Then they came

“I couldn’t tell the date, or the time, or the year of this current journal entry. I have been kept imprisoned far too long. The days are dragging by too slowly and I have long grown too weak to do anything else. Too weak, to even write anymore…

How long since it began? That day still resounded extremely clearly in my mind, as if it had only occurred just recently…

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No one foresaw it…
No one predicted it…

It happened in the day. The clear skies suddenly turning dark as these huge ships appeared menacingly in the sky.

There wasn’t any warning or time. Quickly, thousands of streamline crafts with wings appeared from these ships. In what seemed like a synchronized attack, they rained down destruction and chaos to the lands below.

There was panic and anarchy. No one knew what was happening. No one knew what to do. There were attempts at defense, but the aliens’ technology seemed far superior.

Cries ringed through the air and the ground soon became covered with the dead. Lone figures could occasionally be seen running and ducking beneath covers, but it was a futile attempt at escape. The crafts eventually found them.

It wasn’t long before the destruction stopped. By then, an eerie silent hung in the air, safe for the humming of the huge ships up above. The crafts circled the skies a few more times, and seemingly pleased with the job they had done, returned to the ships.

Then slowly, the ships began to land. From within poured out huge armored machines and strange figures covered from head to toe in what seemed like an oddly crafted suit.

Immediately, the aliens started working. They were organized and worked efficiently, as if this attacked had long been planned out. There was a delegation of tasks. Some were commanded to start terra-forming the lands and altering the atmosphere so that it would suit them. Some were commanded to scout and explore this new place which they had just taken. Some were commanded to round up the remaining survivors that were lucky – or perhaps, unlucky enough to have survived the onslaught.

I was among the first survivors to be rounded up…

I pleaded and begged them, but I didn’t know what I was imploring them for. My home had already been destroyed and taken. My close ones lost. Everything was gone...

I cried…
I struggled…
I yelled…

The aliens however, couldn’t understand at all – or perhaps they didn’t care. Neither could I understand them, as they grunted and barked orders at each other.

They took me to a strange holding area and threw me into a tiny cell.

Then I was left alone. I pounded upon the walls till my strength left me. Collapsing to the ground, darkness surrounded me.

I do not know how long they held me in the cell. I lost all sense of time and of where I was. Everything became a blur. Occasionally I would hear crying and struggling from the other captives - or perhaps the crying and struggling were my own. Sometimes I felt myself strapped down and could faintly make out a brightly lit object floating above me. Other times I heard drilling and cutting. However, I didn’t care anymore.

I couldn’t care anymore...

Then slowly, the crying and the struggling began to stop. I started to hear less of the drilling and cutting. My sense of time, place and self started returning.

I was shifted to a larger cell. On occasion, I would be strapped down in my new cell and some huge figures would enter and seemingly try to commune with me. Small heads upon their huge bodies, pale white skin and four long limbs protruding from awkward places, the aliens, without their oddly crafted suits looked hideous and disproportioned. I felt this insatiable rage within me. Unable to lash out at my captors for I was chained down, I yelled and demanded an answer and reason for their tyranny. My captors however, continued grunting in their low tones to each other.

This went on for many more times. I soon grew tired of yelling and my rage slowly seemed to quench and fade away. Was I no longer angry at my captors, the ones who had taken everything away from me? Perhaps it was that I had grown numb...

I started paying attention to my captors’ grunts and soon found myself beginning to understand and memorize some of the phonetics that they used. I realized that they were trying to teach me their language…

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How long since these aliens had come to take away my home, I wondered. For the time I was kept here in my new cell, I did not see any of my own kind. Was I the only one left? Why was I kept alive? Was I spared so that these aliens could further observe me? Was I kept alive so that these aliens could try and attempt to understand my race and my home – that which they had destroyed? These of course, were purely conjectures on my part. I was not kept privy to their decisions. As the days grew on, only one thing was certain – all hope had left me.

I was alive, but I was dead.

Since the time I was transferred to my new cell, I began to understand a little more of what the aliens were saying. The aliens seemed keen in teaching me the meanings of their grunts. Along with my understanding of their speeches came my gradual understanding of them.

It seems that these creatures came from a place far from ours, but a place not very unlike ours. After enjoying many years of prosperity and growth, the aliens’ planet suffered from a catastrophe forcing millions of its inhabitants into space. There they wondered through the vast expense of space for decades.

Then, they chanced upon us. For months on end, they observed us, noting our technological capabilities, trying to make sense of our culture, analyzing key strategic points and who were our leaders, and above all else, accessing how suitable our world would be for their growth.

Then they attacked,
And they conquered…

My strength seemed completely sapped. I can no longer write, but I must. My last few dying words…

We had lived but a few thousand years, yet we have come to achieve so much. There was so much of life and space that we didn’t understand, so much potential for us. Often we would also ponder about the existence of alien beings from outer planets, so keen to find them and perhaps make contact with them. Ironic, that our first contact meant our destruction.

This journal, my final words – my only legacy…

My hatred for my captors had long turned to nonchalance, but forgiveness is something I will never ever give them.

These aliens who called themselves humans.

Humans from a distant planet they named Earth…”

– Excerpts from the final journal entry found on the dead body of subject CEX-0021, translated by the Institute of Extraterrestrial Research.