Steve’s shorts: Prelude to Invasion…
[Note: Readers of the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” (now available as the ebook bundle The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection), or subsequent sci-fi stories from A.B. Carolon or me, know that the Tali invaded already developed E-type planets and exterminated the intelligent beings there, calling them “chasa” (vermin) as they made those planets look as much as possible like their home world. That trilogy covers a span of centuries, but I’ve never portrayed the fear and desperation when the Tali invaded Earth. Here’s a bit of that story. It was inspired by a recent blackout in Manhattan.]
Prelude to Invasion
Copyright 2019, Steven M. Moore
The night the lights went out was terrifying. I don’t know how I remained calm.
I was working late in my office on the city’s East Side. Ever since the multinationals’ mercenaries started patrolling Manhattan, combatting gangs and lowlifes spawned by the Chaos, I’d often sleep in my office. I did that more in winter months with their shorter days, but, in any case, blackouts often occurred as a result of the fighting that would make a late trip home far too dangerous. Sometimes the mercenaries mistook even honest, hardworking citizens as the enemy.
That night I took a break by logging into a newsfeed I subscribed to. A headline caught my eye: “Contact Lost with Mars Colony.” The post went on to state that contact had also been lost with the Jupiter and Saturn scientific stations orbiting those planets on two satellites. I hit the “Play Video” icon and watched some nerdy scientist from the Saturn facility stammering and stuttering in fear as he talked about an invasion. Is this a hoax? I asked myself.
Eureka Ltd. had already sent three long-haul starships off to the nearby star systems Tau Ceti, 82 Eridani, and Delta Pavonis. Eureka had been created as a non-profit org to finance all space exploration. UNSA’s director Isha Bai had forced all the multinationals to contribute. I’d signed up for the first expedition to Tau Ceti, but I wasn’t accepted. My computer skills as a social media adperson weren’t enough, I suppose. But I couldn’t help thinking while watching the video, If we can do it, so can they. When the screen turned to snow as the video signal was lost, I knew something was wrong.
I didn’t know who they were then, but I knew what was going to happen if that video record from Saturn wasn’t a hoax. If it was really an ET invasion, human mass hysteria would be just another weapon in the ETs’ arsenal. I walked around the floor where most of my working life had been spent after graduation, shutting doors and setting alarms. All employees knew how to do that. “Shelter In Place” had become a modern mantra.
I returned to my desk and tried to call Uncle Rick. He’d retired from Cornell and moved to Brooklyn where he and I had grown up. My apartment’s there too, but I wasn’t going home that night.
Uncle Rick didn’t answer.
Around ten-thirty, the lights went out, and my workplace was filled with the dull red glow of emergency lighting. I didn’t go to the window to see what was going on more than thirty stories below. I just kept watching the newsfeed.
***
Journalists and reporters are a tough bunch. I don’t know how they manage in emergency situations to keep the news flowing. I watched he usual disaster scenarios unfold on the newsfeed. Panic, trampling others, looting…it happened routinely as some gang claimed part of the city only to have to defend their turf against the outnumbered but better armed mercenaries. This time the chaos was citywide, and ordinary people seemed to be participating.
I watched in shock and horror but still fascinated by the destruction and carnage. Having read about how Orson Welles had scared everyone with his “War of the Worlds” broadcast, I could understand why people reacted in that fashion. Thirty stories up, though, I seemed to be detached from it, an omniscient observer of the insanity and cruelty of frightened and desperate human beings. It also seemed unreal. The newsfeeds didn’t show any invading ETs either. Maybe it is a hoax?
I soon thought I had an answer to my question. About 11:45, the whole sky lit up as something like thousands of cluster bombs went off, turning night into day. I rubbed my eyes. The display reminded me of fireworks when I was a kid, but these bursts were all bright white. But darkness soon prevailed.
I shrugged, leaned back in my chair, and decided to catch a few winks so I’d have some energy for a few good laughs when the other worker bees began straggling into the office. My nap was interrupted by reindeer hoofs on the roof. No, they were pounding on the doors that led to the lobby and corridor with the elevators. Not reindeer either, I decided. They don’t knock.
