Covert Recordings

Covert Recordings

Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel (excerpt)

File No. 2197 – News Report - Miranda Patel, BBC

Location: London, UK.

London is in chaos. Approximately twenty minutes ago, an all-too-familiar giant robot appeared in Regent's Park, mere steps away from the memorial honoring the victims of the first  alien attack nearly two decades ago. Moments later, two more materialized side by side in Trafalgar Square. While Londoners remained surprisingly calm in our previous encounters with the aliens, they are showing no such composure this time around. Mass panic has set in. There is looting across town. All the major roads are blocked. There have already been dozens of casualties, people trampled trying to evacuate their offices, vehicles plowing through crowds. The city has issued a statement asking people to stay in their homes and avoid the streets, bu the memory of those thousands of bodies lying on the pavements is still fresh in the minds of Londoners, and most will do anything to escape the - 

I am just told that more of these giant killers, a lot more, have appeared... everywhere. Reports continue to come in as we... It appears we are witnessing a full-scale alien invasion. New York, Washington. We are getting images from Washington now. There are four, no, five robots surrounding the White House.

Back to the UK, while Londoners are on the run, it is unclear where they can run to. We have a preliminary list of cities where metal giants have been spotted. Here we go: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Doncaster, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchaster, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North Lanarkshire, Nottingham, Rotherham, Salford, Sheffield, Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Swansea, and York. As I said, this list is preliminary. We are getting continuous reports from... This is a picture of the Stockton Cricket Club in Stockton-on-Tees. As you can see, there seems to be nowhere to hide.

Sudden attack. Photo by Elena.

So far, no sign of the deadly gas that killed tens of millions. The aliens have not made their intentions known, but the sheer number of robots would indicate they are not on a mission of peace. Whatever their objective is, it would appear they will achieve it without resistance on anyone's part, as no state has darted to challenge the invader. It should come as no surprise since our last attempt at a military response right here in London had nothing but cataclysmic consequences. I believe I speak for anyone who has seen the crater that once was Madrid when I say that we should...

I am in shock. It has been only a few minutes, but already, the United States, and now the UK, have signalled their unconditional surrender to the aliens. Whether their message has been heard and understood remains to be seen, but – More reports of surrender. China – we do not have video at this time, but there are apparently over two hundred robots in China alone – China has just joined the growing list of countries to lay down their arms. We should hear from Her Majesty's Government on that subject shortly. I suspect the American capitulation will have a domino effect on other nations as well.

We can see – This is central London from above, and we can see smokestacks everywhere. There are fires erupting throughout the city. I am urging everyone to stay inside until the streets are safe again.

Only Human

Only Human

By Sylvain Neuvel (excerpt)

File No. EE955 – personal file from Esat Ekt

Personal Journal Entry – Dr. Rose Franklin

Be careful what you wish for.

About ten years ago – I was thirty-seven at the time – a giant robot from another planet visited Earth and decimated part of London. We succeeded in destroying it, but thirteen more appeared and dispersed a genetically engineered gaseous weapon in two does of our most populous cities. One hundred million people died on the process. Among them, this mysterious man whose name I never learned, who steered our every move ever since I was put in charge of studying that giant hand at the University of Chicago, and Kara Resnik, my best friend, who was also Vincent's wife, and Eva's biological mother.

With some help, I found a way to alter the metal these robots were made of at the molecular level and disabled one of them. That was enough to convince the aliens to leave.

I can't say that I knew that was going to happen, that millions would die because I had discovered Themis and brought attention to our planet, but I was afraid it would. I was afraid ever since I was brought back to life. I felt... out of place, and I wished that whoever built Themis would come back and take her away. I also said I hoped they would take me with them.

They did. After the alien robots left Earth, General Eugene Govender, head of the EDC, Vincent, Eva, and I went aboard Themis to celebrate our – I was going to say victory, but that's not what it was – survival. While we were there, the Council of Akitast – the group of aliens who decide how their world deals with others – had Themis brought back. She dematerialized on Earth and reappeared on Themis's home planet, with the four of us inside.

Only Human. Photo by Elena.

They call it Esat Ekt – Home of the Ekt, their people. In some small way, they're also our people. The Ekt first came to Earth some five thousand years ago – twenty-four of them or so. They were among us for a couple of millenia. They were ordered never to interfere, to stay out of history's way, but over time., some of them frayed and joined the natives. They had children – half-human, half-alien – who in turn had children – three-quarter human – and so on, until their descendants, indistinguishable from humans, had but a tin bit of alien genetics left in them. Three thousand years later, there was nothing left in them. Three thousand years later, there was nothing left to distinguish them from. All of us, every single person on Earth, were related, however remotely, with the handful of aliens who chose love over duty, back when the Titans walked the Earth.

