Good Luck, Yukikaze

religious, and cultural systems they were attached to and declare to the world, “I am an Earther, and I represent the people of Earth.” Essentially, rather than find such a person, we settled back and waited for one to appear. However, the environment of modern Earth isn’t conducive to giving birth to such a saint. Earth is vast, with varied environments and an exceedingly great number of lifestyles, values, and histories. To have an appreciation of all of that, empathize with it, and then moreover dispense wisdom widely to all those different people without discrimination in order to help them live their lives well is beyond the capabilities of any one person. The scale of the target group to be led is just too big, crossing over too many divergent personal desires, and moreover individuals know how complex reality already is.

The human race has now established an unprecedented advanced information society and lives surrounded by a vast quantity of data. Truth and lies mixed together in the vast bulk of information available make everything seem ambiguous, and this vagueness breeds distrust. Indeed, modern people evaluate everything not by how trustworthy it is, but rather by how untrustworthy. Following the physical law that the reliability of transmitted data decreases as the bulk of information increases, relationships based on good faith and trust between people suffer. As the amount of material to evaluate increases, so too do the seeds of doubt bloom. We can call this the pitfall of the advanced information society. So, even if we found some self-proclaimed saint who could walk on water, modern humans have lost their original naive sense of awe for such a person.

And so, with no saint forthcoming, we didn’t set out to look for one. While the reasons are varied for why we never made an effort to form a truly worldwide organization to oppose the JAM, I now think it was the right choice. Consider what might have happened had the human race put its efforts into selecting a leader for all of Earth. To preserve their various group interests, we might have touched off a world war between nations, or a destructive religious war. If such a war to appoint humanity’s representative had been sparked, the JAM would have used it to their advantage, and their invasion would have succeeded. You could say that humanity managed to dodge that bullet. If a true representative for the people of Earth exists, his or her identity remains unclear.

Therefore, the people of Earth cannot now properly be called “Earthers.” Who then exactly are the JAM at war with?

We individuals have entrusted the war with the JAM to the Earth Defense Organization, and to be truthful, it operates in a democratic and efficient manner. I’m not being ironic here. It’s true. It’s because of them that we can forget about the JAM and live our day-to-day lives.

However, the truth is that this organization, established mainly by an array of people from all nations — all with their own fluid, individual expectations — has become a precariously fragile entity. As you might expect, each member views the war according to how they can benefit from waging it. Despite all of these various expectations, or perhaps because of them, they are still able to turn their strength on the JAM without being destroyed. This is, in a way, a far preferable situation than being led by some lone, foolish, half-baked leader. Following along from this truth, we can express another: the various groups that participate in this organization are fighting the JAM for their own sakes. In short, they’re not doing it for the sake of all Earthers.

We are at a dangerous juncture in human history — specifically, we will soon discover whether this method of opposing the JAM will always be successful. True, it’s working for now. Thanks to the Earth Defense Organization, most people have forgotten about the JAM. But in the future, if this system should stop functioning, the time may come when we think of ourselves as Earthers on a personal level. Because of the JAM.

When the system of which we are a part can no longer protect us from the JAM, we will be forced to individually and collectively confront the aliens as Earthers. The JAM who will be gunning for me are not of this Earth, not a part of any system on Earth. Even if I had the title of president of some great nation, it wouldn’t matter. All that would matter would be that I was an Earther. Furthermore, we don’t have any other planet to retreat to. There’s no place for refugees from this world to flee to. If the human race can’t form itself into a group called “Earthers,” then we as individual Earther representatives will have to fight the JAM.

The truth is that we’re at war with the JAM. If we don’t want to die, we’ll need to fight with our own strength. Am I prepared to do that? Are you?

Fundamentally, we cannot just entrust this war to strangers because it’s a problem for all Earthers, for every individual. So long as there is no true leader of all Earth, and so long as we can’t expect such a messiah for the reasons I discussed previously, it’s a problem that you and I have to think about as individuals.

THE THING THAT’S got me thinking about all of this again is a letter I received a few days ago.

Not an email, mind you. It was a literal letter in an envelope. It’s rare for someone not to use the computer network these days, but the sender of this letter had no choice. He had no access to any computer network here on Earth.

That’s right, it came from the other side of the hyperspace Passageway, from the planet Faery, where the war against the JAM is being fought. There, the combat organization of the EDO known as the Faery Air Force fights day and night to hold back the JAM invasion of Earth. If the FAF were to be defeated, the JAM would surge through the Passageway and arrive on Earth itself.

The sender of the letter wasn’t concerned about having his full name, attachment in the FAF, or rank published. In fact, he made it clear that he wanted them known if possible, saying that he wanted the people of Earth to know his thoughts about his war with the JAM. In other words, he was using me as a megaphone to pass his message on to all the people of Earth.

His name is Major James Booker. FAF Faery Base, Tactical Combat Air Corps, Special Air Force 5th Squadron, more popularly known as the mission sortie manager and the de facto second-in-command of the SAF.

The major sent me a letter once before, after he read my book The Invader, which was my report on our war with the JAM. I answered his original letter, and we have since maintained an infrequent correspondence. I even managed to meet and speak to him one time.

“You don’t know the real threat the JAM pose,” he wrote to me in that first letter. Coming as it did from the battlefield, his prose brimmed over with a sense of tension. That was natural, I suppose. And owing to the special duties of the SAF, the war they fought had developed a dimension even more severe than that faced by other squadrons.

By way of simple introduction, a description of the duty of the thirteen fighter planes that comprise the SAF would be as follows:

Gather all data from the airspace where the FAF is engaging the JAM. Return the collected data by any means necessary. Even if an allied plane is in danger of being shot down, you do not have to offer them proactive support. In other words, stand back and let friendly planes be destroyed.

It’s a heartless duty, but the pilots of these planes don’t consider it heartless. The SAF is comprised of people who possess that sort of personality. If you were to ask one of them how they felt about watching their comrades’ planes being shot down, they would answer “So what? It’s not my problem. What do I care about people in other squadrons or on Earth?”

I can only guess at the hardships Major Booker must suffer in trying to command subordinates who think like this. But heartless people like these are necessary to pursue the war against the JAM. If we could make some sort of gentleman’s agreement between ourselves and the JAM, then maybe we could be more careful about who gets to play in this game, but the problem that reality poses to us is that humanity doesn’t have that luxury. The FAF recognizes that as well. In short, the duties of the SAF require these sorts of people, and they have been given high-performance fighter planes suited to them. These are the Super Sylphs, tactical combat electronic reconnaissance planes even faster than the FAF’s mainline Sylphid fighters, with greater acceleration and maneuverability. Developed by the Systems Corps, the elite engineering unit of the FAF, it is a fighter plane truly worthy of the word super. I doubt that there is any fighter plane on Earth that could beat them. At the very least, no Earth fighter can match one in the environment of planet Faery. This is only natural, since the Super Sylph was developed for the skies of Faery, which is why the FAF needs to have the Systems Corps as its own research and development unit.

The Systems Corps has developed numerous models of fighter plane, but as we’ve now reached the point where manned planes are no longer enough to beat the JAM, they are now rushing to put a superior unmanned mainline fighter into service. It was with this development concept as the background that the second letter from the SAF came. The theory was that integrating the weak human element into the system was degrading the