“It’s all manufactured hysteria,” Lisa said, observing the pandemonium on the television.
“You’re not going?” Kali turned toward her sister.
“Are you kidding? Not on your life.”
Kali knelt before Lisa and took her hands. “No, Lisa. Not on your life.” She implored her sister with her large brown eyes. Inhaling the familiar scent of incense on Kali, Lisa knew then, despite their differences, how much she loved her.
“You can’t go,” Lisa said, eyes filling with tears. “Don’t you understand?”
“No, Lisa, you don’t understand. You must go outside and let them save you. If you stay here, you will die.”
“You mustn’t believe this, Kali. It’s all a lie.”
“What will it take for you to see the truth?” Kali said, her voice high. “Didn’t I get you to start doing yoga, to prepare you to open your mind to the truth?”
“Yes, but you must shut off the outside, the media, and… them! Go within yourself for truth. Listen. That’s yoga! I’ve felt nauseous and terrified since they came. What does your intuition tell you?”
“It’s natural to be afraid of what we don’t understand.”
“Please,” Lisa begged, but her sister wasn’t listening. Kali was furiously tapping a text message on her phone.
“Kali’s right,” Eric said. “You gotta go. If you stay, you’ll die.”
Lisa stared at her sister and brother knowing this was the last day she’d share with them.
“What about you, Mom?” Eric asked.
“You’ll have to pry me out of here with a crowbar.”
They argued into the night. Arguments on the internet quickly divided between going and staying. Then the internet shut down.
The television offered the solution. CNN aired footage of what Earth might look like after the asteroid hit: a ruined planet, a cloud of dust, decay, the forests burned, the seas black and lifeless. The words: “A New Dawn” flashed on the screen. Then CNN showed an artist’s video rendering of ships filling the sky, beams of light touching the earth.
“When our allies’ ships come, you must say ‘take me’,” the President said. “You must consent to being taken. Then you and your families will be lifted to safety.” CNN switched to a video of smiling toddlers and teens being lifted into the ships. “It’s a new dawn,” the President said. “A new world for humanity.” The video promptly returned to the depictions of a post-asteroid, burned, lifeless planet.
“Turn this shit off!” Lisa screamed.
As if on cue, the electricity shut down and all went dark. Had the aliens shut down the power grids? Lisa felt as if she was playing a part in some macabre play, peering from behind the curtain at an orchestrated world-wide blackout; preparing for some terrible final act.
Lisa went to the window. Outside, on the levee, hundreds of people stood holding flashlights and candles. In her agitation, Lisa walked back and forth from the living room to the window, noticing as more people gathered, until the levee next to Lake Pontchartrain was dotted with thousands of waiting souls.
Eight hours after the president’s announcement, at around three in the morning, Lisa sat beside her mother while she read from the Bible.
“Are you afraid, Mom?” Lisa asked.
Beneath a shock of white hair, her mother gazed at her clearly. “Either way it’ll be all right.”
“What do you mean, either way?”
“Whether an asteroid hits or not.”
“Aren’t you afraid for Kali and Eric?”
“I have my faith.”
Lisa patted her mother’s blue-veined hand. She wasn’t sure about anything and had faith in nothing. In fact, she could start screaming till she went mute. But she croaked, “I’ll stay with you, Mom.”
Loud cries came from outside. Kali and Eric raced in, slamming the back door.
“They’re here!” Eric called. He took Lisa’s hand.
“I told you I’m not going!”
“Yes, you are.” Eric picked up Lisa in his muscular arms.
“Let me go!”
Kali wheeled Mother out of the house to the backyard.
“Kali, I don’t want to—” Mother went silent.
Up in the night sky, countless bright white lights glowed like the sky was populated by hundreds of miniature, pulsing moons.
The masses on the levee were transfixed by the bright lights. “Take me!” they all shouted as one. Then shafts of white light lanced down from the ships, and each person was lifted up in the light. The night air filled with screams, and the prayers and moans of those sinking to their knees as they waited to be taken.
