Part FourThey both watched as the fireballs raise more dust into the atmosphere. Humanity was dying. Joan eventually asked the question, they had avoided for two days, "How do we surrender...?"
Becker finished her sentence,"And will they understand, if we do?" She nodded knowingly that if they sent a message to where the position of the ships were, and no response came, was it because they do not understand, or was it because they simply wanted to destroy Earth.
They sent the message after they had contacted the other world leaders left around the world to represent their perspective governments. China was first to respond and agreed to the plan, then Russia, then the United Kingdom, then Australia, and one by one the answers came in the affirmative.
The bombardment stopped. Instructions followed. Earth had surrendered to a species known as the Peggellians. Later referred by Earth civilians as the Pegusans.
The terms were simple. Surrender. Occupation. Enslavement. They had came to take Earth's resources.
Johnny knew he had to get home before curfew. Earth's new progenitors were intolerant of excuses. Tardiness was meant purnishment. Disobedience meant purnishment. The slighest infraction meant punishment of the worse kind.
He remembered how the simplest of things use to bring him joy. It had been fifteen long years since that fateful day. It was now April 1, 2026, Earth was in a permanent winter.
Dust clouds still remained heavy in the air. Respirators were required to go outside.
Johnny's mask filtered in the oxygen, as he briskly walked home, and glancing once more at the moon his heart panged once again. He approached large steel-iron gates with a large letter "R" arched of the center, and the crumbling, grecian cement posts lined either side of the battered driveway.
This was the last symbols of Johnny's wealth. Now, he shared his once isolated home with twelve other families. He wondered, what would his great, great, great, great grandfather would have thought? He, of course, was named after him. He changed his name to Johnny, to lighten up his stuffy manner, and to remind himself of a youth he never had.
He stepped into the doorway, reached for the tarnished door knob, and twisted. His shoulders slumped as he walked down the stairs of his former home. He no longer considered this grand place, this place of decadent luxury his own. The lights were low. Shadows bounced off the walls, and in a doorway of the living room stood a young blond girl, who yelled over shoulder, "Mr. Rockefeller is home...."
Roger Troutman's parents had been killed on the orders of the cleric Khomeini, but he had been spirited away by a close family friend to the Now, he sat in the tunnels of
He had felt a connection with the General that he had not expected—a kindred spirit of sorts. He realized that, though, he had been raised as a product of the American culture--in his heart--he was Iranian.
The amount of death he witnessed, while a student revolutionary had torn at his soul, and his perspective of life through death had become etched at his person. He sensed that, the General understood this, and a common bond had been formed, while they'd hammered out the peace accords between Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the US. The acknowledgement that Israel had the right to exist and the formation of a Palestinian state by the self-interested had finally seem to be coming to a resolution. He left the meeting inspired and resolute that the accords would be done.
Roger had an epiphany several days before the meteorites had hit
On Roger's ride to back to
Roger told his driver to head to towards them. The black sedan sped with reckless abandon along the highway and its tires squealed as his driver Omar turned off the road into the desert dunes. Very few knew the route as well as he did driving at a kinetic pace between the large and small sand dunes. The car wheels kicked up sand behind it as it plowed through the isolated deesert as it approached a large three story sand dune, which grew in size.
The meteor struck
Troutman's sedan horn blared as the doors of three story dune slowly lower into the floor of sand, a ramp became apparent, the sedan disappeared underneath the dune as Roger yelled the code into his cellular telephone; the sands of destruction was the last sight he saw as the ramp doors closed behind them.
The place was called the "Crescent Moon." The long "dunnel," if you will, steadily sloped beneath the dunes of
The entrance of the dunnel had been buried. The emergency rations were plenty and scattered through the network of dunnels. Canned good became the staple for the survivors. Roger and the "Crescent Moon" freedom fighters as they became known were surrounded by concrete and steel. The storage facilities were also filled with armaments for the next conflict with
It had been fifteen years, Joan Wilder and Major General John Becker had done what was necessary to save what was left of humanity. The answers they sought in the beginning had now been answered. The "government," as such, was nothing more than a puppet regime for the aliens-- the Peggellians. Life on Earth was suffering. Armageddon had come, but it had not been by humanity's own hand, but from the outside.
Man had always been afraid of his own shadow, and for once, humanity had been right. To bad they were focusing on the wrong tree. Joan writes in her journal, like Anne Frank, her experiences, her surprises, and her marriage to the general. To them, at that time, it had made sense.
Each anniversary celebrates another year of living that had not been expected. Joan watched her general finish dressing. Everything for him had to be in the "proper" place, it was his quirk and she was okay with it.
Fifteen years ago it used to bug the hell out of her, now she was "okay" with it. Like a broken in baseball glove, she grew comfortable with his idiosyncrancies. God, how she missed baseball, football, and soccer, but the planet was being harvested for its minerals, for its grains, and for its oceans -- Earth's greatest assets.
Apparently, the greatest single commodity missing in the Pegasus galaxy was salt. The levels of the oceans fell as they were drained away and the alien harvester's created fields of salt.
