Viole[n]t Skies

by Derek Baker

  Suddenly, the silhouette of the White House appeared outside the windows. Its structure bulged under the glow put off by the Martian ships. I observed its structure: the West Wing connected to the main structure followed by the east wing and then the recently added chapel encircled by the tall barbed wire fences built for security and intimidation.

  The ship came to an abrupt halt and began its descent to the ground. Unsurprisingly, spotlights swarmed the armada and helicopters began hovering beside us in mid-air. It didn’t take long for the news to spread in the city that UFO’s were invading, evidently. The moment of truth approached.

  FAWOOMPH.

  On the ground.

  The blares of sirens drowned out the captain’s orders. “Go!” was all I could make out. I felt the grip of Chym’s hand lifting and guiding me through the chaotic state of affairs on the bridge with everyone trying to keep things organized.

  Alexander and I were led along with Chym by a team of Martian guards along the corridor proceeding to the exit of the ship. When we came to the exit, Chym went forward and turned around to meet both of us face to face.

  “This most crucial moment has arrived, my friends. If things go well, we will be greeted and escorted by the President’s special agents into the capital building. Watch your backs,” and he pivoted himself around to continue walking. I could tell by his slumped posture that he was having some difficulty getting around in our gravity, which was quite understandable. Though I welcomed the feeling, it was nice not having to work as hard to move about for a long time.

  The exit opened, beckoning us outside. I looked out at the building and saw special servicemen jogging in our direction. We came out and stepped onto the White House lawn. I was really back now, and I felt I could kiss the grass and roll in its nightly dew if the situation didn’t call for formality and restraint in the wake of utter chaos. All eyes were upon us, everywhere. Though I couldn’t see them, they were watching. Humanity was watching. Destiny was calling.

  Our group of two humans and several Martians came to the group of six armed men with body armor and night vision goggles that waited out on the wide lawn for us, like they knew we were coming, but not really. They dressed alike, all tall and well-built. All looked ready to kill us on the spot with their weapons drawn, though their facial expressions revealed their caution. The leader of their squad, a middle-aged man with a thick mustache, stepped forward and addressed us.

  “I don’t know if you can understand me,” he said, “but if you come in peace, release your hostages. And if you don’t, prepare for a long and painful battle.”

  Alexander, much to the man’s surprise, walked straight up to him and patted him on the shoulder in a friendly manner. All part of the plan. This was his skill, being a politico. Getting in people’s faces. “It’s okay, sir. We’re not hostages. We just want to speak to President Garner.”

  The man took a step back, held his hands out in a passive gesture, held up a finger as to signal us to wait a minute. The other hand came up to order his squad to stand by. Their weapons dropped, as did ours. He held a finger up to this ear, pressing into it as if trying to hear someone on the other end of his head set. “Yes, sir, they say they want to speak to Garner … No, they’re not … I, uh, couldn’t tell ya … Alright … Understood.”

  He brought his attention back to Alexander, “Tell these monsters to ditch the weapons, kid.”

  Before Alexander could say anything, Chym brought his arms up over his head and went forward to the squad leader, and said, “I apologize for this array of force, my good sir, but if you would kindly inform President Garner that Shri’Buk’Tai sends his regards, this can all be taken care of in a swift and peaceful manner.”

  The squad leader seemed surprise for a split second by Chym’s use of English, but held his composure, “Well, sir, that isn’t gonna happen. Garner’s dead. He was assassinated a while back. His Vice President, Corey Fitzpatrick, has succeeded him.”

  I decided to get in on the conversation, “Assassinated, how?”

  The agent looked at me, “So he speaks. It was a bomb. Got blown up doing a speech in California. Damn terrorists.”

  “Well, we aren’t terrorists, though we probably did scare the shit out of everyone here,” I shrugged.

  Yeah, this is some display we’ve got here, I thought. WOW, this is messed up.

  The other ships in the Martian armada were landing at this point, each following suit. They waited to see the outcome of our meeting.

  I watched Chym as he muttered under his breath into his communicator on his wrist, a standard Martian device on away missions.

  He resumed his conversation with the agent. The night was a standstill, all attention focus on our meeting on the White House lawn, helicopters blared in a circle around us, cars on the street were stopped with the people staring from inside the cabin, lights in surrounding buildings went from dark to light as the city awakened to our arrival. The air felt thick as fog started to creep into the area. Somewhere overhead, Luna shone in full strength.

  “I have arranged to meet this new President Fitzpatrick. You can confirm this,” reported Chym.

  The agent gave him a skeptical look, talked back into his headset, “This is QL15, confirm escort, S-O.” A pause. “Yes sir.” Keeping his attention fixated into his headset, he gestured us with his hand to follow as he turned around and started walking back toward the White House.

  We all looked at each other in a mix of confusion and success. One of the Martian soldiers spoke to Chym in the Martian tongue.

  “What’s he saying?” Alexander asked.

  “He supposes that we can keep our weapons.”

