director.

  FIFTY

  (From LUKE’S TRUE UNBELIEVABLE REPORT OF THE INVASION OF THE FFS, pp. 237–240)

  Agent Johnson arrived at work at his usual time of eight-thirty A.M. At nine A.M. CI Rabb arrived, greeted people along the hallway in his usual fashion and entered his office. He had Johnson summoned, and the two went over the latest worldwide developments. CI Rabb gave Johnson some minor new assignments. Agent Johnson found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

  However, at nine-thirty CI Rabb unexpectedly and without explanation left the building.

  A half hour later CI Rabb returned, coming in the door dressed exactly as he had been when he left, but with his tie and hair askew.

  “I’ve been kidnapped!” he shouted, looking bewildered, and staggering down the hall as if drunk. “I’ve been kidnapped!”

  Two women warily approached him to try to calm him down.

  “What happened?” one of them asked.

  “I was kidnapped!”

  “But when?” asked the other. “You’ve only been gone from the office for thirty minutes.”

  Mr. Rabb stared wild-eyed at the woman.

  “No, no, I haven’t been free since yesterday morning. I was kidnapped!”

  Agent Johnson heard the commotion and now approached his chief.

  “But you and I met half an hour ago, Jim.”

  “No, no, that wasn’t me! I’m me!”

  “But yesterday… Exactly when were you kidnapped?” asked Rabb’s administrative assistant, Carlo Minelli.

  “On my way to work! There was another me in the car!”

  “You didn’t attend the Leaders Meeting?” Johnson asked.

  “No, no, I was in a black hole with champagne and jelly beans!”

  “You didn’t make the presentation yesterday morning at the NSA meeting?” Agent Johnson persisted.

  “No, no, that was him. I’m me!”

  A crowd of more than a dozen had clustered around the seemingly deranged chief investigator, and Agent Johnson realized that this hallway meeting had to end.

  “Into your office, Jim,” he said. “We’ll talk there.”

  “Call the FBI!” shouted Rabb. “I was kidnapped!”

  Johnson took Rabb by the arm and walked him rapidly toward his office. Three others, including Carlo Minelli, followed the two men inside, the last one closing the door.

  Johnson waited until CI Rabb had collapsed onto the couch and then turned to the others.

  “Out!” he said. “Everyone out except Carlo and me. Now!”

  Two of the men hesitated and then left the room.

  “Lock the door, Carlo,” Johnson said.

  As Rabb’s assistant locked the door, Johnson went to the big desk, pulled out a drawer and disabled the automatic tape-recording machine.

  “The FBI!” Rabb shouted. “They still haven’t been informed. Call Cake!”

  “Get a sedative,” Johnson said to Carlo, who quickly moved to the bathroom off the office.

  Johnson then walked slowly over and knelt down in front of CI Rabb.

  “Take it easy, Chief. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ve told Mrs. Argyle to call the FBI. You’re safe here.”

  “He kidnapped me! Only caviar and jelly beans!”

  “I know, Jim, I know. It must have been horrible.”

  “He was polite! Just like me. But I’m the real me!”

  “You are, Jim, you are.”

  Carlo came up with a glass of water and a bottle of pills. Johnson took the bottle, checked what it was, poured out three pills and told CI Rabb to take them.

  “They’ll improve your memory,” he explained.

  “I remember everything!” Chief Rabb shouted. “I was kidnapped!”

  “The pills will counteract the drug that the… the other you must have gotten you to drink.”

  “The champagne! It was poisoned!” He grabbed the pills, stuffed them into his mouth and took two big swigs from the glass of water.

  “You’ll be all right, Jim. You can relax now.”

  After ten minutes Chief Investigator Jim Rabb calmed down and told Johnson and Carlo what ha
d happened. Perhaps.

  He told about getting in the limo, seeing his twin and being jabbed with a needle. When he awoke, he was in a dark room with only a mattress on the floor and a small sink and toilet. His watch said it was ten o’clock at night. Lying next to the mattress was a small tray. In the dim light from the single bulb overhead, Rabb saw that on the tray was an open bottle of champagne, an elegant, thin long-stemmed glass holding something bubbly that looked like the champagne, a large plate containing crackers and caviar, and a huge plastic cup heaped with jelly beans.

  It wasn’t until nine the next morning that Rabb was disturbed. His cell door was opened and there was again the man who looked exactly like him.

  “Hi,” the man said. “Hope you slept well.”

  “I barely slept at all,” said Rabb, whose speech was somewhat slurred from having drunk most of the bottle of champagne between seven and eight that morning.

  “Well, we’d better get going. You’re already more than an hour late.”

  “You’re coming too?”

  “No, only one of us should show up. Probably this time, it best be you.”

  When Rabb had finished his story of the kidnapping, Carlo asked, “Did you come into the office as usual this morning, Chief? At nine?”

  “That wasn’t me! I’m me!”

  “Of course you are,” said Johnson, then handed him the glass of Scotch and water that he’d gotten Carlo to make. Then both men went off to the far side of the office.

  “We’ve got to warn everyone that the aliens can imitate humans,” said Carlo excitedly. “We no longer can be certain of anyone!”

  Johnson stood looking out the window.

  “We’ve got to sound the alarm!” Carlo persisted.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean ‘no!?’ We’ve got to act!”

  “No.”

  “What are you saying!?”

  “Think about it, Carlo. What will happen if everyone in every spy agency thinks that the aliens can pass as any human being they want.”