Kali shouted into Lisa’s ear. “Tell them: take me. Do it now.”
Lisa shook her head and looked down at the grass, artificially lit from the brilliant ships’ lights.
On the levee, thousands of people were transported in the white lights up to the ships, like seeds up a vacuum cleaner’s transparent pipe.
“Say it!” Kali cried. “Please. Come with me.”
Lisa shook her head, her vision blurring. Kali hugged her. “I love you, Sis. If I can come back to tell you what I’ve seen, I will.”
“I love you, too,” Lisa said.
“Close your eyes, listen for me when you meditate. I’ll find you.”
Lisa clutched her sister, her soft wet cheek against hers, remembering how Kali had held her when they slept together as children, so close they sometimes recalled similar dreams in the morning. Lisa sobbed harder, not knowing what life would be without Kali, whom she’d always respected and quietly adored.
Eric hugged Mother, who began to weep. Then he bear-hugged Lisa so hard she lost her breath. “Please,” he said into her ear. “Come.”
Lisa kissed his stubbled cheek. “I love you, Bro.”
Eric lowered his head. “Love you, Sis.” Then he lifted his blue eyes to the sky. “Take me!”
A powerful white light beamed down from the sky to the ground, enfolding him. Then, Eric was lifted into the night.
“Love you always, Sis, Mom,” Kali said. She looked upward. “Take me!” she called. Light flowed down from the sky. She too, was lifted, gone.
Lisa stood next to Mother in the wheelchair. They watched, cheeks wet, as people disappeared from the levee, one after the other. After a while, the only sounds were people weeping and the lake lapping the shore. The ships shrunk to star-like pinpoints of lights, then flew together to merge into one huge ball of pulsing light. The ship burst upward into the night sky then disappeared altogether. The stars reappeared and a sliver moon hung in the sky. The crickets began to sing again.
***
Lisa and her mother sat weeping in the living room lit by a lone candle. The clock ticked toward 4 a.m. The asteroid would hit at any moment.
Lisa wondered if the effects of the impact would take a while to travel from across the world. Would the skies blacken right away? Would the Gulf of Mexico rise up to swallow them? Or, what if the calculations had been wrong and the asteroid impacted closer to home?
“It should be over quickly,” Lisa said hoarsely, hoping.
“Hush,” Mother said.
Light-headed and dry-mouthed, Lisa went into her bedroom. She lay on her bed and closed her eyes. She’d meditate, clear her mind, slow her thudding heart. She forced herself to breathe deeply. At last, she became calm. She inhaled slowly.
Then her sense of peace was disturbed. Somehow she sensed that Kali was in danger. Lisa felt a lump in her throat.
Lisa.
Kali’s voice, but it was distant, hardly a whisper.
I can reach you here, Kali said to her mind. An image of Kali took shape in her mind’s eye. She was transparent and white. Her long dark hair rippled in an unseen wind. She held out her arms to Lisa, beckoning, as if hoping to connect through time and space.
It’s a terrible place, Kali said. They took us to the dark side of the moon, millions
of us, trapped on these ships - -everyone is screaming! They want us for… Her eyes widened with horror and there was that same look of inexplicable horror from that portentous dream earlier that summer. Oh, god, Kali cried. They use us for food, our meat, our blood. And then after we’re slaughtered, they recycle our energy, our very souls…. Her mouth opened in abject terror as she beheld something Lisa couldn’t see. Kali began to scream in a frenzied high pitch.
Lisa heard a fizzling sound. Then Kali’s ghost split apart. It shattered into thousands of pieces and flew out and away, like bright, spinning sparks. Another fizzling sound followed as the sparks dimmed. Then all went dark.
Kali! Lisa called.
But Lisa knew Kali was dead. Lisa sobbed, her head throbbing with the image of Kali’s terrified expression before her light was consumed.
