Alien Opportunities Ch.4 : Suspicions Part 4

    “I hate their greyness,” said one young man who sported a close cropped head, like many of the younger men who were here. “Its not natural. They look to me like trolls or zombies. They’re definitely not human. And we’re allowing them to cart our women off to their planet. Do you know what they do to them there?”

     “I don’t know. What?” responded Chris, not expecting that this rather overconfident youth would have any more understanding of the situation of the travellers than himself.

     “They’re taking them into sexual slavery. They entice them with promises of a high lifestyle, but when they get there they find they’ve been bought by some rich alien to serve them as sex slaves. There was the glint of excitement in the youth’s eyes, so much as to reveal to Chris’s discerning gaze that he would have liked to have Earth women as his sex slaves too. Was it jealousy that made the youth such a passionate hater. “They keep them chained up and fuck them whenever they want.”

     “How do you know this?”

     “I don’t know the exact details, but that’s what we been told. Our imaginations can fill in the blanks can’t they. It makes my blood boil thinking what they do to our girls. What else would they be taking them for. That’s why we haven’t heard from those people. The monsters are not going to let them go are they, not if they’re getting sex out of them.”

      “I understood that the humans who have gone to Starmanena have been male as well as females. Do they become sex slaves too?” This youth was the first of the ‘Patriots’ to bring up the sexual accusation as the foremost charge against the Starmanenans although Tony had certainly included it as a factor in his perceived exploitation of Earth’s people, of the Travellers and of those who worked for them on Earth. The charge had not been mentioned at all earlier in the meeting where various speakers had preached hatred towards an alien species who enslaved Earth people, and would stop at nothing to subvert our institutions and take control over our people, finding all our secrets and our weaknesses. Chris had experienced the aliens’ sexual fascination towards Earth people at first hand so the youth’s accusation struck a chord. Perhaps the youth was correct. Chris knew what the aliens would like to do with humans. He doubted this youth knew the reality of the aliens’ sexual interest. The youth had had no experience of them and could tell him nothing. Chris must follow his own judgement, and the signals he had received from them were not harmful. Perhaps they were hoodwinking him, but certainly youths such as this were not in a position to know. He found himself prying and provoking the youth’s supposed knowledge, wanting to prove to himself that this immature youth held no balanced view.

      “I expect so too. Men can be fucked too you know. These aliens they like men as well as women,” he added. “That’s one of the sick things about them. I bet you didn’t know that too.” Chris thought it was strange that the ignorant should be so confident that they knew more than those who listened. Hadn’t this always been the case, in a world where the considered opinion was rarely given much credence by those who formed quick judgements.

      “We need to do something about it, instead of ignoring the missing people,” said the young man, impatiently. “That could be my girlfriend who’s been dragged away to the stars. But our governments just ignore what’s going on.”

    “What do you advocate the governments should do?” Chris asked, curious to see what this young man’s own opinion was. “I think the ones who’ve gone to the stars are already lost to us. They were stupid, they should have known better. They chucked away their own lives. We can’t do anything to save them now, unless by some stroke of luck we can force the aliens to make terms. No, we need to deal with the aliens here. The broader movement doesn’t really go far enough. They want to, but they’re still hoping we can get the aliens to move by peaceful means. That may be alright if it works, but I don’t think it will. We’ve given them too much of a foothold here. They won’t give it up easily. Peaceful measures assume that we can persuade our governments to act, but as you know we are not yet in the majority. Most people and most parties refuse to look at the realities, and are taken in by the aliens. There are many people who don’t even realise there is a threat from them. So I think, if we can’t get people and governments on our side we need to draw blood. When the aliens respond they will reveal their true colours, then people will see we were right. Or maybe the aliens will leave us alone when they know we do not want them here.”

   “What do you mean by ‘drawing blood’?” Chris asked.

   “I mean we should attack them. Terrorism against them. Sabotage their Households, plant bombs, kill them when they are undefended, make it impossible for them to live a pleasant life here, or to take our women away from us. Hopefully they will leave us alone when we do that to them. If they stay here and put up a fight we’ll just have to fight them until they are defeated, and we’ve taken our world back, as a place fit only for humans.”

