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January 21, 2005
#2 When Aliens Replace Friends and Relatives
Now, in my Second Address (delivered before the Committee for Determining Real People CDRP), I confront a deeper and even more serious consideration. We have to deal with those aliens who, it suddenly appears, have replaced certain close friends and relatives.
I say suddenly, but what is sudden is the realisation you have when, suddenly, after a long time of difficulty with a person, you realise this can’t actually be that person; this must be an alien version of that person, and one who is dedicated to the mission of mixing you up and possibly driving you crazy. This of course is potentially more devastating, this invasion of aliens right into one’s private circle, than the invasion of aliens at top levels of government or in places of no apparent consequence--as of yet, like school crossing guards and pizza delivery people, convenience store clerks or car mechanics . . .
And of course once this gets out that it has happened anywhere, that an old friend living in Vermont, say (this is what happened in my own case), or another older friend in Baltimore, drasticly, or one’s own sister, for God’s sake, has been replaced by an alien, who has set about to confound precisely them, set about to implant hostility and doubt in the other’s mind to corrupt him; once this gets out, the mere idea that this could be happening, everyone will start looking closely at their own friends and relatives and start to wonder about each of them.
Because friends and relatives are precisely not looked at so closely after a while, and are given the benefit of doubt, as we say, and great latitude; in fact they are allowed to do things that if someone you didn’t know did you wouldn’t want to even know that person. With this new possibility that they may actually not be the person they originally were at all, but have been replaced, at one point when you weren’t watching closely, which is all the time really in some cases; well just the idea is enough to cause chaos. In fact the idea of so unsettling that we may never get to know the actual story. This idea alone, even if untrue!, has the potential of ruining circles of friends, and whole families, intimate groups which have grown smaller over the years--and can’t afford have a whole person rubbed out!
In fact in life after a certain point one doesn’t really make new friends, at least one can’t make new old friends (obviously), and that is why the close scrutiny has let up, particularly in regards to friends living in Vermont, in my case, because I always felt guilty in their regards for having left them there, when I moved back to my hometown; since they originally relied upon me so much, for inspiration and guidance. But the point is, though the alien replacement has occurred and I am obligated to report this, I want to simultaneously observe that if there is a dramatic increase in the number of reported alien replacements, now, a good many of those may actually just be fear of an alien replacement. Which is why we have to have a technique for positive identification. We have to have a method people can use for determining whether their old friends and relatives are still themselves, or have been victims of a substitution. (For instance, in taking another look at my sister I decided she still was my sister, after all, and that was . . . sort of a relief.)
But if this can be established that this has happened, and a bonafide look alike has swept in, then of course one has to get busy, not only having to decide how to deal with the alien, but having to ask: what happened to the person?
Posted by mortimer at January 21, 2005 04:53 PM