I stood before them alone. Suddenly I became the centre of a formidable chaos of crowd and the gravity of their swaying expectations of me, of the person, just a little freightened person on the face of a large and freightening planet of sheer horror. I could hear terror in their voices, sensed their confusion and those hundreds, no, thousands of eyes horribly looking at me. To me they were all like far-away stones of ice, none of them I knew. A stranger among strangers. Fat black spaceships were hovering over us in the dusk of the falling night and the moon had already opened its white blind eye. I looked up at the dark metal spots.
God, how beautiful those starsships were! Like black dignified crows were they slowly disapperaing in the unknown of the deep space far beyond any stretch of imagination. “Look, look! – cried someone from the swarming crowd, - They are going away to the Sayron, they are leaving us…” I couldn’t bear seeing tears in their eyes, I put my hands on mine and palms became wet. I was crying with them. “Do something, V! You gotta do something, don’t you see what’s coming…” – shouted the black lake of the crowd. No, I was helpless. I could do nothing.
- I’m sorry… I can’t do anything! I’m not your leader and I never was!
I know that was not what they wanted to hear and not what I wanted to hear me speaking as well. But what else could I say. Meanwhile, the last spaceship was reduced by the far-away black sky to a small dot. It was like a tiny moth sitting on the dark-blue sky and slowly crawling up to the moon. The vast panorama of a once magnificent city was below the spacemoth’s invisible wings, destroyed by a nuclear storm of a hostile alien race of Nikoag.
The spaceships were gone. In their bellies they were carrying over one billion people. The golden billion it was called. They were saving the best of the population or so they called them. Renown scientists, politicians, famous journalists, music and movie stars and so on and on… We were neither of them. We were the background of their stage, we were the masses of extras, the admiring shadows of them overshadowing stars.
- What are you gonna do, V? What shall we do? Here we will die don’t you know it’s crazy… Tell us what the hell shall we do!
- Are you what deaf? I’m not your leader, I shouldn’t even be here…
Suddenly I was blown by a massive strike on the right… That was Jah.
- Yeah, damnit… We know you should be in the spaceships with those starasses… Yeah, bitch!
Another blow stroke and bit me like a sting. I fell off my feet on the dirty soil with my face down…
- You fucking did “so much for the community of the SEA” those crazy freaks… You know what? You are the Nikoag… - he spit and kept beating me with his right feet, the crowd were already climing up the hill to get him, - No, you’re much worse, bitch! They care for their I-don’t-know-what and you just don’t give a damn if we all die!
- Jah… Jah… I do care… But… - I spit blood, - I’m not better... I don’t know what to do… Just like you…
- No, you lie! Go… Go get fuck away from me bitches! He’s lying don’t you see that? He’s… Back off!
Shot! The people rapidly took steps back. Jah pointed a black gun at one of them, then at another, he seemed to be dancing around some invisible point, confused and scared ready to faint… Sheer panic. Although the smoking gun in his hand kept the crowd at bay.
- I know him! He’s not what you think he is, bitches!, - Jah pointed at me. His hand was shaking as he said that, - Step back, motherfucker, or else your mummy’s gonne scrab you off the ground! Back off! I’m not kidding, this gun is real, - he was about to lose control over the situation, - It’s real, wanna check it, yeah, c’mon, son of a bitch, put your forehead here let’s see what’s more solid…
- Leave him… He’s the only one who knows the way out of this… - cried some oldman.
- Shut the fuck up… He ain’t know a shit…
- Better relax… Put the gun down, son… relax… - the oldman stepped forward.
- Do what? Relax? You tell me to relax, motherfucker…
Shot! Another one. The oldman stood still with his hand over his chest. A dark-red spot was rapidly growing on his white shirt. A second later he fell down on his knees and then down on the ground.
- You bitch!! Die! Die! Die the hell now! – a young man rushed forward from behind of the dead body.
In panic Jah made two shots but his shaking hand missed the aim. In a fracture of a second the young man twisted Jah’s neck. The man knelt before the dead oldman’s body, hands on his face, tears rolling down the cheeks.
- It was his father. – said someone with a blank voice.
I stepped forward.
- It’s because of you… You did it all… - shouted the man.
- Listen… Listen… I’m really sorry but… I did not do anything… It wasn’t me who was in the lab that day when thay caught Nikoag’s signal… I did not launch the storm weapon…
- No, it’s you! Don’t you know you’re one of them!
- One of whom?
- One of Nikoag. – a woman from the crowd said.
- She’s right, V. My mother’s right. That’s why you know how the hell to turn it off… - cried the young man.
- No! No! I’m not!
- Yes you are, buster! And you’re gonna lead us or I’m gonna do to you what your friend did to my husband…
We were standing on a high hill with a ruined city lying ahead. We had nowhere to go and I didn’t know what to say.
