by Eric Swanson
“Daddy!” The young child sobbed, his cheeks awash in a mix of tears and crimson. A small stream of blood flowed from his forehead, a fresh bruise forming after the fall. His close-cut blonde hair and deep blue eyes reminded Graham instantly of his nephew. After the child fell, the throng pushed his desperate father farther from him as thousands of people, without thought, shoved their way out of Soldier Field.
Graham and Peter saw the child and both broke toward him without a word. Their eyes met and Peter nodded toward the child. Using his body as a shield for a moment, Peter made a path for Graham to sweep the kid up and run toward the exit.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” An overweight sandy-haired bowling ball crashed into Graham and the child nearly tumbled from his arms. Peter shoved the screaming toddler back toward Graham’s chest and they ran.
“Where are we going?!” Peter cried again to Graham. His question was lost in the sonic chaos of the automated advertisements, all screaming for new customers.
The boy’s father screamed his name (which sounded something like “Larson” to Graham) and yanked him from Graham. A beat later, he nodded a quick thanks and ran off. Finally out in the open, Graham and Peter broke into a full run toward the Field Museum, the parking ramp attached to it and Peter’s car.
Above the gate Graham and Peter ran through, a giant television screen silently broadcast images from all over the world. Bold white letters told the location of the horror. Flickering video of bleeding and frightened people being pulled up into ships looked just like the chaos in Chicago.
Tokyo. Moscow. Jakarta. London. Paris. New York. Tel Aviv.
If radio hadn’t died of listener starvation decades earlier, those disembodied voices might have described the horrible machines in the skies above a panicked mass of humanity as jet black metallic fried eggs.
In Beijing, sleek silver fighter jets fired hundreds of rounds with no effect on the hulking abductors.
In Austin, several tanks fired into the air from an Army National Guard base. The machines absorbed the fire and pressed on.
Over the smoldering wreckage of Delhi, smaller versions of the dark steely fried egg-monsters sliced the sky and dove at fearful people.
Peter shrieked at the sights on the screen as fear stripped him of words. As all the monitors showed full screen shots of ships, a black metal bug slammed into the back of the screen and it shattered. As shards and chunks of the massive display fell, Graham and Peter ran away from the stadium. Both men pulled their phones out, struggling to dial their respective loved ones. As his phone managed to intermittently acquire a signal, messages popped up from seemingly every contact in the device.
Sarah texted in all caps with copious question marks. Graham didn’t need to imagine her panic, it was palpable in her messages. “Sarah!” He yelled with a broken and crackling voice responding.
“—aham!?” Sarah screamed through a broken signal. “Where are you?”
“We’re at the Field Museum!” Graham yelled, the phone further from his face as he ran. “We—”
A thunder bolt later, Graham was knocked from his feet. Momentum carried him forward as smoke and fire leapt from the Field Museum. His phone clattered against the pavement settled a few yards from him.
“Graham?!?” Sarah’s voice, far smaller at a distance, issued from the cracked device. Its translucent glow flickered for a moment and Sarah’s voice faltered with it. “Graham, there’s a ship! It--”
Graham’s eyes fluttered open. His irises narrowed against the sunlight and fire but his ears picked up no sound. To Graham’s right, the Field Museum, blown wide open and billowing smoke and flames, burned silently.
High pitched ringing began to replace silence.
“Peter!” Graham screamed, his eyes swinging from side to side. His friend’s name came out wrong, clarity stripped by a large bruise newly formed on Graham’s chin. “Pe— Oh GOD!”
Graham ran back toward the burning building, fire warming his skin more than fight-or-flight induced blood flow. Lying on the cobblestone under a large piece of concrete, Peter didn’t move. His left leg was pinned beneath the wall chunk, blood pooling under Peter’s thigh.
“Graham!” Sarah screamed from the phone lying on the ground, now further from Graham. “Where are you?!” The signal broke up for a moment, Graham’s name in Sarah’s voice cut up by silence. “Oh my God!” Loud crashes and ringing shards of glass covered Sarah’s screams.