  A mild chuckle broke out within our party, a great way to break the tension. We proceeded to follow the secret service agents into the nation’s capital building, feeling strangely optimistic. I was about to meet the President. Just not the one I expected.

  In America and throughout the world, humanity was realizing it was not alone. People killed themselves in desperation. Some ran to their church and asked God for forgiveness. Others welcomed the next coming of Christ. The changes were beginning. Word spread quickly.

  In Baltimore, my parents heard aliens had landed in D.C. Riots were breaking out. They retreated to the cellar, my father gripping his gun for protection. All their food was brought down with them.

  Claire was asleep when it happened. Her tablet rang, someone was calling her. She woke up, saw it was her friend, Angie. She answered it, yawning and stretching.

  “What are you doing calling me this late?”

  “Claire, turn on the TV, you gotta see this!”

  Her eyes squinted, finding the remote in the dark. The holograph sprang up over her dresser. The headline at the bottom: “WE ARE NOT ALONE: ALIENS LAND IN NATION’S CAPITAL.” The subtitle on the bottom: “Aliens in possession of two humans, believed to be from Earth.”

  Claire’s mouth gaped open. “Oh my god…”

  A cry came from the next room.

  “I’ll call you back, Angie.”

  She hung up, sat there for a moment in shock. The cry came again. Claire knew she couldn’t let anything happen to her baby girl, born without a father in this new world.

  Chapter 17

  Alexander was much better at describing political turmoil than I, so with his permission I have included the following from his memoirs for more insight:

  President Allen Garner was in many ways the last official President of the United States of America. Sworn in on the twentieth of January in 2133 as the sixty-fifth president, he presided over a corrupted and tumultuous couple of years until he was unfortunately killed in a bomb explosion. The years leading up to my abduction were full of religious tensions between the two political parties that both received bribes from each of their respective church backings.

  On the conservative right, they followed Protestant Christianity as had been the case for the past several hundred years. The left was a different story.


  The dawn of the twenty-second century brought in a new fervor of spiritual thought based on ignorance and distrust. Young people and those easy susceptible to join the crowd latched on to this new religion that threatened to undermine the fragile society that was barely able to hold itself together in the first place. Their new religion around which revolved the notorious leader Johnny Haven was a set of radical decrees that challenged basic human virtues.

  A core belief in this religion was that there was no God, nor heaven nor hell. Morals did not matter; therefore anything was acceptable to the Havenists. The typical lifestyle that we went through was seen as unnatural in their eyes. One of these Havenists would come to disregard the life goals of having a successful career and contributing towards the greater good.

  No, the only thing these people cared about was the immediate future and its consequences. They didn’t look ahead, the present situation presented before them was the primary concern and enjoying each day to its fullest was the ultimate goal.

  I must admit, such a lifestyle looked tempting before my outlook was forever altered by my incident. I had dropped out of school, a lousy job at a photography shop, no girlfriend, and nothing much to show for myself. The only money I had to my name was spent on my truck. My few acquaintances had converted to Haven’s ways; they partied all the time, not a care in the world. When I crawled out of my apartment and made some attempt at experiencing a social life, they’d always ask me, “What the hell are you doing with your life?” or “Hey Alexander, come hang out with us sometime, you need to enjoy yourself for once.”

  No words can describe how happy I am even to this day that I (for the most part) resisted those temptations.

  Seeing as politics was my forte, I had a deep respect for President Allen Garner. He at least tried to hold things together. His death was caused by terrorists, no doubt, but those terrorists or better yet anarchists were obviously followers of the Havenist doctrine. Sure, speaking as a historian, this faith sounds fairly simple in my summarization of it, but it went back deeper and further than I have the patience to retell. It was a true and abrupt problem that killed the last real president of the United States.

  Such was the situation when I returned to Earth.

  - Alexander Curtis, “Memoirs” 2173

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  The hallways and rooms of the White House remained preserved in their elegant design that had bested the decay of time. Portraits of dead leaders hung on the walls; an old china set sat in an open cupboard as we passed by. Aged sofas and armchairs marked the antiquity of better times. My eyes darted all around, feeling the eyes of the important men and women in the portraits staring back at us.

  I had to wonder what the founding fathers would have thought to see a party of humans and aliens from outer space being escorted through this house. However, the Chym had said before that world leaders knew of their existence, though they tried to deny it. Denial wasn’t an option when fierce Wendran soldiers were going to parachute down to the surface of Earth ready to destroy all humans in an effort to take our natural resources to fuel their massive interstellar empire.

  I found myself inadvertently pointing out pictures to Chym and explaining their identity. “Look,” I’d say, and Chym along with everyone else would turn their heads in the direction that my finger pointed, “that man there is Abraham Lincoln, possibly the greatest president we ever had.”

  “What did he accomplish?” Chym asked inquisitively.

  “He saved our country from splitting in two. We once had a civil war fought over the practice of slavery and Lincoln was able to pull the nation back together and abolished human enslavement in the United States.”

  “Who were these slaves? Conquered peoples of other nations?” came Chym’s innocent questions.

