Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences

It takes less time for them to conquer the world than it takes me to brush my teeth. That’s pretty disappointing.

I’m in history class, listening to Mr. Whitehead’s description of the Great Depression. “Everything was changed,” he says, tapping his desk with two fingers the way he does when he wants to call attention to something he’s said. I know he’s about to repeat himself because he always does after the finger tap. I turn to Jackson to mouth the sentence as Mr. Whitehead speaks it, which is something we do to combat the big-yawn boredom.

But the second sentence never comes from Mr. Whitehead. It doesn’t come from Jackson or me, either. Instead a voice comes into my head. THAT’S RIGHT. A VOICE. NOT MINE. IN MY HEAD. The voice says,
You are one of the few product who can hear. Congratulations. Stand by for a message
.

Stand by for a message
sounds like some kind of public-service announcement, so naturally I’m thinking I’m crazy. I’m imagining I’m bound for a room with locks on the outside and keepers in white coats asking me questions along the lines of “Would you like another cookie?”

But there really is a message. It comes a second later.

I am Lord Vertenomous and I claim this planet in the name of the Republic of Sanginia. You have been conquered by the greatest beings in the known universe. It took ten seconds
.

The world is conquered in ten seconds? Come on. Also, the voice itself isn’t particularly scary. Not like the breathy, booming voice of, say, Darth Vader. It’s more of a whisper and a little squeaky around the edges. In fact, I’m kind of disappointed that the imagination of my damaged mind couldn’t do better. But then I notice what I’ve been too freaked to notice before. No one is moving. Every single person, including Mr. Whitehead, looks sound asleep. I feel a shadow over me then, and it practically knocks me off my feet. I struggle to breathe. I force deep breaths. Then I do what you do when people are sleeping at a totally inappropriate time and in a totally inappropriate place. I try to wake them. I shake Carlee Thorton, who is the best student in school and would never, ever fall asleep in class. I punch Jackson on the arm.

“Jackson, dude, it’s me, Jesse. Wake up,” I plead. He doesn’t.

I don’t know it then, but this is what happens to most of the Earth’s population. They go to sleep. They never wake up.

I try my cell but it’s dead. I go out into the hall and try some good old-fashioned screaming. No one screams back.

I’m all alone.

It’s so quiet.

The alien voice comes back. My body jerks as if a cold hand has grabbed me from behind, and my heart, which definitely wasn’t doing a slow jog before, sprints. The voice says,
It should be clear that you are weak and we are strong. You are now our slave, unless you are unable to be a slave, in which case you are dead. We are sorry for your loss. This is a most excellent planet. Lovely blue sky. Most excellent green vegetation. We are going to like it here. Thank you for not completely destroying it
.

I do what a lot of people (I find out later) who remain awake do. I run. I run toward home.

I get only a few feet beyond the school doors before the truth of the alien’s claims hits me. I have to stop. I heave my breakfast right there on the sidewalk. Cars are crashed all over the place. Bodies fallen everywhere: people, birds, squirrels, dogs, and cats. I step over and around the bodies. So many of them. But the strange thing is that most people look like they’re asleep. It looks like they just got very tired all at once and lay down for a nap.

“Anybody?” I shout as I start to run. “Anybody here?”

But nobody is. People are all over the place, but they aren’t here. Nothing is. No sounds at all. I even think for a second that maybe I’ve lost my hearing, but I can hear my own short, sharp breaths.

I don’t make it home. I make it about two blocks before the Sanginians stop me. In the same way the alien voice didn’t inspire terror, the aliens don’t look particularly frightening. They’re not giant roaches or hooded, hollow-eyed ghoul types or even some version of the biggest-foreheads-in-the-universe Klingons. They’re small. I’m just six feet and I tower over them. They appear to be hairless. Their eyes are large and round, almost cartoonish. Their skin has a slight green tint to it. I suppose maybe they could be from some remote tribe in the Amazon, the kind you’d see on a National Geographic special or something. If you had to sum them up with a quick description, you’d say “little green men.”

They ask me to please come with them. I’m a wrestler and I have a black belt in tae kwon do, and my father was in the Special Forces and taught me a lot of moves. I try to punch one and kick the other, but I can’t do either. They stop me without so much as moving a finger. I’m screaming in pain; I drop helplessly to my knees.

Please come with us,
one of them says. This time I notice that his mouth doesn’t move.

I get up, but my mind is filled with a thick fog. Everything is distant and unclear. I join a group of people; they herd us to downtown Houston. I step over and around bodies all the way. It’s like being in a nightmare, like I’m not really all there. Large ships land everywhere. They pick up bodies with some kind of device that sucks them up into the ships. They’re like gigantic, sucking garbage-truck ships and we’re the garbage. I want to scream, but I can’t. I’m ashamed and I’m helpless.

I’m put in this big room in a building. There are alien guards all around. Once we’re inside, I slowly begin to feel more like myself. I’m able to move again on my own, able to form thoughts that feel like mine. I think,
Where are my parents? Are they alive? Is anyone I love, like, or even know alive?

I look around. Most people look the way I feel: dazed and exhausted. A woman in the corner is crying. A man keeps pulling a quarter out of his pocket and putting it back in and pulling it out again. A couple starts arguing, shouting at each other. One of the aliens tells them to stop, but they don’t listen. You can tell they are the kind of people who have lived their lives not listening. The alien does something, and they drop. It’s like they’ve been shot through the heart.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the alien says to the dead bodies like you’d say “Excuse me” to someone you bumped into passing down a hall. One thing you have to say about these aliens is they’re very polite. They are probably the most polite killers around. My mother is big on manners, and I can’t help thinking she’d approve, except for the killing part of course.

We spend the night in the building, which I realize is a bank. It has teller windows and a vault and all. I could probably go help myself to as much money as I want. The aliens wouldn’t care. The money is as worthless as dirt to them. I guess it’s as worthless as dirt to us now, too.

The next morning they assign us to numbered groups. I’m in a group assigned to work downtown. They tell us we are slaves now, what they call
product,
and that eventually we will have private masters. For now we’re the property of the Republic of Sanginia, the greatest republic in the known universe. They think a lot of themselves. They’re the greatest beings from the greatest republic. What are we? We’re nothing.

Houston is like a ghost town. A few days later, I’m taken to Austin, and it’s like a ghost town there, too. I guess it’s like a ghost planet. No buildings have been destroyed, no houses. At first glance the world doesn’t look all that different. But it feels different. It feels empty. It sounds empty, too. It’s so quiet. More than anything, the silence makes me feel what I’ve lost. The Earth is no longer ours.

There are thirty-one people on our crew. Twenty guys and eleven girls. I’ve asked around. The oldest person here is forty and the youngest is thirteen. Most are in their teens and twenties. It was the same way at the bank. Apparently, a couple of people on the crew saw kids survive, but there aren’t any kids here and there weren’t any at the bank. Where are they?