“Peter!” Graham shook Peter violently. He lifted Peter’s upper body off the ground, but the stone held. Panicked, Graham tried to lift the stone again. A plaintive whine came from him as helplessness and hopelessness soaked Graham. “Peter…” His friend’s name came softer this time as a pair of hitched breaths left Peter’s body.
“-- cold…” Peter groaned. “I can’t…”
Peter lazily gestured toward his left leg. Another series of cracking noises came from the building and pieces of it fell. Peter’s upper body fell back to the ground, his head lolling back and forth atop a loose neck.
“Pete, we have to---” Graham screamed, fighting against the heavy concrete once more. The jagged edges ripped into the skin on his fingers, blood poured into his palms and the material slipped from his grip under the blood. “Peter! Help me! I can’t— Ahh!”
A deafening pop from overhead heralded the arrival of another ship just above them. The sound and the heat from the engines of the black machine shook more stone loose. Graham leapt back as a small gray piece fell toward him. The chunk struck him in the shoulder, careened off him and turned once before striking Peter in the head.
Blood poured from his hairline and Peter lay motionless, eyes open and locked in their final gaze.
Stunned and distracted by the pain in his shoulder, Graham’s eyes fell to Peter a moment late. “No! Pet-“ Graham took a step toward Peter’s body, a hand out. Nearly large clear container at the end of a black mechanical appendage landed between Graham and his dead friend.
A cracking hiss came and the container opened.
“Graham!” Sarah screamed from Graham’s phone again, stone surrounding it. Graham ran toward the phone and picked It up mid-stride.
“Sarah!” Graham yelled into the damaged device. “I’m coming! Are you at the apartment? I —”
“I’m here! There’s a – a thing here and it’s taking—” Rumbles and more shattering sounds drowned Sarah’s voice. She screamed again. The cry came through over the noise. “It’s—”
“Sarah!” Graham ran faster toward a car that sat with driver’s side door ajar. The droning beeps from the car got louder as Graham tried to slide into the driver’s side seat. A smaller appendage than the last few jutted into the vehicle and cinched Graham’s left ankle.
Pulled by the black metal limb, Graham thudded against the pavement outside the car. Skin on his elbow, rib cage and thigh was quickly rubbed through as the metal dragged him across the street then upward.
As Graham ascended, his phone fell from his grip, clattering on the concrete again. “Graham!” Sarah screamed from the phone. “What—”
The line went dead and the phone flickered on the ground one last time before going dark.
An open clear container gaped mid-air, 50 feet above the ground. Graham screamed again, gory hands clawing desperately at the steel. The cylinder ended in the middle of the open container and retracted with almost unreal speed, silent.
On the ground below, thousands ran screaming from the machines. A few hundred were captured like Graham. Family and friends of those airborne stood, cursing at the sky and throwing whatever they could lay hands upon and toss toward the machines.
A few cracks of gunfire sent bullets and shells futilely toward the stationary, silent black monsters. A stray bullet struck the foreign arm holding Graham inches from his ankle. The impact vibrated through the appendage and Graham’s foot for a moment as he neared the pod.
Graham’s back slammed into the container and it shut around him. As the
ship rose, Graham’s plastic prison cleared the cloud line and sunlight flooded the box. Eyes wide, pupils dilated and leaping around wildly, Graham screamed and pounded on the clear plastic but no sound escaped the enclosure.
Bloody fist prints painted the shell as it flew toward the black of space, trailing the ship.
Dragged into Silence
Graham’s ears popped violently and he lost consciousness twice after the pod passed into space. Seeing the Earth as only a handful of humans had, Graham noticed immediately how calm the planet looked from the outside. The silence of space offset the calamity from which he had just come and the quiet was nearly comforting.
A foreign sound filled the container and Graham began to breathe the air (which smelled of rotten eggs) steadily.
A glow behind him warmed Graham’s shoulders a little and he spun, ready to defend himself futilely against a laser blast, tractor beam… whatever these monsters were going to use to kill him. Instead, fresh horror dawned as Graham watched dozens, perhaps hundreds of ships fly toward a giant black ring.
