text: The destructive capacities of the ingenuity of the human mind had not been fully unleashed until our first encounter with another intelligent kind. We had written about encountering an alien species for centuries before, but unfortunately we were limited in our imagination and tried conceptualizing of other intelligent life as similar to our own. As in, they perceived the same sensations we did and thought more or less similar to our own patterns of thought. But the 'intelligent' kind we encountered were much more profound. Trying to understand their cognition and how they perceived existence itself is much similar to trying to comprehend what it is like to be both God and a lowly amoeba. It is simply completely different from our own qualia. Our first encounter with this kind of life, if that is what it can be called, spawned a whole new field of philosophy and scientific research dedicated to trying to understand their processes of cognition. But my work isn't related to that field, I don't busy myself with pointless work. Misunderstanding is conducive to conflict, and the profound levels of misunderstanding that existed between humanity and this alien life almost immediately sparked conflict. The United Nations employs me, and a hundred thousand other engineers, mathematicians, and scientists across the globe to research new technologies to support the war effort. It is critical that we win, or we face total annihilation. We don't understand why they seek to destroy us, but we do understand that we must fight to stay alive. The global economy no longer revolves around the endless consumption of goods by consumers, but consumption of goods through the brutality of war. We faced a long series of losses, with only the nuclear bomb recouping our disastrous efforts to somehow strategically counter our enemies, before the 'Titan mech' was developed. It's a robotic machine, in humanoid form, that has several weapon systems embedded upon it and stands several meters tall. The bravest and best-trained of the military forces of the globe pilot these mech's, and they give us the cutting-edge advantage we need to push back our foes. But recently, we lost three outposts on Europa. This moon is critical to our species survival for its reservoirs of water, which have now all but been exhausted on earth. The outposts situated on and in orbit around Europa are some of the most well-guarded in the entire fleet, for this very reason. Our newest Mech's are deployed to this location, meant to hold off new waves of invaders intercepting our solar system from interstellar space. But every mech was obliterated, and the marauders annihilated the outposts. We have stopped receiving radio transmissions for the past three weeks from these locations. Fortunately, Europa was ignored as they clearly don't understand the nature of our logistics chain but the objects are now headed towards Mars -- where a large portion of humanities population resides. The Chilean Radio and X-Ray Observatory has noted a fleet of objects, detectable through the fact that they are spots in the sky where no radio or x-ray signals are emitted whatsoever, is on course to intercept Mars in its orbit. I first assumed that there was some fault in the design of these new Mech's, but I demanded to speak with the United Nations General Secretary after neither myself nor none of the scientists under my command could find any faults. Unfortunately, the United Nations was just as corrupt as it was before the war, only it had access to much larger sums of cash. The last General Secretary was assassinated as a result of him meddling in a border dispute between the Russians and the Germans and some other Europeans, and the new one is known to have only gained his position in politics by acting in service of the corrupt entities which desire to tap into the funds devoted to the war effort. It won't be long before he is assassinated himself, I thought. They typically never last longer than intervals of a decade. When I approached him, I made sure to make a good first impression. This was my first time meeting him, and I wanted him to know that just because he was General Secretary, he really held no power over me. It was the Generals who made the most important calls, after all, the General Secretary just held the official power. "I'd like to know what happened on Europa," I said, disregarding introductions altogether. The General Secretary looked shocked, as though he had been disrespected. "I'm sorry... What makes you think you can just walk in here without any formalities?" He looked old and decrepit and had the face of a person who couldn't think for themselves. "That's a waste of time," I responded. The General Secretary had an expression of contempt on his face. I didn't want to wait for this puppet to lecture me before disclosing the details of whatever went wrong on Europa, so it would be better to cut to the chase. "No, it's not." He responded, almost mumbling like he could barely form sentences. "Sir, I need-" He cut me off. "Our new pilots on Europa weren't adequately prepared for addressing the situation that they were supposed to resolve, and were subsequently wiped out." The General Secretary said, emotionless. "What pilots? Where are you deriving these pilots from?" I demanded. "Whenever we face losses like this, its usually a consequence of the source-nation we are recruiting our pilots." "They were composed of individuals from a largely international background, there was no discrimination involved in this new recruitment program." He responded. "Then what went wrong? Where was the mishap?" I asked. "There was no mishap, simply a new program of training has been introduced." The General Secretary said. "A new program? Why would you think its a good idea to deviate from the original training regiment? It has been refined, over generations, to give us the best pilots." I responded. "The old program was inadequate for our strategic objectives." The General Secretary said. I recognized him now, from the scar on his neck. It was a former admiral of the fleet. I wondered what he was doing here, in this position of authority that was surely going to get him killed, when he could try and pull the strings from the back of the stage. I tried ruminating over the possibilities, when the thought crossed my mind that possibly the old program was too expensive, and some business partners or politicians wanted him to cut funding to it to siphon some of the money allocated to the program to their encrypted accounts. "Are you saying its too expensive?" I asked, ready to try and expose him for what he truly is. "No, in fact, this new program requires an increased amount of funding." He responded. "We had