She questioned her sanity, unknowing the logic. But she trusted her inner voice more. She chilled, growing so frightened her bones felt like ice. She couldn’t control her body’s shaking.
Lisa wept. Her sister was dead and likely so was her brother. Feeling movement on the bed, she gasped and jolted upright. It was only her dog, sidling up beside her. Lisa covered the beagle with her arms, clutching her to her chest. The dog trembled, her little heart beating fast. She feverishly licked Lisa’s wet, salty cheeks.
***
When she thought she’d cried as much as she could, Lisa blew her nose and went to sit with her mother.
They sat in the dark, the candle flickering on the coffee table. Lisa said nothing of Kali. They sat in silence as the clock ticked.
The asteroid will hit. Will we die right away? Or will we have to wait for the effects of that massive wave of fire and death advancing steadily toward us?
Lisa and her mother occasionally emitted a sigh, blotting their foreheads with a napkin. It felt like time had stopped.
Then, after what seemed an eternity, Lisa heard birds chirping outside.
Miraculously, the sun was rising.
Lisa opened the back door and stepped outside. The levee was littered with paper, cups, bottles and suitcases. The sky was pale and clear. She walked to the top of the levee.
The old man in suspenders walked toward her with his Yorkie. “You’re still here,” he called.
“It hasn’t hit yet. Could they have been mistaken?” Lisa glanced up at the sky.
“That was no mistake,” the man said. “That was the Harvest.”
Peanut came running, sniffing the Yorkie.
As Lisa scooped up Peanut, dread filled her like mud. “What do you mean, ‘Harvest’?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“No, tell me.”
“Why do you think you’re still here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. You questioned—”
“I don’t care about me now,” Lisa cried. “Tell me what you know.”
The man looked at Lisa, then his bushy white brows furrowed. “You got kin that went?”
Lisa nodded.
He clicked his tongue. “Come on, boy,” he said to his dog.
“Tell me what you know!” Lisa held the wriggling beagle as she trailed the old man.
“Just be thankful you stayed,” he said. “You ever thought why we never returned to the moon? You think NASA always tells us the truth?” He shook his head. “They don’t call it the dark side of the moon for nothing. There’s been hidden alien bases there for ages.”
Lisa’s knees went soft. Hot tears stung her eyes.
The old man patted her arm. “I’m sorry, hon. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Did you really think we were the top of the food chain?”
A seagull above swooped and cawed. The wind blew. The sun was rising in the east.
“The government sold us out. There’s no asteroid, never was. Maybe some of those dumb puppets didn’t even know the truth themselves.” He squinted watery eyes. “I’m sorry, dear, very sorry.”
Lisa turned, crying softly into Peanut’s fur. The gulls hovered above fish jumping for their lives. Lisa sat on the grass and cried for a good while. Then, as the seat of her pants grew damp from morning dew and the sun rose higher, red ants began biting her ankles. Lisa stood.
The only thing to do was to keep going, just keep going. Her mother would be alone in the house, left with only her grief and her prayers. Lisa decided she’d not tell her mother the truth. She’d let her believe Kali and Eric had gone on to the safety of a new world, or the sanctity of Heaven. She wished desperately she believed that, too. But no matter what anyone believed or knew, thankfully now the television screen remained dark, unavailable to instruct otherwise.
Lisa pictured her mother sitting in the dim living room, warm with no electricity, no fan. She’d be clutching her rosary, waiting for breakfast. Perhaps her stomach was rumbling and she, too, was just now remembering with relief the meatloaf that Lisa had cooked last night, left on the counter uneaten, before all the lights went out.
Rent
by Steven Poore
An hour out of Myers City, with the G-class star basking high in the long afternoon, they turned off the main carriageway and headed up into the hills. Down on the flats, the road was laid out in rigid, geometric gridlines, designed by the Corporation's Settlement Directorate years before the planet was ready to be colonised. But here the road was narrower and wound alarmingly across contours that, on the map, had looked deceptively easy. Fahim Barad's stomach lurched with every tight corner – and there were a lot of those. A small part of his mind wondered exactly how the roadlayers must have coped with this environment. It's not as though they're made to work in three dimensions, he thought.