Within the ring, a light blue fire burned.
Graham let a choked sob from his lips as the first ship flew into the ring. After a moment, when it didn’t emerge from the ring on the other side, Graham realized how hopeless his circumstance had become. He sank to the floor, head in his hands. For the first time in decades, Graham began to pray, using words and phrases from his father he was sure weren’t quite right. While he stuttered words to a now nearer deity, dozens of identical ships flew through the gate. The population of Earth dropped by thousands with each passing moment and each disappearing ship.
Graham’s eyes opened and through the bottom of his container he saw half a dozen other pods on steel cylinders trailing his same ship. Quickly scanning the other ships, he saw most were carrying many more than his.
Tears streamed down his face as the blue glow of the gate’s fire washed over Graham.
He drifted toward the gate after the ship’s propulsion system shut down. A whirring sound Graham hadn’t noticed before was suddenly conspicuous by its absence. Graham was vaguely reminded of a rollercoaster clicking and clacking its way to the track’s apex.
Soundless thunder shook his trailing pod and Graham’s hands broke his fall forward toward the clear floor. He spun just in time to see several terrestrially fired Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles incinerated by a red glow from a larger lead ship.
“Yeah!” Unreasonable hope that his salvation was at hand forced him back to his feet. Graham pumped his fist for a moment like he had in his Soldier Field seat that felt like a lifetime ago, but in reality, only 30 minutes. One of the missiles found a home in the hull of a larger ship and a light shined toward Graham. Eyes closed and shielded with both hands, the heat still warmed Graham’s skull. Small beads of sweat formed and rolled down Graham’s face.
His eyes opened to total blinding white. It cleared just in time for him to see a missile coasting toward the gate, small boosters intermittently firing. His ship dragged its pods toward the gate with renewed speed, straining to beat the missile.
A guttural, primal scream came from Graham as the ship crossed the threshold and began to disappear. A moment later, the first inches of Graham’s pod crossed the blue. Grinding noise like radio static filled the pod as another blinding flash of light erupted from the gate.
The light cleared after a time. Graham’s ship was gone as was the blue fire in the middle of the gate. Empty space filled the gate, now broken in half, inert.
The Earth lost 144,000 human lives in under an hour.
Four Hundred Years Later
Chapter Two
(The First Day)
0555 Hours
Micah woke, like every day, a full minute before his alarm broke the morning’s silence. His deep blue eyes caught and shone reflected bits of light from the digital display on the wall. The numbers were a much lighter blue than his eyes and sat in the middle of the wall, right over Micah’s headboard. White walls and matching stone flooring lent his sparse apartment a certain coldness. The clock and a few other pieces of technology provided some of the few splashes of color, most along a blue/silver track.
“Good morning, Micah.” A soft, just slightly synthetic voice spoke. “It is 0555 hours. Would you like to hear your schedule for today?”
“Yes, SAMI.” Micah’s legs swung to the left and his feet dropped to the floor with a padded thud. Naked save for a black pair of shorts, Micah stood quickly and moved smoothly address the still-darkened room. “Please.” For a moment, most mornings, Micah moved toward his bathroom in the dark, keeping the day at bay as long as possible.
“Today, you have an early meal with Mr. Eaton at his residence unit.” SAMI said. She listed several other meetings and activities booked for the day, but Micah wasn’t truly listening. After living in a dormitory during his time with the royal training regiment, Micah relished every moment of his own space. His childhood was spent stacked atop other trainees in bleak metal bunks. On his first day in his apartment, the technician setting up his Sentient Autonomous Machine Intelligence system asked him to name the device.
The logo on the installation guide was all Micah needed to pick a name. The shining blue of the letters inspired his decoration of the tiny chunk of world Micah was allowed. “Would you like me to start the shower, Micah?”