  “No, people that we had as slaves were slaves merely for their skin color. You see that President in that portrait over there? With the darker skin?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “The majority of people had light, pale skin like myself and Alexander. People with that guy’s skin color would have been slaves, with no rights, no voice in society. They did agricultural work their whole lives until they were no longer of use.”

  “Were they of an inferior nature? Did they lack the same mental and physical capacity that the lighter skinned humans enjoyed?”

  “Not at all, they’re equal in every aspect. Yet they suffered so much at the hands of the majority simply because of the pigment of their skin. Crazy, right?”

  “It sounds like an interesting, though illogical, way of thinking. Very intriguing. Human culture fascinates me; unsurprisingly I’m sure in your eyes. Perhaps when this struggle is over, I could study more here on Earth about the delicate nature by which humans abide.”

  “You could spend your whole life doing that.”

  “I would not mind such a manner of spending the natural remaining one hundred or so Earth years that I’ve yet lived.”

  I grinned, obviously used to these insane facts about Martians that I’d been trying to come to grips with. From having three genders to living twice as long as humans, it didn’t seem likely that Chym could shock me much more with the aspects of Martian society.

  Where the White House would have usually come to its edge, the newly added chapel built off of the residential wing of the complex extended out into the lawn. The entrance way to the chapel, marked by two broad, strong doors with hooks for handles, stood at the end of the ancient looking hallway through which we crossed on our way to meeting the new President.

  We stopped at the entrance way briefly. “Wait here,” commanded the squad leader with a touch of annoyance in his voice.

  The moment passed with awkward silence. Our combined group exchanged short glances with an occasional encouraging smile or nod. The hallway was adorned with blue carpet, white on the edges, dimly lit and marked with renaissance-era paintings decorating the walls. I remembered one in particular had a lake surrounded by cherry blossoms with its focus being a young woman clad in only a robe sitting on a bench, staring out into the lake’s mysterious currents.

  The door opened with only the squad leader’s hand jutting out and waving us in. We proceeded into the sanctuary with varying moods ranging between excitement and indifference.

  Sitting on a bench in the first row of pews, head down and hands brought up to his face in prayer, was the President of the United States, Warner Fitzpatrick.

  The lead agent approached the President, leaned down to whisper into his ear. Fitzpatrick remained silent in his trance for a moment, then calmly addressed the agent: “Thank you, Fisher.”

  He whirled around to face us from his pew, smiling with that charming political demeanor. He stood about 5’ 11”, with broad shoulders and a skinny neck. His hair was silvering, a mix-match of black, grey, and white. His forehead’s wrinkles revealed his experience, his eyes cunning, with a look of arrogance. A pointy chin and red, congested looking nose completed his face. He wore the normal Presidential garb of a suit and tie.

  “Welcome,” he said in almost a whisper, “I’ve just learned of your arrival.” His smile continued, creepily.

  Alexander stepped forward, hand extended forward. The President returned his gesture, not ceasing to smile. “Hi, my name’s Alexander Curtis, this is my friend Delvon Galihue. Pleased to meet you, Mr. President.”

  His gaze went back and forth between us, making me uneasy each time his eyes came my way. Like he could see into my mind.

  “…Alexander,” he whispered, “…Delvon…”

  “Are you… feeling alright, sir?” asked Fisher.

  “Oh! Quite,” he answered, “you and the team can go now.”

  The guards all exchanged uncomfortable glances, and left with some reluctance.

  With their absence, Fitzpatrick continued, interlocking his fingers, “So. This is kinda messed up, huh?”

  This time the Martians exchanged looks. Chym stepped forward, bowing to greet the Presid
ent.

  “Greetings, my name is Ambassador Chym of the family Buk of the city Tai, better known as Chym’Buk’Tai, son of the Prime Minister Shri’Buk’Tai of the planet Robhustare, better known to your kind as the planet Mars. Were you aware of any of this? Were you aware of our existence?”

  Fitzpatrick gave a tired laugh, drained of energy. “No, I can’t say I was, Jimmy my boy.”

  “It’s Chym’Buk’Tai, sir.”

  “Excuse me, Chym’Buk’Tai. Well you see, I didn’t know about any of this until tonight. Because, to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to go through the things Garner left for me should anything have happened to him. I’ve been really busy lately, trying to get situated and all that. From what I understand, though, I was supposed to know about you. Every President is, apparently.”

  “That would be correct. Would you care to be filled in, sir?” asked Chym.

  “Oh, all in good time, my boy. But for now, do you think you could get those ships outside off the ground? I think it’s scaring the people. I don’t like that.”

  A distrusting look came across Chym’s face, yet he spoke into his communicator, “Captain Gup’Dis’Sev, come in, this is Chym’Buk’Tai. …Yes, Gup, this is Chym. Yes, order the ships off the ground. No, have them go into orbit for now. No…(looking towards the President)…he didn’t.”

  His attention came back to the group. “They will be taking off shortly, sir.”

  Fitzpatrick’s never ending smile widened, “Thanks, my boy. Now, let’s get on with this. Alexander, Delvon, strapping young men, what’s been the trouble?”