WHAT I DID TO BLUNT THE ALIEN INVASION

                                    BY BARRY N. MALZBERG

1. I talked to them.
"Be reasonable," I said. "Consider the conditions here. Consider the nature of
our circumstances. We are struggling toward a kind of equivocal democracy,
equivocal poise, equivocal justice: Marx's alienation effect is only an
intermediary stage on the road to Nirvana." And so on and so forth. A modicum
of learning, a flutter of pedantry, even some scatology now and then to show the
great comic vision which, ultimately, underlies the human condition. They
nodded solemnly but did not make their position clear.

2. Carried the word to the President, to Congress, to the press as best I
could. Not through letters to the editor, not only through the vox populi
sections of the newspaper and by phone calls to the district office of our
congressman, but through the great common network of our evolving democracy,
the talk shows. "Alien invasion," I said. "Creatures from the far Centauris,
from the proximate Centauris coming in disguise to infiltrate our customs, our
cities, the interstices of our lives, disguised as fellow citizens, dogs,
horses, houseplants. Against their cunning we must be unavailing, nonetheless I
think you are entitied to know. The full story." Also small notices in the
classified sections of the local daily, not much but all I can afford. ALL
THOSE WHO ARE OF THE ALIEN INVASION PLEASE CALL (my number) OR WRITE POST
OFFICE
BOX (my post office box). I did what I could, certainly, to bring alertness to
the populace. My modest funds, my lack of true credibility, all of these were
very much against me; but nonetheless, within limits, I tried.

3. Discussed the issue with Susan. I made no attempt to hide my distress or my
growing awareness that perhaps between the loathsome, threatening presence of
the alienness and all of those circumstances which are our democratic way of
life, I stood alone. "I don't know what you're trying to tell me, George," she
said. "If the aliens are coming, why are you the only one who knows this? The
rest of us haven't heard a word."

" I don't know," I said. "How can I possibly know?" There is, after all, only
so much of an accounting one may give, and yet the woman is endlessly anding.
"Perhaps the rest of the population is narcoticized or drugged," I said.
"Perhaps it is only for me to carry the tale." And so on and so forth. Even
within the context of a difficult living situation, a situation built, I think,
upon my need to reach out to Susan, to humor her, to treat her as if she were a
sensible, rational woman and not the raving, neurotic pain that I know her to
be... even within that context, I tried to be ultimately reasonable. "You can
see why I'm somewhat preoccupied," I said. "You can understand now why you may
find me somehow abstracted on various occasions. I'm trying to work out a plan
to blunt the alien invasion. This takes all of my mental powers."

She laughed and laughed and it was at this point in our dialogues, usually
although not exclusively, that she would begin to hurl objects at me. I do not
wish to discuss this any further. Of the true and mordant nature of our
relationship, of the dark and tumbling necessity of our connection, I will
inform in another context. At this time we are dealing with the public rather
than the private (and hence irrelevant) consequences of our activity.

4. Remonstrated with myself. Had genuine agonies of conscience, cris de coeur
in the deep insertion of the night. "Perhaps it is a delusion," I was driven so
far by the insensible Susan as to admit. "Perhaps there are no aliens, let
alone an imminent invasion; I have concocted all of this out of heavy drugs,
phantasms, and the need to establish some aura of personal significance. But
no, no, this cannot, possibly be; the corporeal reality of the aliens has been
proven over and again, and I have no reason whatsoever to fantasize." I am of
course compressing this internal monologue significantly while at the same time
preserving its essence. It is of the essence which I am speaking now. "No, I
have examined the issue wholly and profoundly and I know that it is only I who
can sound the warning," I concluded. Would conclude these remonstrances and
heaving internal monologues composed of equal parts self-revulsion and
determination. "It is not internal disintegration but objective necessity. That
necessity can be proven by the very conditions in which we find ourselves. The
times bespeak invasion." Well, don't they? How much doubt can there be about the
nature of dislocation?