- So, where’ the Ark Station?
- Follow me this way.
I didn’t know where the Ark Station and what the hell it was. I just stepped forth and the crowd followed me. Thousands of confused and desperate people going after a confused and desperate man. I didn’t know where I was leading them. I could only hope that maybe somehow it was going to be alright.
Who knows, maybe, that was the right way but most probably… it was the wrong one.
Viewed from above the whole procession looked like a big black lake slowly moving over the face of the Earth. It was stirring like a big disgusting amoeba swallowing the ground. A big spit from space that’s what it was. Humanity.
In the back of the amoeba crowd there were two little tentacles. Those were two parentless kids having no idea of what was going on. When the chaos stroke and reared its ugly head above the city no-one was prepared. You can’t prepare for that kind of events. When a giant circle of blue wind swirls itself over your head like a cosmic pest ready to attack what you think? I guess nothing. You just run like a wild animal saving itself from a cruel killer thirsting for fresh blood. That’s what the kids did that day. That’s what everyone else was doing that day of hell. Running.
Now. The kids were dragging along, scarred and afraid.
- Dal, where are they going? – asked one the other.
- I donno, Lant, some safe place to hide maybe, - tried a guess the other.
- I’m tired, let’s stop…
- No, Lant, we have to go on.
Lant was looking around as if searching for something or, maybe, someone. No need to say he was confused. His clothes were torn apart, rags they call it. Unlike his friend, Lant’s feet were bare and the dirt squelched under his toes. Although it didn’t matter to him.
- Dal, where are our parents? – Lant asked Dal like he always asked him. Dal always knew the answer and was kind of authority on life for Lant.
- I donno, Lant…
- But you do always know… - Lant was crying.
Dal was silent.
- Dal! Dal!
For a few seconds Dal was standing still and then he sat down and closed his face with his hands. No, Dal couldn’t afford crying. He was the one to stay strong. He was the only one to take care of the yonger brother. The kids stood still as the crowd was slowly moving away disappearing into the night. The crowd didn’t care, it kept moving forward with its thousand blank eyes fixed on a little human figure ahead.
- Lant, please, move on… Our parents are waiting for us ahead… - said Dal.
- Are you sure?
- Yes. I never lied to you.
They continued to go. Lant didn’t know that this time his brother lied. Dal thought to himself that whatever happens they have to move along. Just like everyone else, he looked at the ghostly figure of a distant man shining in the silver moonlight.
- Dal, who’s that man they’re looking at… Jesus?
- Yes, Lant, - answered Dal gulping back his tears, - that’s Jesus, Lant.
- Will he save us?
- I don’t know.
The city was built on a vast lowland. It seemed to be growing out of the depth of the Earth, making its way from the core through the magma right up to the populated surface. And populated it was! If I were to give it an apt name I would definitely pick “Swarm”. Bees and wasps were common in that now gone industrial machine. Many outside the city area called it “The Scientific”. There were more laboratories than lavatories and more smoky plants than green plants. Smoke was the city’s daily cloak. It woke up in it and in it went to sleep. Although it actually never slept, only snoozed.
Jah Raizzy was a common scientific bee of whom there were plenty. He woke up at 7 a.m. and went to work with neither shower nor breakfast. Not to say that he didn’t care, rather he had neither a shower nor a breakfast. But he had an insatiable and seething desire to make it in the field. That’s why he did wake up or else he couldn’t care less neither about his job nor about himself altogether.
When Jah opened his sleepy eyes he found himself alone in the room. He really didn’t need anyone else to find him in that state. He could always find himself alone thanks his room was not that big for his body to hide. On that morning Jah found himself alone again. He smiled, looked out the window, at the round clock on the shelf at the opposite wall, scratched his unkept hair a bit and made himself stand up. He loved his life. He had to because there was no one else to love.
It took Jah half an hour to get to the plant’s gate. At the gate a serious guard gave him a serious look and upon taking Jah’s passcard the serious guard allowed his serious dog to sleep a bit more to see its serious dreams. As you can see it was all very serious at the plant. But there was fun as hell… Sorry, I meant “as well”.
When Jah entered the department compartment the fun began. It began slowly and cautiously but over time the fun grew more amd more insistant and furious. Jah loved his colleages and thought they were kind and overall good colleages but they were fun’s fans and Jah found it hard to fan fun. Jah was an introvert and they plus all the others were extroverts. That was the problem with his colleages and all the others. Jah called them “cooleagles” in his mind. Of them there were a girl and two guys. They did science and it seemed that science also intermittenly did them in. The department was small but, make no mistake, its tasks were big as a hell party.
That morning at work. Jah opened the door.
- Hi, man. How are you? – said his colleage Roak from behind his black PC.
- Fun. Thanks! How you?
