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By Bradford Hatcher © 2019 Bradford Hatcher ISBN: 978-0-9824191-8-2 Download at: https://www.hermetica.info/Intervention.html or: https://www.hermetica.info/Intervention.pdf Cover Photo Credit: Found online. Appears to be a conception of an evolved Terran reptilian life form. Table of Contents Part One 5 Preface 5 Puppet Shows 7 Waldo Speaking, Part 1 11 Waldo Speaking, Part 2 17 Wilma Speaks of Spirit 24 The Eck 30 Gizmos and the Van 34 Growing Up Van 42 Some Changes are Made 49 Culling Homo Non Grata 56 Introducing the Ta 63 Terrestrial and Aquatic Ta 67 Vestan, Myco, and Raptor Ta 72 Part Two 78 Progress Report at I+20 78 Desert Colonies 80 The Final Frontier, For Now 85 The Stellar Fleet 89 Remembering Community 94 Prototypes and Lexicons 99 For the Kids 104 Cultural Evolution 112 Cultural Engineering 119 Bioengineering 124 The Commons 128 The Tour 132 Mitakuye Oyasin 137 A Partial Glossary 147 Part One It gives one a feeling of confidence to see nature still busy with experiments, still dynamic, and not through nor satisfied because a Devonian fish managed to end as a two-legged character with a straw hat. There are other things brewing and growing in the oceanic vat. It pays to know this. It pays to know that there is just as much future as there is past. The only thing that doesn't pay is to be sure of man's own part in it. There are things down there still coming ashore. Never make the mistake of thinking life is now adjusted for eternity. Loren Eiseley Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man apart from that. Robinson Jeffers Preface Dear Readers, Although this work begins with a brief story, it’s really nothing more than a pair of progress reports. The first was submitted to the Archives six months after the Tan arrival, the second, twenty years later. I’ve committed to writing a dozen of these, one every twenty years, over the next two centuries. They’re written to be part of a much larger collection. There are three thousand Van in the world, still outnumbered more than a million to one by human beings. Of these, just under three hundred of us have undertaken to document our Intervention in humanity’s future, and our plan to save this world from humans. While the Van are not great friends of relativism, we do at least accept that situations as complex as this Intervention are best understood by combining a number of points of view or perspectives, to better surround the objectively true. While we Van have tighter bonds with each other than human beings do, we are also more vigorously individuated. Therefore, you should expect to see some variety in these accounts and intend to read more than one if you have need to understand us. You may find contradictions. It’s important that homo survivor try to see recent events from our “alien” point of view. For my own part, I've never engaged directly in a dialog with a human, not even the Fit, other than exchanging brief pleasantries. This is rare among our kind, but I was made to be a kind of Aspie, and the Ta to which I’m linked is a Myco. As such, my point of view is going to seem a lot less neurotypical than most other Van accounts. You should not, therefore, expect to be hugely or primarily entertained here. What follows is a simple history, not a colorful story full of well-crafted plots and character development, clever dialog, heroes and villains, or human interest. In literary terms, this is what’s called a data dump. I was informed long ago that I’m a better thinker than a storyteller, and I’ve come to accept that. But what follows is necessary as background information for Survivors, the Fit, who will salvage and carry on the business of human civilization, and ultimately of human evolution, and I would hope it still merits reading in conjunction with the other reports. I've tried to provide something of a narrated timeline for these early events, as well as descriptions and terminology related to the Tan and our own Van technology. Wherever you encounter what seems to be a gratuitous capitalization of words you are probably looking at a special or technical term adopted by the Van, most often borrowed from elsewhere in human culture. It’s hoped that your familiarity with these will eliminate some of the need for my associates to also write data dumps, so that they might proceed to tell more reader-friendly and entertaining stories, tales full of sensations and rich emotions, full of personal struggles and victories, full of life and warmth. I will be assuming that you are Homo Survivor, and not Meh, and that any interest you might be taking in these reports will be relevant to your vision of a better world. If you’re simply trying to understand the “alien invasion” or “the two greatest evils that Mankind has ever faced,” what we’ve done here will probably still go over your head. But even Homo Survivor will be hard pressed at times to locate our humanity and moral center in all of this. To this, we can only quote your own Nietzsche: “Man is something to be surpassed.” We’re not “coming out” now. The Van intend to stay in our old stealth mode, either hidden among you, or hidden in plain sight, or hidden away, for more than a century if necessary, very possibly until the last human now living has died. You will meet us in person and not know it, and we will be greatly outnumbered by our appointed human delegates, who won’t be certain they know us either. What we’ve done to your species will never be forgotten, but it might one day be forgiven, once your descendants are able to compare where you were going with where we are taking you. Puppet Shows It was a pleasant enough day for first contact, the day you picture when you’re being hypnotized, but replace the boat on the river with a bench in the park, surrounded by worshipful pigeons, in late spring, some fluffy clouds, gentle breeze, a little jasmine wafting around. Waldo had been on that bench for an hour, glancing across Pennsylvania Avenue from time to time at the fountain on the north side of the White House. He had already maintained his calm through two police demands for identification and a third that came with a frisking. He’d watched a couple of picketers get taken off to jail. This was a date not circled on a single eschatologist’s calendar, at least that we can determine. Most of the simple folk were of late looking to 2033 for the End of Days, not long at all now, and still with more hope than dread. This was only a little bit too soon for them, but none too soon for us, or for a world in agony. Waldo was too average in every respect to attempt to describe him. About all we can say is brown-haired, brown-eyed Caucasian, and medium or average everything else. He did look a bit younger than middle-aged, thirtyish to outward appearances. His hat, an average of trilby and fedora (nice, though), his coat, of trench coat and dry-as-a- bone. His brown sneakers suggested that what he wore beneath might also be average and middle-class. And he carried a matching umbrella, despite the perfect weather. As if done waiting for a sign, he stood up and walked briskly across the street to the fence. From a deep pocket, he pulled a long strap with a loop in the middle and stirrups on the ends, hooked the loop on a picket and used the device to straddle and then hop the fence. The device was a new idea and had made it through the frisking. The hopping was happening more frequently, leading to an increase in the White House security presence, now matched in numbers by military personnel. He wasted no time in crossing the lawn to the east side of the fountain and pool. He had barely come this far when he was flanked on three sides by two Secret Service agents and a soldier, all with guns drawn, about as he had timed it. Almost three meters from the water’s edge, Waldo knelt down suddenly, arms out- stretched, palms out, in what seemed a gesture of surrender. Two shots had already been fired, one to warn him, one to wound him, but the latter shot “missed.” Covered by his gesture, he had just flung two freshly-burst glycerine gas pellets towards his captors, who were still standing a safe distance away. It was a special kind of gas, not really meant to hurt anyone, just a lovely mix of skatole, putrescine, cadaverine, butyric acid, and hydrogen sulphide. One of the agents started retching almost at once, while the other two quickly got more distance, one tripping backwards in haste. Nobody fired another weapon at least. “You know how sometimes there’s a dead cow that’s been laying in the sun for days and it gets bloated and pops open and blasts ooze everywhere? It was like being dipped in a pit full of those,” an agent later recalled.

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