“Give me a minute, SAMI. I just need…” Micah’s breath left him as he leaned back and stretched. A few 44-year-old joints popped as he came forward. Micah rubbed a spot on the small of his back. “… a minute. Getting old, SAMI. Anything you can do about that?”
“Increasing shower water temperature by 3 units.” The steam coming from the shower grew slightly, wafting around the light gray tile on the floor and walls. “The heat may help you relax, Micah.”
“Thank you, SAMI.” Micah stepped into the shower, the living area still mostly darkened. Micah stood in the path of the hot water drawing deep breaths. “What’s going on in the world?”
A screen flickered and took half the mirror. Light from the screen shined into the dark of the bathroom. “The news, Micah.” Two news anchors behind a desk spoke silently. “I’ll turn the sound on now, Micah. Would you like me to turn the lights on?”
“No, this is fine.” Micah turned away from the soft blue light intruding on his dark shower. “SAMI, please reduce screen brightness by 75 percent and flip on sound.” The screen dimmed considerably and tension visibly released from Micah. His shoulders dropped just a bit he leaned lazily against the tiled shower wall for a moment.
“Thank you.” Micah whispered.
A soft click later, two new voices joined the room. Their names floated below their respective images. Sallust, a thin, severe looking blond sat beside Xenophon. Xenophon was bald and nearly as intense in appearance as Sallust. Their brown speckled green eyes matched almost perfectly.
“Thanks, Sallust.” Sallust nodded curtly. “For the third time in as many days, hybrid separatists demonstrated outside the Ceran Senate.” Darkened images of dozens of hybrids sitting together on a lawn flash across the dimmed screen. The crowd sat, hands in their laps, chanting. “No arrests were made and the crowd dispersed just after sunset. During their protest, Hybrid Separatist leader Kristian Lahm spoke.”
As the screen changed to show a slight man with light features standing among a crowd of seated hybrids, Micah allowed a frustrated groan to escape. “Separatists…” He mumbled dismissively.
“Our people are simultaneously human and Ceran. We were taken from Terra and cannot belong. We’ve changed in our time on this planet. We live among you but do not belong. We stand apart and only wish to live as such, in peace.”
As his supporters cheered and clapped, the newscast cut back to Sallust and Xenophon.
“Strong words from Mr. Lahm.” Xenophon said, a small smile on his face.
Micah pressed two fingers against a circular metallic panel under the showerhead and the waterflow stopped. “Dry.�
�� Micah spoke and a reddish glow enveloped the shower. After a few quiet moments, it faded and Micah was bone dry. “SAMI, lights at 60 percent.”
The bathroom brightened and Micah moved toward the light.
“—opinions vary in both communities.” Xenophon’s clear, deep voice hit Micah as he stepped out of the shower and stood before the mirror for a moment. Micah caught a glimpse of what might be a slight crow’s foot wrinkle near his left eye and stared intently.
“SAMI, magnify my left eye.”
His reflection changed as the mirror zoomed in on the suspect area. Micah pressed and poked at his skin a bit while the newscast continued.
“Excitement has gripped the Hybrid Quarter as the Antisar playoffs begin the second round, that action only three days away.” To Micah, it seemed that Sallast’s inflection was more pronounced and her voice just slightly louder once the sports segment began. “Jor Mikan and the Block A Quasars face-off against their arch-rivals from Block G, the Dark Wings and their star defender, Ton Rendere. It’ll be a classic battle of strength versus strength for the right to move onto the South Conference Championship, a best two out of three series.”
Micah walked away from the mirror and his slowly aging face toward racks of garments. The Antisar excitement on the newscast continued as Micah dressed in plain black pants and a loose-fitting white shirt.
Antisar, the global pastime of Ceres, was an action packed, high intensity sport with many fever pitch moments. Played on a recessed court (sunken into the ground 15 feet) the shape of a capital letter I, the sport catered to fans of great action as well as thoughtful play. Goals at each end of the court were holes on the far walls, in the center and 12 feet off the ground. The most physically demanding portion the game was the transition between offensive ends as all ten players squeeze into the narrower part of the court, called the Chute.
