Free The Bird Cage by Kate Wilhelm Page A

three weeks for one of the bloggers to post a nearly complete copy of Mel’s original mailing, and it went viral within minutes.
    Bob Fellowes was next to refer to it in an hysterical rant:
    “They’re here among us, and have been since the forties! Maybe longer! What’s their purpose? What are they after? How many have come? Forty or fifty at a time! Year after year! For decades! There could be many thousands of them walking among us! Call your congressmen! Call the president’s office! Call your governors! America, we demand answers! They’ve had time to be assimilated, to have families, to infiltrate every level of government! Who’s in charge, us or them?” His voice became more and more shrill as he raved.
    Mel was both fascinated and alarmed at the way conspiracy theories were advanced by mid-October. The invasion had to be world-wide, else why had the Soviets launched Sputnik? Had they been starting a search of extraterrestrials on the moon or Mars, or possibly a mother ship in orbit out there? And why had the United States launched a desperate push to get to the moon and to Mars if not to conduct such a search? And now, international cooperation on a space station. Advanced nations were cooperating in an unprecedented way. Searching for extraterrestrials?
    A panel of experts in an hour-long television broadcast discussed the difficulty of detecting them. If they existed, they repeated often. DNA samples might possibly identify them. Autopsies were the only conclusive method, of course. One Harvard professor said: “Keep in mind that such advanced technology that allows them to navigate interstellar space would allow them to conceal their identities in a manner that we are unable to imagine.”
    Another panel discussed what possible threats hostile extraterrestrials could pose, with the most obvious one being the release of a pathogen for which they had immunity and humans didn’t. Were they waiting for a predetermined critical moment of their own, sufficient numbers, for example, to launch an attack? Or were they waiting for sufficient infiltration of all levels of government and industry?
    Mel had sent his original material to one senator and two representatives along with the others. The senator responded, as he had expected him to. A serious legislator, no doubt he had turned the matter over to one of the intelligence agencies. One representative, two bloggers, and Bob Fellowes also responded. Mel sent them all identical messages, taking the same care he had shown before, and mailing his answers in Manhattan again. His message was simple and short: “No more until I feel safe. The Whistle Blower Protection Act can’t protect me. My life is in danger.”
    A week after he mailed his response, two congressmen demanded hearings in the House of Representatives. One of the bloggers demanded all memos, communications, records, reports, etc. regarding Project Skylight through the Freedom of Information Act. It wasn’t clear exactly which agency he petitioned. And Bob Fellows became even more hysterical.
    By November Mel knew it was time to reveal the hoax, to prove to the country, possibly to the world, that the populace had been primed to believe any nonsense that was presented.
    He sat at the computer to write his confession and stared at a blank screen. When the alarm sounded hours later, the screen was still blank, and he left to start dinner. Tomorrow, he told himself.
    Day after day he sat at the computer and stared at a blank screen. Where to start? How to start? He felt as if his fingers had frozen, his brain had turned to stone. He had lost faith in words and had to consult a dictionary to look up the word hoax , which had become as alien as the invaders he had invented. All the phrases and sentences he thought of while sleepless in bed vanished by the time Ruth left for the high school.
    —Project Skylight is a hoax!— He sat back and looked at the words, deleted them. They weren’t even his own