Joan and John left for the office.
Part Five
In the years that had past, Roger had grown greyer, obviously older, and he hoped wiser. The dunnels had hidden him and his band of rag-tag rebels beneath desert surface since the times of the scourge; the cleansing; the rapture; the day the Earth community had been shattered.
The atmospheric dust swirled, the heat of the desert was an ambient 25 Celsius, a bit cooler admittedly, but the cold nights were even more frigid. Roger missed the heat, his bones missed the heat. Roger memories flooded back.
“Omar!” he waved for his former driver to come over. It had nearly taken six months to unbury the doors; the equipment from the dunnels had done their job. Omar nodded as he covered the distance between them. Roger pointed toward the bodies that lay splayed on the ground, scavengers of the desert gnawed on the bones of the dead, and the dunes sand sprawled over the unburied. Chord after chord of rotting bodies decomposed and apparent that they had been dumped in the desert by the alien invaders.
The disrespect of the Pegusans of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian burial rituals left a bitter taste in the mouths of the men. Anger swelled in the blood of Omar and Roger, the horizon landscape revealed the devastation of bombardment, as the men scanned deeper in the daylight skyline.
Part Six
Ice-cold grey eyes fluttered opened as they coalesced in the fog of recognition, blinking rapidly, at their surroundings. A female voice, gruff from sleep, echoed “How long was I in stasis?”
“Fifteen years Earth Standard Time,” another female voice echoed.
A room began to form. First, the walls—white and sterile, second—the floor—black and white checkered squares, and finally, a white canopied mosquito net hospital bed in the center with two apparitions shaped—one standing upright and the other laying in the bed. Both shaped as females. One older than the other—by appearances, laid in the bed, a middle aged woman with silver hair with an athletic build sat up unsteadily at first, and a bit of nausea coursed through her system.
The other waited patiently. The young dark raven haired beauty wore a white gown with the v-neck cleavage neckline revealed just enough to accent her bosom. Her dark forest green eyes showed compassion for her friend of two millenniums. This incarnation of her friend had been quite happy—children and a husband—and a place of influence to shape humanity’s future. Unfortunately, for them—the Peggallions had other plans Earth.
Her friend’s physical form had been Earth side at the time of the Pegusans’ attack. She asked her friend, “What do you remember?”
The other answered, “I remember seeing the Peggallions’ attack, and having to rush in the Bronx Deli’s basement as the meteorite hit the city…”
“I remember sending out a distress call prior to the food and water running out… And I remember the pick up of my physical body….”
The other nodded, “Good your memory is intact….”
“Why have I been awakened?” the silver haired woman asked.
“We have been contacted by the Earthers….”
“Oh? They are aware of us?”
“Yes,” the other continued, “a rather resourceful Earther named of Roger Troutman has been giving the Peggallions trouble. Undercutting their production, sabotaging their resources, and undermining their personnel movement, and researching their vulnerabilities—and he found us.”
“Huh, Roger Troutman…Sounds very familiar—an Iranian Persian, a Sunni, I believe, raised in
“Yes, the same, you know him?”
The other responded negatively, “No….but my husband does, or did….do you know if he survived the attack?”
The other hesitated, nodded as she took an awkward step back, “Yes, yes he did….”
Part Seven
It had come in the form of a dream. Colors swirled within his head. A mist formed into a shape of a person he had once known.
A room formed around him, white, barren, and isolated. Above it were stars. In the middle of the room, a white plush couch—and at one end a dark raven haired woman, next to her sat a silver haired middle-aged woman
He knew her, or at least, recognized her. Uncomfortably with an inquiring tone of uncertainty, he asked, “Hello?”
“Hello Johnny,” the silver haired woman responded.
“Do I know you?” he countered.
“You should…” a smile crossed her face.
“Gina?” He asked. The other nodded in the affirmative.
“You’ve … you’ve…” he stuttered, “You’ve been dead for fifteen years…”
She continued and smiled, “My physical form was—yes! I have been in stasis the past fifteen years to reform my shape and corporeal essence. It is difficult to explain to outsiders, but simply, when our physical side has expired, our thoughts and energies that make us—us, need to “recharge” the eternal being. Our corporeal side loose cohesiveness, even form, thus we go into stasis in order to reshape our thoughts, to reshape our form, and our corporeal energies.
“What are you are experiencing at this moment is the form of our reality when we want to communicate in our vocal form….”
“We ?” Johnny asked.
“Yes Johnny ‘we’ I am an Oriuisian…”
“Since when?” He seemed confused.
“Since always—Johnny, our society takes the libertarian perspective. Obey the convention of the “rule of law”—but the journey of our personal bliss is our own. We have one absolute law, no messing with the temporal law of time, although we are capable of traveling back and forth, we must respect the linear nature of a planets history….”
