Saturday the third, the day the aliens came and invaded, it never happens as you would expect, but never as bland as this,.. it happened like this...
Saturday the third, quite a nice day, fairly warm, with that breeze you always want on the beach in a heat wave, bringing you a little lift of freshness to help you through the day, and the sky looked clear, but who really looks up?
It was about ten minutes before we realised that we had the company we for so long had anticipated, and had always worried about. The single machine just hung silently in the sky, not the elegant or beautiful ship often assumed in movies, but simply an enormous and indiscriminate collection of machinery cobbled together. No one was impressed from an artistic point of view, but with so much mass just hanging limply in the air like that, it was a real case of having to come to terms with seriously large forces.
For three days we tried to make contact, using all the frequencies we knew, and all the basic codes to impart our abilities of communication, with the effect that the aliens made no attempt to even acknowledge our existence. And so the governments, with obvious diplomacy decided that as hostile action was almost guaranteed to be futile, of dubious effect at best, and at worst, who knows ?
For three days as it just hung there, during which a multitude of religions sprung up, the sales on sedatives went through the roof, and all the mad professors had a field day supplying the papers with wonderful and often conflicting ideas or pet theories, often in the same edition.
Panic reigned, but after three days it subsided enough for a little sanity to appear, when the simple message was received from the ship, coming across all machines as one, simply stating that we were now under a new rule. There were no terms, just that the people of the planet will be at the aliens beck and call whenever and wherever they decided. Panic reigned a second time, and with what was to become an annoying habit, the aliens promptly carried on ignoring us. No requests for materials, no meetings with heads of state, no-one went missing under suspicious circumstances, at least no more than usual, and only the religions decided upon any definitive changes in direction, usually to the detriment of sanity, but then, these were difficult times for everyone.
The nations leaders gathered, conferred and for once worked in unison, the talks went on and on and on, for even though the world is in unknown jeopardy, years of tradition are hard to shake off. Eventually the leaders decided that the solution to our problem was to keep an eye on the aliens, carry on as before, to ignore the aliens and hope they go away.
This was not so easily said as done. People started to be more wary, crime dropped sharply, after all, many people now thought, who, or what were watching us, and what was their idea of justice? The simple concept of realising you are under new management is a terrible blow to anyone, especially when you don't know who the bosses are, or how they think, what the rules are, or if your job is secure, let alone your planet?
For lack of other stimulus, the world settled down and carried on as before, although a few secret projects were started to understand the aliens and their technology, little else could be done, humans have a million generations of history at being able to smile at unknown people, yet still keep the big stick nearby, 'just in case'. Most projects became 'military priorities' and funding flowed like water.
And so life carried on almost as normal. The usual famines broke out, but this time were quickly overcome, most of the petty wars faded and died a natural death, apart from one which reached a religious fervor typical of human history, and ended in an embarrassing waste of life from a ''glorious' last attack, unfortunately from both sides at the same time.
Meanwhile the machine just hung there, with both sides trying to make the best attempt of pretending they were'nt there, or at least a good attempt at it, well almost ignored by us, apart from a turist theme park which grew up nearby catering for those who were curious, if in a somewhat unsettled way, but not so unsettled enough to stop buying postcards, plastic spacecraft ornaments 'I've been ignored by the aliens' hats and getting gauranteed genuine cosmic alien back remedy, and other such amazing cures.
After a year of being ignored, the only new development to come from the aliens was the religion which grew up around the concept of the God of Nonintervention, called by their followers as 'The All-Knowing, Restrained Hand', but known more popularly as 'Banal'.
A number of projects emerged from the secret labs of the military, along with a surprisingly number of small back street workshops too, often more effective, but all in a limited way. These led to measuring the mass of the ship, the range of frequencies it emitted, trying to find out how it supports itself and possible uses for the various lumps of machinery seen on its surface. For all the work, little came of finding out more than the barest of information. We did not know their size, their environment, whether they were animal or artificial, nor how they lived, annoying from a practical point of view, but convinient at least for now, for the new religious leaders.
The world eventually became, to many peoples surprise, a more harmonious place, with all countries working together, spurred by a common enemy. The planet eventually began to change it's way of governing, nothing so adventurous as countries coming together into super states, but more of a fusing of the different governments into a recognised and definite way of working together under a single form of democracy.
Then just as quickly as they arrived, the aliens left, promptly followed by a couple of small wars which were evidently on 'hold', and the return of crime as we knew it. Communucation between nations degraded back to normal, and we carried on as before, apart from a square mile of ice missing from the arctic, for which the nations decided to charge the next passing spacecraft, but not quite sure how.
End.
Other writings by the author include.
Builders Guides to the Design of motorcycles, composite HPV's vans, trikes, wiring etc. - Via website
Future dreams. Short story.
Stonehenge and spanners. Alternative maintenance.
Easy life. Short touring guide.
Email
jhpart@btinternet.comAll material on this website is subject to patent, copyright and other intellectual property rights.All Rights Reserved. All material subject to change without notice. Feel free to distribute this page, but only if it is unchanged. Copyright (C) J.Partridge.1992 2002.