I woke up today and decided to write the opening to an alien invasion story. It has to go in the Idea Shop for now, since thinking about the vastness of space triggers my anxiety. Oh, there it goes.
Let's pretend we don't already know about the Eleven Stars. It's three days before the Invasion. No one has heard or seen a K'rivlin, nor a Mirrorborn. No Holarids or Quiet Ones swarm across terra firma consuming biomass. The Urd-Kesh, Mnemorak, and Tachrians are still fighting for the honor to destroy humanity first. The Trinalis are digesting interesting meteorites on the far side of the Moon. The Yulanerem and Ambriarchs still wonder what we taste like and swap recipes in their interstellar communiques. And certainly, blessing of all blessings, no one is trying to tongue a Threlix in its pheromone sac.
What good times these are. We still think humanity is on the road to a mutually-assured annihilation. We play at war, throwing thermobaric bombs around like snowballs in a Norman Rockwell painting. Generals lead lines of tanks across borders like they are moving pieces on a checker board.
From space, however, there are no borders. From space, there is only gravity pulling in everything that flies too near.
I'm at home eating a toasted cheese sandwich while I wait for my pants to wash and dry. My girlfriend is packing her things in a cardboard box and crying. I distract myself by watching a newscaster interview a scientist who discovered strange signals from outside our solar system.
Toasty-cheese normalcy. Remember that? You could sit in your underpants while watching cable TV—even after crushing another human being's heart—and still savor melted American cheese sandwiched between sliced white bread that you toasted in an air fryer.
"Well, I guess I'm heading out," Marley says. I pull my eyes away from the screen
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and acknowledge her presence across the coffee table as she sets a box by her feet.
"I'm sorry to see you go," I say, pretending not to mean it. I toss my half-eaten sandwich onto a paper plate.
"I'll send you some money. To replace the pants."
"Don't bother," I say. "They'll wash clean." I slip my heels off the table and rise in as dignified a posture as I can while dusting crumbs off my tighty-whities. I walk around the table. "Does the Rule, still apply?"
"Always leave with a hug?" She nods and opens her arms, hugs me more deeply than she has all year, then pushes away with her hands still on my shoulders. "I'm just going to add one variation."
She knees me hard in my cotton-clad groin and I crumple onto the carpet like a shrimp on a barbeque. "Thanks," I say. "For letting me off easy. I deserve worse."
"You're going to get a lot worse, Christopher. You being you."
Truer words are never said. I squeeze my eyes tight. I hear the front door slam shut. On the TV a scientist named Chen is describing a constellation of eleven stars that appeared in the message. "We've matched them to a set of nearby systems."
If my gut weren't already punched I probably would have felt my stomach drop. "Damn," I say. "Is this shit real?"
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That’s it for now. One small opening scene for the Idea Shop. Did you find it enticing? Should I write more? Let me know in the comments below.