- Fun, hah… Funny. You coined it?
- No, mint did. What’s ahead?
- A full working day, man. Rejoice!
- Oh, yeah, I do. I really do… What’s these papers? – asked Jah pointing at his desk overloaded with some paper pulp.
- Noan left it for you to process. Accepted or what?
- “Or what” would be better but if it was Noan himself…
- Oh, yeah, he looked like himself this morning.
- Strange.
- Sorry, man. A lot of work… Scien…
- Scienterrific, yeah, - smiled Jah.
- Jip will be a bit late today…
- Ladies style…
- Yeah, right, I’ll go to the lavato… laboratory!
- Laborate, man, it’s… - said Jah looking at a heap of scientific papers.
- It’s labo-fate, yeah… You don’t need to remind…
- Ok… See you… maybe.
Roak left.
Jah looked at his desk. All the papers on it were scattered like autumn’s leaves thrown by a harsh stroke of wind. Jah wished they were as small and dead. He picked up one of them and lifted it before his half-asleep eyes. The title at the top of the front page said “Routine signal analysis confidential”. It was strange because Jah didn’t have the access level for this type of info. He rapidly looked through the pages.
“It is reported…” – “strange nonlinear shots unrecognizable…”-“from the star ICE-2, alien objects 200 km long and…”-“moving to Earth…” and so on. Jah was distracted by the door being opened. A tall girl with white curly hair was slyly looking at him through the crack of the door.
- Yeah, Jip, very sexy, keep looking at me that way. I guess you like it, - teased Jah this little imp of a woman.
She silently moved in without saying a word and flowed right through the room like a spring brook. Something mysterious and intelligible slipped into the air once the girl’s eyes lit it up, once her glance shone upon the bleak world. Whenever she was there something changed in the place and people, even walls seemed charismatic as if having caught and reflected her shining. Was he in love with her? Rather with beauty itself.
- Well… - said Jah, - Jip, I know you don’t need words to get your sexy messages across although… ,- she didn’t give a glance, - although a word from you would be greatly appreciated and gone down in history… at least in the history of the day.
- Jah, you are being distracted today. Better get down to work, - responded she flirtatiously emphasizing each word like beating nails with a hammer.
- Oh, thank you for your timely advice, mad-moiselle, thank you sooo much, - answered Jah smiling, she was cute this curly girl. There was something about her Jah couldn’t quite figure out. Although he didn’t try very much. Robbing beauty of its mystery is like depriving a picture of its colors.
- What’s that mess on your table, man? – a thunder on his left. Jah got startled, to say the least. He slowly looked around to find out the burst of speech was no other but Noan himself. His boss did have a way of making the mind collapse in a shock.
- What do you mean, Noan. You put it here, didn’t you?
- Me?! – a wave of chill went through Jah’s body as Noan said that.
- And… It… - Jah was about to turn into a stutterer, - I thought that I thought that it migh have maybe been…
- Wow! You must be a scholar, - a slight tone of condenscending sarcasm on Noan’s part didn’t miss Jah’s ear, - Might have been having been what? – he said it laughing and tapping Jah on a shoulder. Jah didn’t like the tone.
- Roak told me that you put it here for me to process…
- “To process”… C’mon, man, I’m about to collapse now… No, it was not me… Might have been someone else… By the way, what’s in in?
- It’s strange because… - Jah started but then the chief researcher came in.
- Noan, you forgot or what? – the researcher said with a gust of fury in his voice.
- Oh… Yes, Mr Baily… , - said Noan hastily and vanished behind the door.
- Soo… Jah, what’s that stuff? – asked Jip.
- The stuff is called Noan and it’s away… fortunately.
- Hah… Funny… No, really, Jah, what’s in the papers on your desk?
- I don’t understand yet… Something about alien spaceships…
- C’mon, stop kidding… What’s there?
As we went along to the Ark some black man with white hair tried to push himself forward through the thick wall of people to get to me. Again and again he was pushed back but finally he broke through.
- Go back, man. You can’t be here, - said the oldman’s wife to him.
- No, I want to talk to V, - he said looking at me.
- Say what you want and go back, - said the woman.
- No, it’s eye to eye – he was insistent.
- It’s ok, we can talk – I said.
- Roak, I know why they’re angry with you and that you should’ve flown away on the spaceships with thw golden guys but… - he was silent.
- What?
- But I thought you know, don’t you?
- Know what?
The black man looked aroud alarmingly as if afraid of something, then stepped forward and whispered:
- They are all dead men.
- What? The starsship blown up or… What do you mean?
- No, the ships are alright…
- Did they kill them?
- No, no… The golden guys were already dead when they put them on the ships. There are a billion golden coffins inside the ships. They are sacrificed to Nikoag.
- But wait… They are the chosen ones, aren’t they?
- Yes, they are, man.