Chapter 1: 1. Contact

I remember well the day the saucers came. It was chaos as one might expect.

Governments panicked. People rioted. It took less than three days for the governments of the world to declare martial law. The saucers hung over every landmass. We did not need telescopes to see them either. The saucers were that big. Their arrival was the biggest news event in the history of mankind. The question “Are we alone in the universe?” had finally been answered, and that answer was a resounding “No, we are not.”

Scientists with blogs and Twitter accounts, conspiracy theorists, and theists from nearly every known religion in the world flocked to social media to voice their fears and share their theories. Politicians stampeded CNN, FOX News, Al Jazeera, and all the other major news networks with the intent of calming the people, and even though their voices were calm and collected, we could see the fear in their eyes. They were just as scared as us. Experts shared their conjectures as to why they thought the aliens had come, tossing them around like a football to anyone who would listen. They clung to their theories like toddlers to their security blankets. All the theories Hollywood made famous were out there in full force.

The saucers had come to plunder Earth for our minerals and steal our resources. They were slavers here to take us into bondage. They were peaceful explorers in search of life on other planets. The ships were part of a scientific expedition, and they were here to study us. They were scouts here to test our defenses. The only thing that was apparent was that no one knew why they were here, but everyone had a theory. They had a theory because the saucers never landed. They never descended to make their intentions known. They did not attack. They refused to communicate. Other than knocking a few weather satellites out of orbit by accident, they did nothing at all. They were like moths crowding a streetlamp. The saucers came, and they did absolutely nothing. At least, they did nothing in the beginning.

While the saucers did nothing, we sure were busy. The riots lasted for three months, and when the saucers never landed, our fear turned to curiosity, fermenting like grapes into wine. They could have destroyed us at any time. We had no hope of standing up to so many. Each ship was the size of Iowa, and when NORAD finally managed to count them all, it found that there were a whopping one hundred and six of them. NASA confirmed the count two days later. Each ship was given a target designation by the military. Warheads were prepped, launchers positioned, alliances formed, and it was all done in the name of defending humanity from the alien horde. We stood no chance against what was up there. I knew it, and so did our world leaders. If we fought, it was not going to be a fight for Earth's survival. It was going to be an obstinate attempt to go down swinging. Thankfully, the call to fire never came and the ships blocking our view of the stars never descended. Five months after their arrival, a threshold concern was raised requiring that a decision be made. There were still cosmonauts on the ISS. They were evidently running low on Tang and powdered ribeye or whatever it is our astronauts eat. At least, that is what I took away from the President's broadcast. The cosmonauts needed to be rescued or resupplied if they were to survive. I remember watching the debates over whether we should launch a space shuttle to resupply them, or whether we should task Space X with the mission to rescue them. In the end, they went with rescue. I think the government just did not want to risk losing their only means of space flight should the worst happen. So, Space X got the job.

Even though we risked starting a war with the aliens, we still chose to save our people. I think that says a lot about humanity. Though, I suspect it had less to do with saving their lives and everything to do with wanting to debrief the people who had the closest vantage point to the ships for the longest. A Dragon class rocket of Space X design was selected to make the journey. A day was chosen. A launch window was selected. Nobody watched SpongeBob that day. Every channel on every station aired the same damn thing, a ship with a big red "X" painted on the side tensely awaiting it's launch window.

Newscaster after newscaster showed the same dozen retired astronauts—now consultants—explaining what the people were about to see. I watched with bated breath. This would either be a boring taxi ride for a bunch of Russian scientists, or it was the one deliberate act by the people of this world that was going to doom us all.

It was believed by many who watched that these were our last moments, this would be the extinction of man.

But, as many had hoped and even more had feared, the launch happened as planned. I started drinking. I drank faster when the newscasters announced that the Dragon shuttle was passing within one mile of two of the saucers. When they successfully docked with the ISS, the satellite imagery of the coupling left humanity breathless and dazed. The ISS was like a ladybug on the windshield of an 18-wheeler compared to the saucers in the background. I stopped drinking when they made their second trip past the two saucers while on their return voyage. I had to stop drinking because I drunkenly passed out.

When I did finally awake, I was laying on my couch soaked with my own disgusting mixture of piss and stale beer, but despite this, the news kept repeating that all was well. Mankind would live. The visiting space craft was apparently uninterested and unthreatened by our trip up among them. The politicians who made the call to go were praised by those who chickened out and other armchair warriors. The cosmonauts were healthy and even appeared briefly at a press conference, though their responses were heavily censored. Debriefing those who had floated amongst The Arrived, as they were called, was paramount. They had surely seen much more than we had from the ground. Whether that was different than what we experienced was never revealed to the public. As I sat there, hungover and praying for death, I realized that this was a victory of sorts. Perseus had saved Andromeda, but this time, the Kraken did not care.

All went back to a post-arrival state of normalcy. People worked with an ominous dread pressing down on them. People boarded planes fearing they would never arrive at their destination. All was calm until the week before the anniversary of their arrival. The governments tried to play it down before the public, but I was one of them. They could not hide the truth from me. I knew what was coming because somehow, in my mind, The Arrived had shown me.

The visitors had finally made first contact.

It started on a Friday. Pilots from all over the world had reported the same phenomenon. A mysterious magnetic field was intermittently interfering with their navigation systems. Planes were constantly forced to correct their headings. On Saturday, the period of interferences got longer, and planes veered even further off course. By Sunday morning, the call went out that planes all over the world were being grounded. The skies of Earth were declared no fly zones. The skies had not been this empty since Kitty Hawk. By Sunday, the magnetic field was starting to interfere with telecommunications. Cell phones would not work. Television was fuzzy and radios the world over crackled with dead air. Everyone sensed it. Something was about to happen, and on Wednesday, something did.

All the TV stations came back in, clear and undisturbed. Radios worked again. The magnetic interference was gone as if it had never existed. It was anti-climactic to say the least. I was so convinced that this was the end that I almost spent my entire life savings on vice and entertainment. This had become a thing now for some of us. The fear of total annihilation will lower some inhibitions. People were hooking up like never before. I’m not sure what it is with the prospect of death, but when faced with it, people get horny. They develop this sudden desire to copulate and reproduce. Maybe, it is a survival instinct: a biological arc response. If we are probably going to die, let’s all get pregnant. If one of us survives, at least mankind will go on. Living in the first world like I did, this sounded ludicrous, but then again, when have the multitudes ever been on the cusp of extinction as they were right at that moment? There was the Holocaust and a bucket full of other genocidal events, but till now, I had never realized that this could be the end of all things. There may be no Lazarus Rising awaiting us. I thought that the last pages of humanity's story might at this moment be receiving its last few lines.

But Wednesday arrived, and I did not have to spend my life savings to have sex with a stranger. The interference stopped, and I did not need to eat that sinful fruit.

I was glued to CNN after that. The governments still called for a moratorium on flying, but there was talk of an easing up of the restrictions if nothing new presented itself in the interim of the next few days. It seemed a prudent precaution. It turned out to be a good decision on their part, because on Thursday, all Hell broke loose.

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