The Visitors

Beyond the cracked sidewalk, the telephone pole with layers of flyers in a rainbow of colors, and the patch of dry brown grass, there stood a ten-foot-high concrete block wall, caked with dozens of coats of paint. There was a small shrine at its base, with burnt-out candles, dead flowers, and a few soggy teddy bears. One word of graffiti-filled the wall, red letters on a gold background: Rejoice!

Rejoice! The word was everywhere. It had been an awakening when the visitors first arrived. The visitors came when we were at our lowest. Years of war had devastated the planet. Pollution, famine and a resurgence in long-forgotten diseases now ruled. At last count, three billion laid dead throughout the world.
Governments across the world had collapsed, reorganized, collapsed, and reorganized again. We were a mess, and we had no one to blame but ourselves. The visitors changed that. We were desperate and dazzled by their technology. We were drawn in by the fact that they offered solutions. They were friendly and wanted to help.
When they first arrived, it was in two ships. They landed outside of New York City. They waited for what was left of our military to arrive before leaving their vessels. There were no more than 12 of them; they presented themselves with hands raised. They were docile and friendly. They allowed the authorities to board their ships and inspect them.
They were patient with our confusion and resistance to accept them. The visitors asked to speak to what remained of the United Nations. The east side of Manhattan Island was gone, so the countries that could send representatives met across the river in New Jersey in a hotel conference room. They never thoroughly explained their technology to us, so we still don’t know how they did it, but the visitors spoke to everyone at once without the need for a translator. They offered to help us heal the planet. They offered to heal us. They provided us with technology so that we could grow more and better crops on less land.
Most importantly, though, the visitors offered hope. Maybe we were too eager or too naïve. Perhaps we had no other choice. We asked what they wanted in return, and they said nothing. They wanted nothing in return except friendship. They told us that there were other planets out there with life. Different than both theirs and ours. Some were more advanced and some less, but there were many. They told us that a healthy Earth would benefit the greater Universe, and they wanted us to be a part of it. They promised that once we were healthy and viable once more as a species, they would introduce us to the greater Universe.
How could we say no to their offer? We couldn’t, but that didn’t stop the few skeptics among us from asking questions — those pragmatists with enough sense to know that it all seemed too good to be true. So, we asked for some proof. Some evidence that what they offered was true. They didn’t hesitate. They asked that ten of our sickest be brought to them. They told us that they would show us the way, and with that, the visitors left, returning to their ships to wait.
We went to the local hospital and asked for ten of the sickest people they had. We took those dying and brought them to the visitors. They hid nothing. They showed us the implant that they were going to use. It was tiny. It looked no larger than a piece of hard candy, those rectangular ones that came in different fruit flavors. They asked permission from the dying who could still speak. They didn’t want to force anyone. They were gentle as they made a small incision at the back of the neck and placed the implant there. They explained that the implant would attach itself to the brain stem and that the healing would be rapid. The downside was that only those “of age” could receive it because a child’s body would reject the implant and most likely kill them. They didn’t want to risk hurting us.
It was effective. Within hours the “Firsts” began to awaken. Their bodies were healing before our eyes. Cancers disappeared, arteries cleared, and long-festering wounds started to close. It was a miracle happening right before our eyes. They promised that those who received the implant would live a longer life without suffering from diseases or cancers. We believed them. How could we not? People began lining up for the implant. It became overwhelming. The visitors asked if more of their kind could come down to help facilitate the implantation process. We readily agreed, and more ships arrived. All over the globe, they began landing — larger vessels for cities and smaller ones scattered throughout the countryside.
We welcomed them, and we Rejoiced! People stopped dying and began healing. Hope began spreading, and we eagerly awaited what the visitors would show us next. They did not disappoint.
They gave us seeds. They told us that the crops would yield large amounts of food on minimal land. Again, everything they said proved true. Within two months of planting, new and exotic varieties of plants began maturing.
The food was delicious. When analyzed by our scientists, these new foods proved to contain everything needed for life. Meat became unnecessary. Our new crops produced more and better food than we could have ever imagined; they flourished in every climate. It was miracle number 2.
People began to believe. Cults began springing up all over the world; cults that worshipped our benefactors. The visitors didn’t encourage the adoration, but they certainly didn’t discourage it either. They mingled among the populace, speaking to groups large and small about their homeland and the beauty it possessed. They told tales of how a superior race visited them four Millennium ago and how they too had benefited from their visitor’s altruism.
