Our Secret

The cabinet meeting room was utterly silent as the members all stared at their President. He leaned back in the chair comfortably, looking for all the world like a man asleep. Other than one rather large detail: his face was open in the middle a very small furry creature sat at a set of controls. It looked out at the room with wide, surprised eyes and a hand hovering near a button it very much hadn’t meant to push. Then the laughter began. The Vice President was doubled over the table laughing so hard that it sounded like hissing. He raised his head at last and reached to remove the device that disguised his nature. For a moment, his skin flickered and then he revealed the pearly scales below. Double-lidded eyes blinking slowly, he looked around the room.
“Alright, tell the truth. Is anyone here human?”
One by one, disguises were removed until not a single human remained in the room. Skins lay discarded over chairs and devices sat powered off on tables. The furry creature commonly known as the President was the first to speak, looking at his three-foot tall, gray Secretary of the Interior.
“Roswell?”
The gray alien groaned expressively.
“That was us. Our craft malfunctioned when exposed to the atmosphere of this planet. It took years to figure out why.”
The reptilian Vice President looked down the table at the seven-foot tall, hairy, ape-like Secretary of Defense.
“Bigfoot is a hoax, huh?” he asked in an accusatory tone.
The Secretary of Defense puffed out his fur, appearing to double in size.
“We consider that term to be quite insulting.”
“Alright, here’s the big one.” crackled a creature made of pure energy who served as Secretary of the Treasury. “Kennedy?”
Head down, the Vice President slowly raised one scaly, clawed hand.
“That’s our bad. The humans did really get to the moon though.”
For a moment, there was quiet, then the Secretary of State tilted their head to the side, bat-like ears quivering.
“What now?
It was the exceptionally tall, blonde Secretary of Education that spoke, her metallic armor rustling oddly as she stood. Her eyes were an ethereal glowing blue as she surveyed her fellow cabinet members.
“We carry on. None of our missions are compromised, I trust, and the All-Father would be most vexed if I returned home now. This will simply be our little secret.”
There was a chorus of agreement before another gray alien, the Secretary of Energy, spoke up.
“What about the Attorney General? He’s not here.”
The creature riding in the head of the President scoffed.
“Him? He’s human.”
The Vice President smiled though.
“Don’t worry, though, we’re scheduled to replace him with a clone later today.”

Siege

That was the problem with living out in the hills. When something happened, there wasn’t anyone near enough to help. So when the sky lit up like the Fourth of July in the middle of September, the Mayweather family did the only thing they could do: they prepared. Pa had a shotgun he kept in his closet for days like this and he sat on the porch with it across his lap, waiting to see what might happen. Jimmy sat perched in his window with his 12-gauge leveled on the drive up to the house. Sue Ellen had her little compound hunting bow in her hands as she watched the back yard. Mama only kept an eye to the sky, but she did holster on Pa’s pistol when she went to take down the laundry.
The lights stopped around dusk and they heard something rustling in the bushes at the tree line. Pa watched it and Jimmy took aim. It was a furry little creature about 3 feet tall and darkly purple. It walked towards the house with hands upraised and no expression any of them could read. Jimmy’s hands were shaking and the old dog that usually slept at Pa’s feet let out a howl. A crack echoed through the farm as Jimmy pulled the trigger. The creature flipped in the air, landing on its back. Then it stood again and continued to walk forward. More of them began to appear out of the bushes, each walking like that with their hands up. The Mayweathers hunkered down, pulling the windows and doors closed and hoped the creatures would soon be gone. The creatures leaned against the glass and screens, staring in with their wide yellow eyes and their little hands still in the air. They didn’t make a sound and didn’t move an inch, just stayed there like that for hours. Finally, as the first fingers of dawn appeared on the horizon, they turned and walked away back into the brush.

In the Beginning…

The attack was over in seconds, leaving nothing but desolation in its wake. There wasn’t even the crying or screaming, just the sound of broken concrete settling and the silent thrum of their craft hovering in the skies. The attack had been simultaneous around the entire world. Even beyond the cities, out into the countryside and the farthest, hidden villages. Now only two remained. Two humans: one male and one female.
“Keep them in stasis until we complete terraforming procedures and then begin the experiment again.”

Kepler-438b

The terraforming drones had arrived on Kepler-438b long before humans first set foot on its rocky surface. The pictures transmitted back baffled and amazed, but it was, they decided, like the face on Mars: merely a matter of shadow and wishful thinking. There was no way there were towers reaching to the sky and spiraling edifices of stone carved and shaped by hands and minds that were, like theirs, capable of dreaming. Not on Kepler-438b. It was a trick of the light and nothing more.

That was what they said until the first colonists disembarked from the landing craft. The yawning bay doors opened in the back and the first landing team found themselves staring up at an immense wall bestrewn with an ivy-like crawler vine that wound around columns in made its way in through perfectly round windows. Standing sentinel beside the great archway in its center were two statues, crumbling depictions of something the screamed louder than words “We were here!”

The colonists searched and searched, but there were no signs of the builders, of any creatures native to this place. There were only the plants. Then one day, a child stood by one of the carved walls. The others had long since stopped looking for answers in the pictures, long since ignored the mystery implied in stone, and focused on their survival. But when they saw what he saw, they stopped. He held his small hand up, fingers splayed, and smiled. There on the wall, lined up with his own hand, was a palm and five splayed fingers. A hand reaching out through the ages, the very same as their own.

Cosmic End

Far-flung in space and time
holding on to nothing
holding back everyone
we know nothing of what we do
and yet…

Flashes of light bursting in colors
explosions of nothing
watching the gates against the darkness
refusing to accept…

alone but surrounded
enemies on all fronts
yet all’s quiet on every front
only when they come will we know
but they are not…

spinning whirling never stopping
alone and hopeless
surrounded and helpless
the cosmic war shall never end

Cosmic War

darting here, darting there
flying through the starry void
weapons cocked, ready to fire
upon our enemies

we’ve never seen them
but we know
we must kill them all
friends or foes

they come to us with arms out wide
to embrace their possible new allies
but we fire into the crowd
with our lasers, mow them down

they sent messages we couldn’t read
and greeted us with only friendship
but no more is there an alien race
for we have decimated them, one and all

they were different
and different is bad
so none are left by our hands
and again we float alone in space

Cosmic Trip

Spinning whirling never stopping
Cosmic trip without end
Light years gone, light years ahead
Hold on tight, it’s the ride of life

Floating in an endless void
Surrounded by all things
Never alone, always alone
Fighting for your own little piece

Waving to our neighbors
In outer space
They never call, they never write
They never turn off their lights

No longer alone in our cosmic void
They finally answer our plea
With anything but what we sought
That attack is imminent

Fighting wars with those we thought
Would bring a greater peace
The galaxy is ablaze
With misunderstanding

Spinning whirling never stopping
The galaxy is now devoid
Light years gone, light years ahead
The cosmic trip has reached its end