We have been living here on Esat Ekt for nine years now, but we are still very much outsiders. Their entire society is built on the idea that different species shouldn't interact in ways that can affect them, that each should be left to evolve according to its own set of values. Centuries ago, their kind was nearly decimated by the inhabitants of a planet their emperor had displaced, exiled for personal or political raisons. After that, they replaced their monarchy with a very complex democracy, and took their noninterference policy to a whole new level. To the Ekt,”polluting” an entire species with their genetics means robbing them of the future they should have. They view this as we would genocide.

Freedom of Religion

Freedom of Religion

Excerpt from Trump's America by New Gingrich

In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for teachers, principals, or other educators to lead prier in public schools. In 1980, the court barred schools from displaying the Ten Commandments on campus. Since these cases, courts have gone further. The high court said in 1985 that even a moment of silence could potentially unconstitutional, and in 1989, it ruled that nativity scenes celebrating Christmas in government buildings were unlawful.

In 2002, a federal court even ruled that the phrase « under God » in the Pledge of Allegiance ran afoul of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause – which prohibits the federal government from establishing an official religion. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court's ruling, but the justices stopped short of clarifying that this phrase is in fact constitutional. This is profoundly troubling, after all, the official motto of the nation is still In God We Trust.

In addition to the courts, some associations have also waged a wide-ranging cultural campaign that impacts every aspect of American society. The First Liberty Institute documented 1,400 attacks on religion in America in 2017. The Institute's “Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America” looks at instances of religious hostility across four categories: the public arena, which includes government, workplaces, markets, and other public spaces; the schoolhouse, which includes K-12 and collegiate institutions; attacks against places or worship by local communities, and local, state, and federal governments; and religious attacks within the military. The Institute reports that instances of religious intolerance increased by 15 percent since 2016 – and 133 percent over the last five years.

St-Joseph Cathedral. Photo by Elena.

Some of these attacks include companies that have been threatened with consequences by government for refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception or abortion drugs and procedures. In one example cited by the Institute, elderly Americans at a senior citizens' center were told they could not pray, listen to religious messages, or sing religious songs because of religious persecution, a high school football coach was fired for praying alone on the field after a football game, and a Navy chaplain was investigated for counseling his fellow seamen according to his religious beliefs.

More and more often, we are seeing the First Amendment, which was written to protect our freedom to practice religion, misused as a tool to strip religion out of our public lives. Not only is this push for a religion of public secularism a departure from the historic American approach to faith, it is a threat to our liberty and the principles on which our country was founded.

The Founding Fathers regularly – and intentionally – engaged in public religious observances, and they knew that faith was vital to our country's survival. They understood that religious freedom underpinned all our other liberties and provided an important limit to the federal government's reach into our lives. We must recognize that religious rights in our country have been diminished over the years and the country must work to restore these rights. America is strongest and most successful when its people are free to live and worship as they wish.

This is why the freedom of religion is an essential pillar of America and a key to the American comeback.

Reaching Beyond the Stars

Reaching Beyond the Stars

Excerpt from Trump's America by New Gingrich

Perhaps more than any other initiative, President Trump's commitment to revive American leadership in space will have enormous, long-lasting outcomes that will help ensure the United States remains a global superpower for decades to come. Even more importantly, if the Trump administration can build on the emerging commercial launch systems Americans will lead people throughout the solar system and freedom will be the banner of space travel....

Thinking big and achieving big in American space exploration and commercialization will require a lot more drive, mental toughness, and determined implementation than anything we have seen in space since the Apollo program, which put us on the moon.

Unfortunately, the speed, creativity, risk-taking, and technological and managerial innovation born out of the Apollo period from 1961 to 1969 has been replaced by bureaucracies, lobbyists, entrenched old systems, and narrowly defined ways of thinking and measuring success.

Many of these old bureaucracies, old systems, and old interest groups are working overtime to redefine their activities to fit the Trump-Pence vision. In other words, they are trying to put new point jobs on 50-year-old cars and pitching them as new.

If the old guard succeeds, we will have another eight years of rope-a-dope with slow moving, expensive, safe bureaucratic activities that achieve very little.