The confused brow on Johnny’s head had been firmly set in perplexity. Gina looked over at her friend—and smirked. Her friend responded in kind. Gina scooted over as she patted the couch for him to come over, “Johnny, please sit…What I have to tell you is very important and I have a very short period of time to do this…”
Johnny walked over to the couch and sat down between the two women. He sat uncomfortably at first, stiff as a board, rigid, his hands clasped in front of him. Gina leaned back with one arm on top of the couch and the other along the couch’s arm. Gina and her compatriot wearing long, white gowns, with v-line cleavages seem to ooze an intoxicating sensuality.
“Johnny, it began 3500 years ago…” Gina started. She explained the history of the Peggallions and the Oriusians. How these ancient races had been invariably linked through war, famine, and the competition of resources. Their battle of each other viewing themselves as fighting against good versus evil. In some respects, each saw it as suffrage of chaos versus order, linear versus cyclical, nature versus nurture, science versus myth. In that the struggle between the two races was the culmination of the duality of opposites and its very nature the necessity of its existence.
Gina explained to Johnny the order of things and the placement of Earth’s suffrage and battle to take its next step in evolutionary development. She is also explained that the Peggallions premature consecration of this step of humanity’s development. In fact, she Gina, explained to Johnny that this sabotaged the development of human eventuation of shedding the physical being, but she explained to Johnny it was not too late, extinction could be prevented.
She explained to Johnny his mission. Johnny worked at the secure communication facility near the New York Transportation Harbor. His duty was to sabotage the network for the rebels, the space fleet that attacked Earth was station outside of Pluto setting up a materials convoy to the Pegasus Galaxy. Johnny was overwhelmed, but he understood his role. Afterwards, Johnny woke up. Uncertain of the veracity of his experience, Gina’s friend coalesced before his eye, while he had breakfast.
“Who are you?” Johnny asked…
She responded, “I am Eve…” Johnny looked at her with full discernment. Her eyes shifted among the color spectrum, “I am the First” Her smile broad and alluring.
Johnny questioned, “The ‘First’?”
“Yes, Johnny—the First. All things have a beginning, middle, and an end, even in a cyclical universe. You can trust your vision…Johnny” she smiled like the Cheshire cat as her form dissipated.
Johnny understood the assignment. After all, it was the order of things that he help reclaim his planet, his home, and to destroy the tyranny that oppressed humanity.
Part Eight
The office overlooked the devastated city of
The pollution stood as tall as Sequoias trees and in the streets rusted cars, trucks, and tanker ships leaned either against the old shattered skyscrapers or collapsed in the middle of once bustling streets.
The 'new'
But before, in the days that followed, the meteor bombardment by the alien invaders allowed for disease, dysentery, and dearth to took hold of Earth’s people and ecosystem. Emergency services of the planet were in the state of crisis: bodies laid in the streets, burnt, smoldering, and twisted in configuration that were eerily reminiscent of an old space-alien monster movies of the twentieth century 1950’s.
The once majestic cities of Earth, flatten by the bombardment, were debris ridden, spires of concrete, steel, and fragmented shards of glass. The cluttered dystopic skylines forever reflected the changed horizons; the land of despair and desperation, looting, rapes, and murder replaced the rule of law and the “grand experiment” itself sunk into a Hobbesian Hell. These days were called the end times, but in reality they were to become the times of destiny—shrouded in pain and misery. It was the suffrage of humanity. The humbling of humankind’s ego and the resurrection of the basic staples of life: family, community, restoration of virtues, and the “purity of justice” long since forgotten returned.
The overseers of Pegasus were bemused by humanity’s attempts to return to ideological stoicism. The hardliners Pegusan’s felt that the crushing of the “definable” ideologues were a threat to their controlling the population and often used mass execution for the slightest infraction.
Public demonstration resulted in the wholesale slaughter of city’s population. No, the alien invaders curried no favor from the people, because that was not why they were here. The aliens' mission was simple. The exploitation of Earth’s resources and the quirky obsession of humanity for the necessity of freedom of expression was irrelevant.
Simply, humans were a tool--a necessity--for mining the resources of the planet. The pacifist’s "Earth First" motto and demonstrations fell on deaf ears. The Pegusan’s, in human terms, regarded humanity as a piece of bottom-feeding scavengers who warranted no quarter. Pegusan's made the atrocities of 20th century's Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Idi Amin, Dafur, Rwanda, and every other totalitarian regime combined pale in comparison. The population of Earth had been reduced to ten percent of its former size -- 600 million. Yet, humanity spirit did not waiver, the art of sabotage and covert disruption were used with subtlety and stealth to annoy the Pegusan oppressors in the hoping to delay humanity's final extermination.
The
Joan Wilder and John Becker, once again, took stock of what was left on the anniversary of the day that Earth died in fire.
The new American population was 60 million. The overseers had taken pleasure in “culling the herd” of the American citizens. Joan Wilder and John Becker shook their heads collectively and tears once again flowed from Joan's eyes.
Joan's sentimentally had been great of late -- melancholic in fact. The angst had been driven by a belated friend’s patriotic spirit. Joan looked over at John, she saw his stoic brow furl as her tears dissipated and her voice cracked, “Let take back our planet!” John nodded in agreement.
