Posthuman Blues

It often seems as if the cryptoterrestrials maintain a genetic caste system not entirely unlike that in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Accounts of UFO occupants are replete with insect-like overseers, diminutive Grays and, most intriguingly, human-looking "Nordics." Who's in charge?

Although the Grays have become synonymous with "aliens," I find them all-too-terrestrial in appearance; if we had a DNA sample, I suspect it would register as predominantly human. Like Huxley's remedial working caste, the Grays are consistently observed in menial roles. They comprise an army of compliant troopers, standing ready to restrain (or assist) abductees, deal with technical minutiae and carry out routines associated with the quintessential "on-board medical examination." Their atrophied appearance conveys a severe functionality, the sort of anatomical design NASA scientists might choose if able to construct a being suited for the rigors of spaceflight.





Ufologist Leonard Stringfield is probably best well-known for his meticulous harvest of alleged crash-retrieval cases, including detailed reports of autopsies on alien corpses. While his canon is plagued with the "anonymous sources" that have become the bane of "nuts and bolts" UFO research, the reports display an intriguing commonality.

Of course, proponents of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis would have us believe the Grays are an alien species that has, despite all odds, evolved into a caricature of the human body-plan. But given the Grays' unsettling similarity to ourselves, it's more probable we share a common ancestor. A thorough reading of close encounter lore veritably begs that we consider that they're a genetically engineered servant race -- in effect, biological robots that can be utilized at will by beings higher up the cryptoterrestrial chain of command. Indeed, some exotic reports depict seemingly lifeless Gray bodies coming to life like autonomous devices.

Whitley Strieber, for instance, has come to think that our "visitors" have learned how to manipulate consciousness, even able to transplant "souls" from body to body as casually as humans don specialized worksuits. Although he readily admits that this interpretation may simply be how his mind has chosen to decipher a phenomenon beyond human comprehension, others' experiences with nonhumans argues for an equally strange explanation.

Bruce Rux, in "Architects of the Underworld," posits that the UFO enigma can be explained if the aliens are actually robots under remote control. He cites cases in which humanoids of various descriptions display conspicuously mechanical characteristics, such as the reported posse of goblin-like creatures that assaulted a rural home in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. When shot, the "creatures" would rebound from the impact -- hardly behavior expected of flesh-and-blood entities. (Unfortunately, Rux fails to consider that the siege of goblins was a cryptoterrestrial psy-ops display, which eliminates the need for cumbersome robotic invaders.)

In the end, we're left with a pageant of unlikely humanoids operating in stealthy liaison. While this can be interpreted as members of some sort of "galactic UN" working together for the common good, a more promising hypothesis is that we're observing facets of the same intelligence. (The purported ability to "swap" bodies, if true, introduces a host of fascinating possibilities and may even help explain the role of altered states and apparent out-of-body experiences associated with the abduction phenomenon.)

Abductees' frequent allusions to insects (and suspiciously similar depictions offered by DMT trippers) may suggest a literal "hive mind" at work -- a concept that receives circumstantial support from recent breakthroughs with quantum "entanglement." Tellingly, dialogue aboard UFOs is usually reported to be telepathic -- a fact that speaks potential volumes about the CTs' culture and society (if they have one in any distinguishable sense). The CTs may well have a communications infrastructure, but of a sort we don't recognize until we find ourselves snared in its web.