5. Rendered pictures of the aliens for talk show hosts or congresspersons who
might want physical evidence. Using Crayola (TM) and perspective drawing,
rendered them as they had appeared in my hallway on that fateful afternoon in
June of 199- when all of this began. Eight-feet aliens with thin lips and
square shoulders, the aspect of soccer goalies or perhaps a new breed of
astronauts, all of them with intense, winking blue eyes and highly concupiscent
genitalia of the requisite kinds. Whiskers and cilia, representative balloons
to display their dialogue, which came in only slightly fractured English with
what seemed to be a cockney accent. "Are you serious?" Susan said, seeing a
cache of these drawings one night, looking as she so often looked in places
which were none of her business. "What are these things, what has happened to
you?" Pointed at the representations of genitalia and with crooked forefinger
made an inexplicable but wholly repellent gesture. "This is too much for me,"
she said. "It's one thing to have a living arrangement, strictly business and
all that and another, quite another to realize that you are living with a
homeboy lunatic." And further statements of a kind which cannot be paraphrased
and need not be included in this otherwise true bill. The pictures, faithful
reproductions of the aliens as they appeared to me on that doomed late Saturday,
the cones and slants of dim summer light infiltrating the walls of this
tenement, have been carefully preserved and are available at any time for
inspection and further consideration.

6. Tried in the absence of any fair response from congresspersons, call-in
hosts, covivant, or the corrupt, self-serving press to take the issue directly
to the streets. "They are already among us," I said, "eight-feet caterpillars
with purple genitalia masquerading as people and they have so clouded our minds
with dangerous drugs and global corruption that we do not notice, we think it is
merely part of urban decay. When several hundred thousand of them, a critical
number, have infiltrated the populace, they will have reached a kind of
Heisenbergian mass and through use of the uncertainty effect will topple entropy
itself. Oh, we must be alert, we must be alert, we must be aware!" I pointed
out, gesturing somewhat floridly (but in a controlled and geometric fashion) in
the park on that and other difficult evenings and I would like to say that I
drew a crowd and some enlightened response but due to the very dreadful and
imminent conditions created in part by the aliens themselves, I am afraid that I
was unable to elicit the kind of response which was deserved under the
circumstances. Tried then in the presence of few and the absence of many to
make the situation entirely clear but, met only by welling indifference and at
last the tanks and brutalities of the guardians, was able to shout no more.

7. Tried to consider all parts of the issue, all phases, and alternatives.
"Perhaps I am fantasizing," I told them when they had called me in for further
investigation, "but that doesn't mean that it isn't true, that they aren't here,
it just means that I have no hard evidence, that I cannot produce them. Not
that I im fantasizing, you understand, although I will make that stipulation for
the purposes of argumentation. I have a serious mission, this is serious
business, we are talking about the alienation effect," but their faces were
bleak and implacable; oh, I know something of bleakness and implacability, it
must truly be conceded, although it is not these qualities alone which will
suffice when they come tunneling through our streets, using their massive
weaponry, dismembering our civilization.

8. Seized Susan in a sexual embrace and tried to convert her to understanding
through sheer will, some Reichian orgone box of the spirit, performing upon her
otherwise unprintable and desperate acts which need no explication within this
difficult compass. "You've got to listen," I said as she struggled. "You've
got to hear me out, you have to understand that there are aliens among us, they
may even as I speak have seized me just as I seize you," and the desperate cries
of her resistance sped me only further on my way as I joined with her in an
absolute cold infusion of knowledge, a spiraling knowledge of spiraling aliens
as pointlessly she resisted the knowledge which would free her.

9. Begged the aliens, as they clutched me, as they took me away, to heed my
pleas for the sake of our destiny, "Behold truly, I will not betray my race
before cockcrow," I said, "not one time, not twice, not three times," and
invoked what frail Scripture I knew to try to change their course, our destiny.
"Comfort me with apples," I said, "and leave us time and season," but beggars,
like betrayers before cockcrow, cannot oppose with reason that which is
implacable and doom ridden, although I tried and tried.

10. Offered my services as administrator. "All right," I said to them, in the
consultation room, being allowed as was their policy (they said) one interview
in which to make my position known. "You need an intermediary, someone you can
trust, someone who can speak to both sides and surely I have done that
throughout. Consider Petain," I said, "consider Quisling, consider the occupied
territories. Consider how truly dapper and assimilated I will look in my
eight-foot disguise," and so on and so forth; there are, after all, as many
species of failure, as many varieties of submission as there are of success and
it fell upon me-it has always fallen upon me, consider the condominium split
with Susan-to make the best them, "who better than me, who better deal I
can. "After all," I pointed out to than the prophet of Tompkins Square and the
Marxian diocese would know how to manage the true destruction, the latter
exculpation of Earth? Who, O friends and brothers? Who, then?"