THIRTY-THREE YEARS have passed since unknown alien life-forms opened a hyperspace corridor between Earth and the planet Faery in an attempted invasion of our planet. We still know nothing about them. We don’t even know whether they were the ones who actually created the Passageway. Five years ago, I collected data on how every nation perceived this war and compiled it into a book that was published under the title The Invader.
I was only four years old when the JAM launched their preemptive strike. I remember what the adults, my mother and father, said back then as though it were yesterday.
“It looks like-----happened in-----. The president is sending the-----to-----.” I listened to them in wonder. To this day, I can clearly remember those blank spaces in the conversation, those words that, limited by my child’s vocabulary, I didn’t understand. And at the time, I wondered if I would understand them when I grew up.
As an adult, although I may experience blanks in a conversation, I don’t notice them. I automatically compensate for them by my understanding of the context in which they appear, and the meaning of the sentences flows unhindered. It’s similar to the way that our sight works. We perceive things in our vision as a continuous flow of images, when in reality there are blank spaces in our visual input. However, our brains automatically fill in those gaps, so we don’t notice them.
It’s easier for humans to process things as analog data. We need continuity, the illusion that what we say, see, and think presents an organic whole. In other words, we function in the opposite manner of a digital construct, where data is quantified, discreet, and determinate. The digital world seems to run counter to the very essence of our humanity. Our language as well. Our civilization itself. So what, exactly, are we doing turning over more and more of our existence to computers?
It was the JAM who raised these doubts in me. They are aliens. But to me, they seemed almost more like evil gods, a presence that held up a dark mirror to the meaning of human existence. That was the basis upon which I wrote The Invader.
Most citizens of Earth do not share my view. And that in itself points to the heart of the issue: the very concept of “citizens of Earth” is nonsense in light of the current international situation. There may be humans on Earth, but nowhere is there any group of individuals who regard themselves as inhabitants of Earth first and of their nations second. I think this a foolish and dangerous mindset, but when I say this to others they tell me that I am naïve.
I once told a scientist of my idea that humans lead an analog existence. He laughed and explained to me that our world—that the entire universe—is essentially digital. Objects, atoms, and even time itself are quantum in nature, and nothing works in a completely analog way. Everything from the subatomic world on up is digital. But humans exist on a macroscopic, not a microscopic, scale, I told him. He replied that if I insisted on clinging to that concept, then I could never understand what he was saying.
And so I asked him this in return: Are humans becoming more like machines, and in particular, more like our computers? Are we headed in the direction of digitalization? Yes, that may be, he answered, with an air of possessing some type of mysterious knowledge that I did not.
I became so intrigued by this notion that I began collecting data on the JAM and on the soldiers of the Faery Air Force who battle them on the front lines. Apparently the soldiers are beginning to have doubts about the still-unknown aliens and the war they are fighting with them.
One item in particular that caught my attention was a letter from a major in the Special Air Force. The SAF is the air force’s tactical combat reconnaissance unit, an elite group of highly skilled pilots tasked with a difficult mission. In the letter, Major James Booker speaks with unusual candor.
The JAM are not fighting humans. They’re after our machines. And our machines seem to have acknowledged the JAM as their enemies and are at war with them. So where does that leave us humans? The JAM aren’t fighting to conquer humanity. They’re fighting to control the digital, non-corporeal intelligences of Earth. You think this is absurd? You probably don’t understand. You, who live on Earth, where the JAM have become a fairy tale. Where they fade in significance compared to global competition. Where humans kill each other.
Major Booker’s words are correct. Setting aside the parts where he says the JAM disregard humanity and that humans have forgotten the JAM threat, he is entirely right.
In the first year or two following the JAM assault, we were nervous. But when we learned that we were only slightly behind them in combat ability, when we established Faery Base on their planet, expanded our presence by constructing the six principal bases and founded the Faery Air Force, there was no longer any need to fear them as a threat to Earth. It’s the same way that one forgets the heat of a burn once it’s healed. The problem is, the heat remains. Just because you can’t feel it anymore doesn’t mean the danger has vanished.
That was the point I was trying to make in The Invader. But people read it as though it were fiction. They bought the book and I became famous. My husband and I separated because he found he was no longer married to his wife, but to the public figure “Lynn Jackson.” We had no children. If we had, well… perhaps I might have written a different, more serious book.
Major Booker ended his letter in this manner.
You need to write a sequel to The Invader. The world needs to know what’s happening now here on Faery. But it may already be too late. Despite all your efforts, the message may not get through to people on Earth. The people who watch footage of actual combat on Faery act like it’s a war movie… One day they may be destroyed by the reality. Regardless, the soldiers of Boomerang Squadron still have to fly their missions. All I can do is pray that they come home alive. So what can you do?
In writing the letter he was trying to convey to me the fear that he felt. His rage, his resentment, his sorrow over the meaningless loss of the soldiers under his command. And he was also asking, “What about you? Do you have someone you care for? A lover? A spouse? A child?” Because the soldiers of his squadron have none of these. Even if the Earth were to vanish tomorrow, they wouldn’t shed a single tear. And that is wrong. They’re becoming machines. Humans need to be human. A soldier in that squadron feels that as he fights the JAM, he’s gradually becoming more and more machinelike. To convince himself that their battle isn’t meaningless, he must believe that he is as much the enemy of the JAM as the computers are. The JAM are dehumanizing humanity.
War will normally bring out the true nature of man. But the war with the JAM is different, Major Booker wrote. This war is not bringing out the basic nature of mankind: it is destroying it. Whatever the JAM’s true objective is, whether or not they pose an immediate physical threat to Earth, that danger has not gone away.
I am not confident I can live up to the major’s expectations. Even so, I think I have to write this book. That soldiers are dying on Faery is a fact. If I pray for anything, it is that their deaths are not in vain.
They are dying to protect the Earth, and what do we do? We forbid them to become self-sufficient. We keep them from becoming independent. Over half the individuals we send to replenish their forces are the stigmatized trash of every nation. It’s ridiculous enough to drive one to tears.
As I write this, I am cruising the freezing waters of the Antarctic Ocean, roughly four hundred kilometers from Scott and McMurdo Bases, and a thousand kilometers from where the Passageway stretches into the sky from the Ross Ice Shelf. The ship I’m aboard is a Japanese Navy attack aircraft carrier with the task force designation Admiral 56.