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STRIP TEASE 1982 113 How could we not submit to Tlon, to the specific and vast evi- dence of an orderly planet? Arguing that reality is orderly is the wrong answer. Perhaps it is, but it follows divine laws (let us translate: human laws) that we can never fully elucidate. Tlon may be a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men. The frightening, even terrifying fact, says Borges, is that the un- known masters of Orbis Tertius are slowly substituting their own reality for ours. Indeed, the earth will soon have become Tlon! Perhaps UMMO falls short of Borges' awesome vision of the Tlon fantasy encroaching on our own world. It is doubtful that the false landing in Aluche was planned by some wealthy, unbalanced American industrialist. But it is true that for hundreds of UFO believers in Spain, in France, in the U.S., and in South America, UMMO has become reality itself, with its language, science, and cryptic documents. These people have left the real world, and they have even left the tenuous, marginal reality of paranormal research and UFO investigation. In a way, they have been lost to us and have reemerged as hronir, doubles of their former selves, their past and their future rearranged to serve a powerful fantasy that is "enchanting in its rigor," as Borges says. But he cautions us that it is "a rigor of chess players, not of angels." LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, The UMMO story has everything to please—aliens from outer space revealing new physics, new physiology, and even advanced concepts of the soul; mysterious Danish doctors performing sadistic mutilations; castles in Spain with underground chambers filled with all the parapher- nalia of a Frankenstein movie; French military helicopters looking for caves in the Alps; and a growing number of devotees forming groups and clubs all over the world to propagate their new cosmic truth. The story was too good, the product was too much of a marketing dream, not to find a niche on the New Age shelf. Indeed, Colonel