Page 48 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Anthropic Fallacies

its workshops and move on, perhaps never again to find a world
with such promising raw materials.”
“And when will that occur?” Reverend Upchurch had surfaced.
“That is classified information.” Buck folded his arms.
“And you have allowed those young people to be brainwashed
by these devils for God knows what purpose, letting them fly
around the countryside in those contraptions—and then you are
going to let them be packaged up like frozen steaks and shot into
space?”
“Effectively. We had no choice. Things will return to whatever
passes for normal in this chaotic age. People bound to silence for
the duration will be released from that obligation. Their stories,
should they make them public, will probably not find much
credence. Photographs like yours will be treated, with the passage
of time, as genuine curiosities, inexplicable mysteries. Those
looking for other material traces of what occurred will be
frustrated, and may well be treated as cranks. The UFO era will
soon come to a close, and with it the calls for congressional
investigation. But we must ask you to destroy those negatives—or
at least lock them away for a while. We need to maintain privacy a
little bit longer. Will you?”
Doug Upchurch snorted. “In a pig’s eye. You can’t bully us.
We’re still American citizens.”
Buck frowned. Heinzeit pouted. O’Day shrugged. But Ray
Zorbach suddenly stood up.
“No, Reverend: they’re my pictures, and I have the negatives,
not you. This all makes perfect sense to me. We have to pretend
to cooperate with these invaders, because if we don’t, they’ll blast
us to smithereens with their ray guns. You can count on me. I
don’t want any part of this, really. Let’s go home, Reverend.
Leave the photos here. I have to be back at work on Monday.”
Thwarted, Upchurch began a series of expostulations,
invocations, and imprecations. Then he ran out of gas.
“Oh, all right. I know when I’m licked. I can find plenty of
other issues on which to unite my flock. But you and your aliens
are not as smart as you think. You can’t drive the immortal soul—
or whatever you atheists want to call it—human nature, I don’t
care—out of a human being just by filling his or her head with a

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