These cults began to merge and form more prominent cults, and if our history has taught us anything, it’s that when a cult becomes large enough, it ceases to be a cult and becomes a religion. Our traditional beliefs began to break down as more and more people became believers in the “One True,” as it became known. Our standard greetings fell to the wayside as “One True” became the preferred greeting. Traditional churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples converted over to the “One True.” We became believers, and how could we not? They had saved us from ourselves, and they were leading us to a better us; They were bringing us into the fold of the greater Universe.
For ten years, we flourished. The visitors helped us reorganize our governments with a focus on unity with the greater Universe. Our birth rate exploded as people across the globe lived healthier lives. Our population reached pre-war numbers within four years and almost doubled within eight. Our crops were producing more food than we could eat, and, most importantly, there was no more war. Peace reigned, and poverty was becoming a thing of the past. There were no more diseases of significance, and people were grateful. When a child became “of age,” they received the implant and immediately became believers when they felt the benefits.
They told us that we could join the greater Universe within a generation at the rate we were going. They told us that it took them three generations before they were ready. They were impressed by our willingness to comply. It showed maturity, they said.
Then the rest came. These new visitors entered our skies in numbers that we couldn’t comprehend. Thousands upon thousands of ships descended from the skies. We thought our day to join the ranks of the greater Universe had finally arrived, but that wasn’t the reality. The new visitors that showed up were less friendly and more aggressive. They began making demands and not merely suggestions. They began taking the excess crops we had harvested, claiming that it would benefit other worlds. These new visitors put the strongest of us into groups and sent us across the globe to begin mining Bismuth. Most of us had never even heard of Bismuth before, but it was vital to them. They never told us its purpose.
The reality of our new overlords set in about five months after the arrival of the latest batch of these more aggressive visitors. It was at a Bismuth mine site outside of La Paz, Bolivia. Because of the implant, we didn’t tire as much, so they worked us longer and harder hours with few breaks. Some miners became angry at this treatment and demanded that they receive more breaks and better working conditions. The visitors disagreed. They felt that if you could work, you should, so they made an example of these miners. They aired the punishment live across the globe. The visitors lined the miners up and explained that we were not grateful for all they had done and they were not happy with us. One by one, the miners fell dead. The implant that the visitors had given us had caused a small explosion at the brain stem, killing them instantly.
From that point forward, all pretenses of friendliness from the visitors disappeared. They were not our benevolent benefactors; they were our slavers. They had seduced us with candies and trinkets, and we never saw it coming. We were fools, and they had us now. We couldn’t remove the implants because they would go off, and they instantly killed anyone who fought back. Significant uprisings occurred around the globe, but they were always brought down quickly by the visitors. The most successful rebellion took place in Mumbai, India, and that only lasted 15 minutes. After ten years of willingly handing over our lives to them, everyone had the implant, and no one could fight back.
They even knew (how they knew we never figured out) when a child came “of age,” and now, instead of willingly receiving the implant, it was forced upon them. They told us once, in the beginning, that children not “of age” couldn’t handle the implant, and that’s why they never received it. We never found out if this was true or not. All we knew was that our children enjoyed a few years of relative “freedom.”
Five years passed; we became docile and entirely subservient to our masters. They worked us to the bone, and they worked us more because we tired less and stayed healthy. We were stripping our planet for them. Rumors circulated that there was no greater Universe and that the visitors just moved from world to world, stripping it of whatever they needed. If they came across a sentient species, the visitors did what they were doing to us. They had the power and the weapons to destroy us and take what they wanted, but they enjoyed the cruelty of it all. They enjoyed the subjugation and torture. They enjoyed death.
Our fire had died out, and we needed a spark to reignite our desire for life.
That spark flickered in a quiet square in Kinshasa in what used to be the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A spontaneous uprising arose, and it was put down almost immediately like all of the rest. Twenty-five men and women laid dead in that square within a minute, the rest scattered as the visitors threatened more deaths.
A boy watched as his parents were murdered right in front of him. He watched as the backs of their necks bulged, and they fell lifeless to the ground, his father’s gun falling beside him. The boy, who would simply become known as “The Kid,” became enraged. He started to scream at the visitors. They looked at him, confused that a child would dare speak out. I think they were almost amused. “The Kid” kept screaming as he moved closer to his now-dead father; they continued to watch him.