    Chris felt revulsion at the youth’s solution. He had lived and worked with these aliens now and he found it unpalatable to imagine that his own people might kill them. They seemed so friendly, so worthy of life, so harmless. He might have doubts about their underlying intentions and their promises, but the thought of killing them was as horrible as the murder of humans. He hoped none of the movement’s leaders thought in such terms.

   Tony introduced him to Bruce, a ruggedly handsome self assured looking American probably in his early twenties. One evening, a few days after Chris had attended the Patriots’ meeting Tony and Bruce called in on him. As soon as Chris opened his door they came in swiftly, not waiting to be asked. Chris did not object. He was glad of company. If they had come to see him, he was happy to play host. Bruce looked around curiously as Tony talked with his usual enthusiasm.

    Bruce commented, “Man you got a lotta books here.”

    “Yes. I collect them, the ones I like anyway,” Chris replied. He explained that he had always enjoyed reading, “It gets you away from ordinary life once in a while. Helps me to look at the world from a wider perspective.” He joked self consciously, expecting that books were not the reason for their visit, and that they would be unlikely to want to hear much detail about them. “I have about five on the go at the moment,” he said unnecessarily. “But I am not getting through them very fast.”

     “Why do you read them?” asked the stranger, surprisingly.

     What a strange question. Wasn’t that obvious. “Why? Because I like books.”

     “What’s the point?”

     Chris didn’t think anyone had ever asked him such a question before. He hadn’t expected it of this friend of Tony’s, who looked well educated. It was because he liked books that he could do the job Urilt’s company had assigned for him. He wanted to be a writer one day. Books were an important part of his life. How could he begin to answer this Bruce. “I have always enjoyed stories.”

     “How old are you? Aren’t there millions of serious things to be done?” Bruce gestured outside to the world. “Out there is alien exploitation, takeover, theft, and colonisation. And worse – the exile and likely murder and sexual abuse of our young as they disappear into the void. And you read books like an old grandad. They’re all old, outdated like the old politics. Don’t you know we’re in a new situation now. Then we could fight amongst ourselves and do what we liked. It didn’t matter because none of it threatened the end of the world. Now our planet is being taken from us and we don’t even know what the aliens have in store for us.”

     “You make it sound as if I am committing crime by reading. Surely it is our culture, human culture.”

     “Well you said it. In the circumstances….  It’s hiding your head in the sand.”

     “Most people I suppose read newspapers,” said Chris. Surely we learn more by reading books.”

     “Its true most of our people, particularly in the West, they think they’re so civilised and educated. In fact most of them read magazines and papers which tell them nothing, nothing about what’s really going on in the world. They don’t seem to know anything about the aliens. Aliens offer them an easy life and they forget about everything else. The soft option is to ignore a threat, to put their feet up while the aliens take over the economy and kidnap the flower of our youth. Chris I learned something recently.”

      “What?”

      “There is a lot more to life than entertaining ourselves. And entertainment won’t save us from whatever it is the aliens have in store for us,” warned Bruce. Tony stayed unusually silent. It was as if he realised Bruce could say these words better than he. Or maybe they weren’t the words he would have chosen to use.

      “Literature is more than entertainment. They take us to higher levels. You could express your beliefs about aliens in literature, politics,” he suggested.

     Later Chris thought about this conversation. Did all the Earth Patriots hold these kind of anti cultural views. Surely being Patriots they should be defending Earth’s culture, and yet he had the sudden perception that it was the aliens who appeared to care more about the preservation of our rich heritage, created over long centuries of hardship and sorrow, than these Patriots. How could it be that Earth Patriots turned their noses up at it, recommending instead military attitudes of resistance and conformity.

    He found himself in a more macho world than he was used to, particularly in his current alien employment, where the ‘fighters’ were competing in games of oneupmanship, childish, possessive of their girlfriends, greedy for sex, but starved of it. They blamed their lack of self satisfaction on the aliens. They gave their praise to a past golden age before the aliens arrived, which never was; a figment of their simplistic imaginations. He saw less maturity than the aliens had, despite his doubts about their motives. They were like children compared to the aliens he knew.