The car took another corner, much faster than was necessary, and this time the wheels skidded on the hard surface. Fahim felt his safety belt bite into his shoulder as centrifugal force took hold of him once more.
“You're enjoying this far too much,” he said. “Can we please slow down just a little? I would like to get there in one piece, you know. And with some charge left in the car.”
His companion grinned and shook her head, but Fahim felt the car decelerate a little as it approached the next bend and, to his relief, this time his stomach stayed where it was supposed to when Maria Ortega took the turn.
“Okay, so we were running a bit late,” she conceded, still smiling. “But I suppose the place won't be going anywhere without us.”
“Speed demon,” Fahim muttered, but the complaint was meant in good humour. He had worked with Ortega long enough that her habitual impatience no longer bothered him. It was an attitude that poorly suited her job, however: mankind had been waiting for a genuine, live First Contact encounter since the middle of the twentieth century, and would undoubtedly wait longer yet, no matter how impatient Ortega might be. She drove as though she was afraid to miss that first encounter. But nobody could fault her enthusiasm on this road, away from the dull, straight lines of the city grid. Had he been more inclined to such things, Fahim might have taken the wheel himself on this journey. Now they travelled at a more civilised pace, Fahim took the opportunity to look out at the hillsides, craning his head for his first sighting of their destination. The ground was uneven and, for the most part, quite barren, just like the rest of the planet surface. But there were more patches of green than there had been even just a few months before. Clusters of oxygen-producing fungus had been seeded here by the first wave of terraformers, decades previously, to aid the conversion process. The fungus released spores into the air, spread itself across the land on the arid winds. After that, when the thinnest of breathable atmospheres was in place, the second wave of bio-agriculturalists planted genetically modified forests: stiff, regimented ranks of force-grown trees that dug deep into the planet's soil to find the moisture trapped far below the surface.
One of these shoulder-high forests flashed past the car window even as he looked – a legion of infant trees, Fahim thought, waiting as if
to march to war. The idea amused him. Behind the plantation was a long line of beech-variants, placed to ward off the prevailing winds; they towered over their smaller charges with the authority of centurions.
A much larger shape loomed over the newly-planted forest, casting a long shadow down the hillside. A curving, sinuous sculpture, broad-based and several meters high. Alien and ancient: they were spaced out at regular intervals across the entire planet surface. Art, some said. Some kind of message, others argued. With no solid evidence on any side, everything was speculation. The only thing anybody could agree on was that the unnerving shapes could not have occurred naturally.
Someone – something – had lived on this world before.
Fahim fixed his gaze on the shape until it disappeared behind another bend in the road.
“Those things still freak me out,” Ortega commented. “I mean, you can sit there just looking at them for hours and they never seem to make any sense at all. You can lose your mind staring at them.”
Fahim flashed a smile at the young woman. “It is good to hear that even you can know fear.”
“Yeah.” She returned the smile. “Things that stand still, Doctor Barad. They scare me.”
Acceleration pushed Fahim back into his seat and he shook his head ruefully. “Ah, youth.”
***
The observatory had been fully commissioned less than a year ago. It hadn't been very high on the Corporation's list of priorities, and the academic partnership that had invested in the mission over a century earlier had fought tooth and nail to get it moved up the schedule. The quality of the sleek buildings that clustered around the base of the towering radio telescopes testified to the financial backing behind that particular battle. There must have been some very strained meetings in the Corporation's boardroom, Fahim mused. The observatory was on prime real estate that had initially been earmarked for executive-level residences.
But even if this was the perfect location for the observatory, it still had to contend with the ancient world that had come before – one of the massive alien artefacts dominated the parking lot, the complex helices humming and whistling when the wind caught them.
Aliens - The Truth is Coming (Book of Aliens 1) Page 8