“The Kid” kept screaming as he knelt next to his dad, acting as the grieving child. They never saw it coming. “The Kid” grabbed his dad’s gun and quickly fired off four shots landing three into two of the visitors. They dropped, and from what we’ve heard, the look of anguish and confusion on their faces as the life left their bodies was beautiful. For his part, “The Kid” never flinched. He called the other children, the ones who had watched the uprising fall apart, to arms. He rallied them as they took guns off dead bodies and began firing wildly towards the visitors. The children were poor shots, but the shooting had its desired effect. The visitors pulled back out of Kinshasa to regroup.
There was silence in that square as the kids and those adults still standing tried comprehending what had just happened. For the first time since their arrival, humans had scored their first victory. Slowly life began stirring. Cheers began to spring up. Someone picked up “The Kid” and lifted him above their shoulders. He had been the first to kill one of Them, and now that they knew how he wouldn’t be the last. He was a hero. They carried him towards the middle of the now gathering crowd. Someone tossed a milk crate at his feet, and someone else shoved a bullhorn in his hand.
“The Kid” got up onto a milk crate and raised his hand. A murmur went through the crowd, and then it fell silent, except for a few people shouting words of encouragement at him. “The Kid” acknowledged them with a nod and a shy smile. In the full light of day, he looked less angry and more determined. He waited until people stopped shouting. A siren rang out, maybe five or ten blocks away. “The Kid” raised the bullhorn, pressed the button, and began to speak:
“They thought that we wouldn’t fight back; they thought that we couldn’t fight back! They thought that they could control us; THEY CAN’T CONTROL US ALL! THEY CAN’T KEEP US FROM FIGHTING! THEY WERE WRONG! WE WILL FIGHT BACK, AND WE WILL WIN!”
The noise from the crowd rose from a murmur to a deafening scream with each word “The Kid” spoke. They cheered, they wept, they believed for that brief moment. It wasn’t long before They began pushing back, though. The adults urged the children to flee, so the children ran but not out of fear. They ran so they could plan so that they could organize and begin to fight back.
Kinshasa became ground zero. It became an urban war zone with the children fighting a guerrilla campaign that our visitors were ill-prepared to fight. The children improvised bombs, and they set traps. The children were smart enough never to face Them in open battle.
Slowly the children began pushing Them out of the city. The visitors couldn’t reinforce the city either because word had spread quickly through back channels, and children began rebelling throughout the world.
Our visitors had two things working against them. One was that even though they could kill every adult they found, the adults weren’t the ones fighting, and once this rebellion was crushed, they would need every human left to continue to grow their food and work their mines. It was counter-productive for them to kill their slaves. The other thing They had working against them was that they were highly disciplined. They thought logically, and they acted logically. Our visitors were organic beings, but they acted robotic in the way they operated. They couldn’t adjust as they should have for this type of fight, and they couldn’t understand how or why these children were fighting. They couldn’t think like a child because a child’s mind is not logical. A child’s mind is a glorious mess of unorthodox thinking, improvisation, and little fear. A child’s mind is imaginative. Our visitors were not prepared.
“The Kid” died ten months after becoming a hero. It was a tragedy that almost collapsed the rebellion, but “The Kid” denied the visitors the satisfaction of killing him, which made all the difference. They never got to make an example of him. He died, sacrificing himself for the other children who followed and revered him. “The Kid” was clever. He was able to draw an entire platoon of Them into a small square. He had rigged the buildings with enough explosives to bring them all down. But the trigger malfunctioned. “The Kid” couldn’t miss this opportunity, and he wasn’t willing to sacrifice one of his fighters. So, he went into one of the buildings himself. He triggered the explosives without hesitation. The buildings exploded out and rained down on Them. “The Kid’s” body was never recovered.
He became a martyr and the face of the war. “For the Kid!” became the rallying cry throughout the world. Revolutionaries began putting up black and white posters everywhere that showed the iconic image of the kid standing on that milk crate with his fist raised in defiance. From Seattle to Shanghai and everywhere in-between, “The Kid” stood for strength and freedom.
For two years, the children fought as hard as they could wherever they could, but there just weren’t enough of them. A stalemate of sorts developed. Small cells of children would strike out and kill some visitors, but more would just take their place. The visitors seemed endless, and our children were finite. Hope began to fade. Mine production began to pick up, and it looked as if this would be their new normal.
The children needed a break. They needed a way to regain the advantage. The children were a loose network of cells sharing info when they could, but for the most part, they were all independent. So, each cell worked on a solution, something that could turn the tide of the fight. It was a small cell outside of Liverpool, England, that came up with a plan. They studied the ships and noticed a small and barely noticeable ventilation shaft towards the top of the vessel. It was tiny, too small for most of the hardened fighters in their cell.
