[Dream Report] Invasion of the Gingers From Another Dimension

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I began this one watching TV. Not really believing what I was seeing. The same thing most of us felt when we saw news reports of the 9/11 attacks. Only this time, every channel was a live newscast of what looked like an alien invasion. Bizarrely designed craft hovered in the air over major population centers.

The hovering ones resembled metallic rings. One large ring, then above that, another ring but smaller in diameter connected to it by struts between the two. Then another smaller ring above that one, connected in the same fashion. The structure had something to do with how it levitated but I couldn't work out what.

These stacks of metal hoops supported millions of single seat fighter jets. It seemed weird to me that they were using aircraft to attack us, not spaceships or something, but then again an aircraft is what you'd use to fight within an atmosphere and gravity well.

However the more the press learned about the "aliens" and their motives, the more it made sense. Their jets didn't seem much more advanced than ours. The only big technological edge they seemed to have was a method for levitating those huge sky bases which supported their jets.

When we got our first glimpse of them, they looked human. All of them had red hair, were of a muscular build, and were covered in dense freckles. Not aliens then, but an alternate humanity. They revealed that they fled their own parallel Earth after a cataclysm they wouldn't tell us the cause of, but that they would be residing here from now on.

It was expected that we would object, but their technological edge made opposing them difficult. They concentrated most of their resources on pacifying the US, perhaps reasoning it would serve to intimidate the other nations of the world. There were nonetheless brief, short lived wars elsewhere.

All we could do after that was to watch them slowly take over. I would say that they integrated into our societies, but it was entirely on their terms. Little by little, businesses began to cater to their wants primarily or exclusively. Restaurants first had a special menu for them, serving their native dishes. Then that became the main menu, and the secondary menu was for the rest of us. Then that menu disappeared.

We all simply had to absorb their culture in order for life to be tolerable. We learned to like their foods, to speak their language, to dress like them, even to dye our hair and administer fake freckles. This helped endear us to them, though we remained second class citizens regardless.

Every improvement to their lives came at the expense of ours. Every expansion of their living space took some away from us. Any complaints were mocked on the grounds that they could have exterminated us if they'd wanted to, and we should be thankful they didn't.

I wound up working in some sort of fast food place that focused on serving a variety of foul smelling gels and sludges in containers resembling spherical, open topped fish tanks. They ate so ravenously it was uncomfortable to watch. I knew just enough of their language that I overheard snippy remarks about my appearance. They imagined red hair and freckles to be the apex of beauty.

Some people I knew, who I'd once been friends with, took jobs enforcing the invaders' laws on the rest of us. I could have understood it if they just wanted to secure better treatment for their families but some of them seemed to enjoy their newfound power over their own kind.

Life never went back to normal, but stuff like insurgencies and terrorist attacks dwindled to nearly nothing over the subsequent years as we accepted that this was our new reality. Our sports were replaced by races involving these comically small jet-like craft.

Like the soap box derby version of a jet. One person barely fits. They flew alright though, propelled by a weird mechanism. Each craft had a parabolic metal dish on the back to direct thrust. In the center of that dish was held a chunk of glowing pink crystal. When a current was applied to the crystal, it explosively released energy, channeled by the dish into thrust.

As they were used up, the crystals would erode and shrink until needing replacement in the pit stop. I didn't care to watch these races but there was little else to do, recreationally speaking. Eavesdropping on customers where I worked revealed they came from someplace with no ground, only sky.

Or not exactly, but that they could not inhabit the surface of their planet. They resided in floating aerial platforms, presumably like the hoop things they invaded with. Their technological development focused on aircraft more than ours because of the necessity of finding ways to keep artificial habitats up in the sky for long periods without consuming an unreasonable amount of energy.

I would see them on TV debating issues like whether humans could feel pain to the same degree, whether we could think as far ahead or reason as well. They had their own version of the political left which campaigned to increase our rights, imagining it was a very high minded thing to do, but they were all rights we had anyway before these fuckers showed up and took over everything.

Even the well meaning ones were to some degree destructive. Because when it came down to their needs or our needs, their needs won out every time. They were simply stronger and smarter. Their technology was better, so when they wanted the same thing we did, they were the ones who got it.

Even if they'd been better people, I don't think we could have coexisted. The difference in capability between us meant we could never compete with them even on fair, even terms. The only way for humanity to enjoy a dignified existence was if these invaders never arrived, or were to somehow disappear overnight.

It's like the equalization of a pressure or temperature differential between two closed vessels. One of them gains, the other loses, simply by coming into contact. The only way to prevent that is to keep them separated.

I felt guilty to think this way because by then, I'd met a few very nice, well meaning individuals of their species. That just didn't change the social dynamic, overall. They were part of the problem just by living here.

When asked by one of them why I was disgruntled or had a bad attitude, I couldn't find any way to answer which didn't seem like I was unjustifiably hostile to their whole species when they're individuals, the same as humans, where some of them are bad and some are good. I always came out of it looking bigoted and mean.

The fact of the matter was that we couldn't live together without humanity getting the short end of the stick on every issue. It was a humiliating existence, to be knocked down a peg like that. The only way we could be happy is if we went back to being at the top of the food chain, as it were. Something I knew would never happen so long as we lived together with the invaders.

I would up joining a terrorist organization dedicated to driving them off our world. Except it was a honey pot. The second in command was a quisling, in the employ of the invaders. He sold us all out, and I wound up rotting in prison. In court, I found I couldn't answer many of the questions about my motives in a way that wasn't humiliating.

I was asked again and again questions designed to force me to admit that we lost because we weren't as advanced. That we can't compete with them even on a level playing field. I could hardly say those things, having committed so irreversibly to the cause of destroying the invaders.

I wrote many letters in prison. I don't know what about, I couldn't read any of them or if I could, didn't remember it upon waking. I held out hope things would change, that others would take up the fight and one day humanity could once again rule the Earth on its own terms. But things didn't change, at least now how I wanted them to.

The invaders only grew more powerful. More politically dominant, more wealthy. A handful of wealthy humans were held up by the press as supposed proof that we could succeed if we tried, but most of us were lazy whiners. Worse, the next generation of humans absorbed these views, defending the invaders at every opportunity and condemning anti-invader sentiment as old fashioned and hateful.

I awoke at this point. There's nothing like a happy ending, or even any resolution to speak of. I felt gutted at the state of that world, as I left it. Without even any hope of improvement or possible avenue to begin instigating change. Just total cultural domination forever, until the last traces of humanity faded away. Imo, it honestly would've been better if they just wiped us all out the day they arrived.