to allocate double the amount of funding we typically do for this reformation of the training program." I scratched my neck, confused. I noted that, upon my entry, the security that protected the General Secretary was far more stringent and larger in scope than it typically is. Maybe he is paranoid, being a new secretary. But it seemed that the military had provided a helping hand in ensuring that his safety is secure, considering the sheer amount of personnel that are protecting him. Perhaps the military played some role in this scheme. "Then what the fuck is going on? Why are we losing?" I demanded. I was the director of research and development for the entire international force, my position was among the most important in the United Nations. When I demanded answers, I got them. "I am sorry to inform you that the idea that we were 'winning' before was simply a propaganda slogan thrown around to keep morale high. We were always losing, this is just a different kind." The General Secretary responded. "A different kind? A different... *kind of losing?* Just give me a straightforward answer." I said. "The truth of the matter is that we have always been losing. The amount of resources that we exhaust to keep the most minor objects away from our important logistics line is too much. The larger attacks, which occur periodically about every five decades, always cripple our command and logistical infrastructure and very nearly wipe us off the map each time." The General Secretary said. "At a space station situated in a polar orbit around Jupiter, one of the most powerful telescopes ever constructed sits. It consists of an array of mirrors some eight hundred meters across, with the appropriate life support systems, hangar modules, and power generating equipment attached. The remainder of the station is dedicated to housing the large computational systems required to process the data it captures, and algorithmically filter through this data to detect small zones deep in interstellar space that emit zero radiation." I now understood that, whatever he was telling me, was something that I had been deliberately kept in the dark about. Something that was a very classified matter, but that he had decided to disclose to me due to my apparent pestering. Perhaps he thought I was too important in my post to see me quit over a lack of information. "Our greatest astrophysicist believe that these intelligent life-forms, if they can be called intelligent in the way we think of that word, are manifested by a form of matter that does not interact with the fundamental forces except in some undetectable manner that deflects all electromagnetic radiation that interacts with the warped area of space it occupies. It's possible that these specimen exist in some sort of higher state, a more dimensionally complex state than ours, where they protrude into our perceptible plane of existence and... for whatever reason they do not take kindly to our existence. Anyways, this telescope has been searching the skies for fifteen years now. The data was streamed to a data processing complex in Tokyo, and for the majority of its operation it did not detect anything." "But two years ago, one of the processors embedded in the great complex of computers aboard that space station detected some sort of anomaly. The computer automatically began utilizing the majority of its processing power to scan this area of space on this spectrum of wavelengths -- which mind you is all classified information that I will not disclose -- and a discovery was made. A fleet of objects, far larger than anything that has ever been detected in our solar system, is situated in interstellar space near Alpha-Centauri. It is larger by a factor of two hundred and fifty, occupying a space nearly a lightyear across. We believe that our kind friends are trying to wear us down, and exhaust us, before making a final, massive thrust to wipe out our species from the solar system. And so far it has been working." The General Secretary said, the lines of age sagging through his distinctly asiatic face. He continued, "As the war has been grinding on-wards for generations, the resources that we can utilize to support our own population have been exhausted at a rate far quicker than typical. Granted, our technological development has been spurred forward by the conflict, but our own technologies can only be sustained if the economy itself can be sustained. And for all intents and purposes, the economy is in a terrible state. Inequality runs rampant, and the vast majority of the globe's population lives in conditions that are best described to be below the poverty line. Even in the wealthiest cities, violence and crime is the most characteristic part of life. Compared to the luxuries the average individual enjoyed before the war, our society is in a dismal state. The only luxuries we have now are created by the technologies we have engineered through our efforts to survive. This is all a consequence of the economy being geared toward the war effort, and not the general growth of living standards. This is further exacerbated by the increasing scarcity of resources. Because of this, the enemy is winning by grinding us down slowly. They may even be able to get us to fight against ourselves before they surmount the final attack." "Me and my comrades directing the international force recognized this, and I was thrust from my position in Japan to General Secretary as soon as the opportunity arose for me to be elected to that position. My first act as General Secretary was to implement a new training program that would not only give us a better advantage against the enemy, but end the war altogether. Even the highest ranking politicians, and the wealthiest individuals, are not aware of this. We were able to influence them in the proper way to encourage the General Assembly to elect me through a long series of empty promises and threats. Acting tangentially to this training program is another weapon and form of travel that I cannot speak of, but I can say that it will deliver our final strike that will annihilate our enemies from the very idea of existence itself. We don't need troops that will simply fend off enemy attacks for a period of time, we need troops that are so finely tuned to excelling in combat that they will counter-attack the enemy and cripple whatever remains. For that reason, we have implemented a global training program that militarily trains children from the moment they reach the meager age of two. Children act like sponges, and can become the greatest soldiers if they are trained correctly. The events on Europa were a mishap, but a step in the right direction. Now if you will excuse me, I have some work I need to finish.