Back when I was a teenager, I remember reading a science fiction novel, one which has apparently stayed with me for a long time. I never really knew why. It has however recently begun to reverberate within me due to present circumstances. The plot goes something like this: There is this guy named Gene. Gene is a reporter for a great Metropolitan Daily Newspaper, you know the story, and somehow gets involved with an investigative piece in which he discovers that there are aliens living among us. These aliens are called the "Djinn". They have infiltrated even into the proverbial "high places", but are still acting underground and of course unbeknownst to the populace at large. What they are capable of doing is hypnotizing/brainwashing normal Earth people and thus winning them over to their point of view, as well as enslaving them. Some Earth people are even made to work as slaves in the ore mines they have on Titan, one of Jupiter's moons.

The problem occurs when Gene begins to get too close to exposing the plans and secrets of these Djinn. They get wind of Gene, and Gene gets wind of the fact that he will soon be taken into custody and brainwashed, and will then be sent to work in the mines on Titan as a slave. So what he does, very cleverly, is to write a letter to himself in which he explains the actual current situation; who he is, where he works, what he has been working on, in short, the whole conspiracy of the Djinn as he has been able to piece it together up to that point. He also adds several important clues as to methods for rediscovering his real identity. He very carefully folds the letter and hides it in his shoe, between the bottom and upper sole.

Sure enough, very soon after this, he is arrested by the police, of course working under instructions of the Djinn. He is hypnotized by their special apparatus, which causes him to forget everything he was, his whole life up until that point, and sent to work in the mines on Titan. He is just one among many others who work incredibly long days, are poorly fed and housed in primitive conditions. But no one really cares. They do not seem to know anything else. After  working there for a year or so, of course Gene's shoe begins to wear out, and while seeking to stuff some material into the shoe, to protect his foot from the inclemencies of working in a mine, he stumbles onto the letter he had written to himself.

On first reading he does not really understand it, much less believe it. He cannot believe that he has another identity, that he has not been a mine-worker forever. He hints at this to a friend he has shared his space with who tells him he is crazy. Slowly, but surely, by following several of the hints in the letter, he succeeds in piecing together his other life. He discovers who he really is and his place in the world, what his work must be from this day forward, liberation from the effects of the Djinn.

He begins to attempt to talk to some of his companions in the mines, but they will not listen to such preposterous ideas. Gene's job from here on in is a lonely one, he needs helpers and must somehow create the necessary means so that at least some of his co-workers can at least partially recover their sanity, see reality right-side up, and assume their genuine lives and purpose before they die.

I won't reveal what happens after this, in case you somehow stumble upon this book one day and would like to read it. These days I identify with the character Gene as portrayed in this book; like him I follow the clues strewn about in trhe lifetime, speaking subtly to fellow hypnotized slaves on the lookout for those whose conditioning might be weak enough to be able to penetrate the veil. I find myself dropping vague hints about another kind of life . . .