I went and peeked through the doors’ little inset windows. Vomit was dripping down from both of them. The whole lobby was filled with writhing, choking people. Why are they here?
I looked at my watch again. Seven-forty-seven. The day shift—not all of them, though—had arrived. Okay, Ellen, it’s not a hoax. The people were dying. I concluded it was a biological attack. I’d feared one for years as the technology of airborne plagues advanced. The only good thing about the multinationals controlling the world—the whole solar system, for that matter—was that the arms race, both nuclear and bio warfare, seemed to be under control.
That death scene in the lobby and the multinationals strict control convinced me the biological attack had been launched by invading ETs. Can I avoid being contaminated? I figured that was unlikely.
I returned to the carpeted area outside my cubicle, assumed a lotus position, and meditated.
***
Uncle Rick, the Cornell astrophysicist, had done some research out Jupiter way. He’d also learned from Spacers the ways of the Way, that strange pseudo-religion they had. He mentored me to follow the Way. It fit my stoic and philosophical outlook on life, and it calmed me when things became stressful at work. Advertising work was always stressful.
Traveling along the Way calmed me at that moment too. When the pounding finally turned into silence, I peeked out into the lobby again. I only saw dead bodies, work companions with faces turned into distorted masks of pain. I returned to my laptop and tried to restart the newsfeed. But there was nothing there.
I went to the window and peered down at the street below, now in bright sunlight. Vehicles had smashed into each other, looking like crumpled ants. I saw tinier specks all over the street and sidewalks. More bodies.
Dare I go out?
I figured if the city was dead, it might be interesting to meet some ETs before whatever plague they’d unleashed on Earth killed me too. I was always curious but didn’t have the brains to be a scientist like Uncle Rick. The Way had taught me to live with those limitations.
I was faced with a problem. Emergency electricity on my floor meant no elevators. They used the emergency juice for alarms, low lighting, and such, not the seven elevators in the lobby. A blackout was supposed to be temporary, right? So my problem would be going down more than thirty flights of stairs. But if my fellow workers had made it up, I should be able to make it down. Or had some of the elevators been working?
I stepped over and around bodies and tried all the elevators. Two of them opened, but the doors just kept opening and closing. They were stuck on my floor. I figured the others were stuck somewhere else.
I looked at the snack machines at the end of the corridor. Should I just stay here and live off junk food?
Did the machines even work?
There were more bodies in that direction, so I decided my best bet was the stairs. I started my descent into the underworld. Going down had to be easier than going up, but I still had to push aside bodies in the stairwells. I stopped every so often to catch my breath and work out cramps. But I made it to the street level.
The disaster I’d seen above was a lot messier at street level. I started walking toward Brooklyn.
I didn’t get far. Coming at me was something like a huge bulldozer cleaning the street of dead bodies. I ducked into an alley and watched it go by.
The ET driving the machine looked like a huge orange Teddy bear. The leathery face was so black I couldn’t make out any features. Mine’s black too, but not that black. Its face was like staring into space where there weren’t any stars, something I’d seen on a class trip to the International Space Station as a kid. The driver also had small, black hands and lots of muscles that rippled under that orange fur.
I knew I had to get out of Manhattan—far, far away! Most of all, far from the evil Teddy bears! I began my trek.
Three months later, I’d managed to team up with some other survivors. We vowed to get revenge.
It was a long time coming.
***
Comments are always welcome.
The Last Humans. “By the end of my little diving course and all the SWAT training, I was thinking they might be ready to kick some butt. Wasn’t so sure about myself.” Ex-USN Search and Rescue and current LA County Sheriff’s Department diver Penny Castro goes on a forensics dive off SoCal shores and surfaces to find herself in a post-apocalyptic world. A bioengineered and airborne contagion has been delivered to the West Coast and will be carried around the world, killing billions. Her adventures trying to survive in this new world will make you ask, “Could this really happen?” Published by Black Opal Books, this post-apocalyptic thriller is available in ebook and print format from Amazon and as an ebook version from Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) Also available from the publisher or your local bookstore (if they don’t have it, ask for it). A sequel is coming.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