The job fell to a tiny six-year-old girl named Gemma, a volunteer from Hunt’s Cross, who had been with the cell for only three months. That was one thing that was consistent throughout the children’s cells. Every mission, every shot fired was voluntary. No child was forced to do anything they weren’t ready to do. The plan was for Gemma to get into the ship through the ventilation shaft with an improvised bomb, set off the timer, and then get back out as quickly as possible before it went off.
With nerves of steel, Gemma scaled the outside of the ship until she found the ventilation shaft. She slowly worked her way down until she entered a room. She thought of quickly hiding the bomb and getting back out, but something stopped her. Gemma felt compelled to look around. She had no idea what she was looking for until she found it. It was a peculiar machine. Rudimentary really in its design, but she was sure she knew its purpose. She studied it for a few minutes before climbing back up through the shaft and out into the night. The bomb was still in her possession.
For the next ten nights, she climbed back into that ship with a notebook and a pencil. She meticulously drew this machine, trying not to miss any details. On the 10th night, when Gemma felt that she had drawn everything she could, she placed the bomb in a corner and hurried out of the ship. Minutes after Gemma was free; the ship exploded in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. Dozens of Them were slaughtered in seconds, but that mattered little compared to what Gemma had in her hands. In those tiny delicate hands, there were drawings of a machine that she believed could safely remove the implant.
Word spread quickly, and cells everywhere began trying to build the machine from the pictures. Volunteer after volunteer died as each device failed to remove the implant safely. Seven months and countless deaths later, a cell outside of Singapore successfully removed the implant of a 25-year-old woman. The schematics of their device spread quickly throughout the network, and within months, our numbers grew as more and more people “of age” were freed from their bondage.
We knew what we were giving up by having the implant removed. Those of us old enough to remember knew. We knew that disease would return to our bodies and that the cancers would begin to grow again. We knew our bodies would again become tired and weak. We understood all of this, but that didn’t stop us because we knew that living one year as a free human was worth 80 in slavery.
As more and more humans joined the revolution, the tide of the war began to turn. We were able to shift from guerrilla tactics to all-out war. The more of them we defeated, the more of their weapons we could get our hands on.
We adopted the illogical tactics of the children. We kept them in positions of leadership; there was no time for the arrogance of age. The children had been the warriors for years, and they knew what needed to be done. They were the veterans.
There’s a saying from one of the old religions. I don’t remember it exactly, and the old books are long gone, so I may never get it right, but it goes something like — The wolf and lamb will live together. The calf with the lion and the leopard with the goat and a child will lead them all. — These children led us. They were our heroes.
As the war turned in our favor, the visitors began to get desperate. In areas where the extraction machines weren’t finished in time, there were mass executions as they began pulling back. We lost so many good people, but the implant ultimately backfired on the visitors. Because of the implant, our numbers were overwhelming. There were more of us now than ever before in history.
Over every terrain across the globe, we fought as one. We fought for our families; we fought for the living and the dead. We fought for our homes and our precious land; we fought together, as one, for our planet. We fought for the survival of our species.
We pushed them back. We killed as many as we could. We destroyed as many of their vessels as we could, so they couldn’t escape. We were brutal and vicious in victory. We were justifiably angry, but many of us still regret our actions towards the end. We were unnecessarily cruel. We were like them, and we knew it, but it didn’t stop us.
The last holdout was in the foothills outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. It was the visitors’ last stand, and it ended as poorly as Custer’s did. We decimated their forces. One final ship was able to take off with what remained of the visitors. As we watched that last ship depart, cheers rose among the fighters. Word quickly spread around the world. We had won. We wept, we cheered, we celebrated as one. We Rejoiced!
The rebuilding took time. We were starting from scratch in a way. Our old ways were gone, so we needed new ways. There was no more country versus country, race versus race, rich versus poor; now it was the visitors versus us. We are now united as one people as the old allegiances slipped away. We organized a World Council that now meets in Istanbul. We are learning from our mistakes of the past and forging ahead.
A 30-foot statue now stands in Kinshasa. It depicts “The Kid” as he stood that day on that milk crate with his fist raised in the air. It stands as a reminder of what we are capable of in this life. It stands as a reminder that humans are one people and that we can never go back to the old ways of pettiness. It stands in defiance to complacency. It stands for humanity.
They will be back. We know that. We know that we have only won the battle and not the war; we know the visitors will return with more fighters and deadlier weapons. We know it will be a fight for our lives and the future of humanity.
We know we may not win, but we also know that we will be ready the next time they visit.