Real change in American space activities will be controversial. It will stir up opposition from entrenched bureaucracies, large corporations, and congressional pork barrel vested interests. If you don't see or hear about this resistance, you can assumed it is because the old guard has successfully minimized the amount of change coming, and instead of thinking big, we are acting small.

Space program! Photo by Elena.

Meeting the Trump-Pence Standard

At the first meeting of the National Space Council, Vice President Pence outlined the following clear goals based on President Trump's directive:

1. Refocus America's space program toward human exploration and discovery – launching American astronauts beyond low-earth orbit for the fist time since 1972;

2. Establishing a renewed American presence on the moon to build a foundational system for space activities beyond earth's reach. The moon will be a stepping-stone, a training ground, a venue to strengthen our commercial and international partnerships as we refocus America's space program toward human space exploration;

3. From the moon as a foundation, America will be the first to bring mankind to Mars;

4. Renew America's commitment to creating the space technology to protect national security. America must be as dominant in space as it is on earth;

5. Promote regulatory, technological, and educational reforms to expand opportunities for American citizens and ensure that the U.S. Is at the forefront of economic development in outer space;

6. American industry must be the first to maintain a constant commercial human presence in low-earth orbit expanding the economy beyond the planet. We'll strengthen our economy, as we unlock new opportunities, new technologies, and new sources of prosperity;

7. We'll inspire our children to seek education in science, technology, engineering, and math.

8. Our nation will bring American values to this infinite frontier. We will renew the American spirit itself and rekindle our belief that America can accomplish anything.

If we insist on the scale of change these eight goals will require, we will have an amazingly dynamic and popular program in space by 2020. Furthermore, we will be poised to make even greater leaps during a second Trump-Pence administration.

A major key to succeeding in this effort is recognizing this level of advancement is vastly more complex than the Apollo program. Apollo was an engineering project with the full force of political-governmental support that could be managed by a bureaucracy with adequate resources. The Trump-Pence goals, on the other hand, require a series of cultural, political, economic, and technological changes that transcend any single bureaucracy or manageable, measurable system.

This new system requires fundamental shifts in virtually every current space-focused activity in our society.

Reaching beyond the stars. Illustration by Elena.

Net Worth

Net Worth

From I Love Capitalism – An American Story by Ken Langone, cofounder of The Home Depot.

When I was ten years old, I was an altar boy at St.Mary's Church in Roslyn, just across the harbor from the sand pits. The priest, Father Francis Ryan – Father Frank – came from Ireland, spoke with a brogue, and had a boxer's nose: he really had been a boxer. Does it sound like a Spencer Tracy movie yet?

I've always been spiritual, and I loved being an altar boy. The hours were challenging, though. When it was my turn to serve the 6:30 Mass for the week, I had to get up at six every morning from Monday until Saturday and walk about a mile to a spot underneath the railroad bridge at Roslyn Road, where Mr. Harnett, the church sexton, would pick me up in his little Ford Model A and drive me the remaining two miles to St. Mary's. I remember the smell of the pipe Mr. Harnett smoked and the fragrance of the inside of the church, a combination of incense and the wood of the pews and the bindings of the hymnals.

Weekdays I'd serve Mass, then walk back up the hill and go to school. But on Saturdays I had to walk all the way home – three miles. Once I took a ride from my uncle Pat, my father's oldest brother, and his wife, my aunt Agnes. My aunt scolded me the whole way about why my mother and father didn't go to church. I never took a ride from the again.

Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Graffiti. Photo by Elena.

I've always felt that some of the worst people in the world go to Mass regularly, while some of the best people in the world never set foot in church. I attend Mass every Sunday, and try to make daily Mass as often as I can. I have a routine every morning: I get up and brush my teeth and, still in my pajamas, go off in a quite corner of the house for twenty minutes with my Bible and a Bible study guide and pray.

I don't know if there's a God or if there's a heaven; I can't prove it, but that's what I believe. There's one part of me that thinks, when you're dead, you're dead. You had your shot; move on. But if there isn't a God, what have I lost by praying? Nothing. It's a no-downside bet.

The first part of my prayer is that when I'm presented for my judgment, our Creator will have concluded that for the most part I've lived my life according to His teachings, and Scripture. I then ask that in the hereafter I'll be reunited with all those people I loved and admired who left before me. I then pray for those who have lost loved ones or have problems: people I can help. I say, “God, let me always do it for your praise, honor, and glory – not mine.”

I know spiritually isn't for everybody, but for me it's been an incredibly motivating factor. God is the most important parе of everything I do.