From the Journal of Steven Keys- August 19, 2018
I’ve spent years bemoaning the state of humanity. Ridiculous wars fought over small territories. Even more ridiculous wars predicated upon the belief that one side’s religion was better than the other side’s religion. Hunger running rampant. Disease spreading unchecked through impoverished nations. Never missed a chance to pick up a sign and join a march to try and save the world. I’ve always been willing to pit my lefty credentials against anyone else’s.
Hell, I’m a college professor. WAS a college professor. In linguistics! God knows that the righties had no use for people like me.
Until today. Today, all of those people I’ve considered war mongers and hate bringers have asked me to pick up a gun and fight. And I didn’t even hesitate in saying yes.
The Omegans have been dispersing themselves throughout most major cities left across the planet. From the intelligence that’s leaked back to us here in Flagstaff, they’re pretty entrenched. But our military leaders seem to think that they’ve done us a favor along the way.
After they landed last month, they began constructing those weird machines I mentioned before. Well, it’s become clear what they are. Lots of folks had believed they were bombs or some other doomsday device. Instead, they’ve proven to be some sort of massive atmospheric scrubber system. They’ve been filtering and repairing the atmosphere! And rumors suggest that they dropped a few in the oceans, too. The air is breathable again! And once rains kick in, the freshwater supplies should start being useable again!
I, of course, thought this was great news, but Ed- The Human Bummer, as I like to call him- swears differently. “This is the worst possible news,” he swore to me. “This means that they’ve done this before. Otherwise, why carry that equipment from fuck knows where across the galaxy? Why do it at all, unless you need the water for something, and you need the air cleaned for a particular purpose?”
“It would have been easiest to just let us die out and take over from there.”
The more I think about it, the more I realize he’s probably right. Goddammit, Ed. Stop being right.
Anyway, at today’s briefing, we had a visit from a military commander in from a base somewhere in the Nevada desert. He explained that, with the atmosphere becoming safe again, we (humanity, I presume) would begin launching counter-offensives soon. They would not, however, be on a massive scale. Nukes had been ruled out, the prevailing thought being that scorching the planet and leaving nothing for ourselves would defeat the purpose. Mid-range stuff was also a shaky approach- the Omegans looked to be solid in the armor department. A few brave souls had tried, but even a 50 caliber bullet had proved unable to penetrate their defenses. A couple of battleships had launched missiles against their space cruisers, but the impacts caused just enough damage to annoy the Omegans into destroying their source.
What this man explained to us was very simple: we were going to have to revert to the basics.
Guerilla warfare. Sneak attacks. Tactics banned by every civilized nation on the planet. His words sent a chill up my spine: “Each and every one of you, no matter what you did in your lives a month ago, is something new now. You are all terrorists.”
We are all terrorists. The last seventeen years in the U.S., we have lived in constant fear of anyone using that word to describe themselves. Presidential speeches have demonized terrorists as the ultimate thing that should scare us into submission. And now we were being asked to embrace the methods and ideals behind the boogeyman.
Nadine did not handle the suggestion well. Not at all.
She seems to be growing more fragile every day. Every night, she wakes up screaming out for her parents. Some of the people we’re sharing quarters with have gotten extremely angry about it, but I can see sympathy and pity in the eyes of others. Their own dreams are obviously littered with the corpses of their loved ones; it’s just been a quieter journey.
I talked to her tonight about asking the doc for sleeping pills or antidepressants but she just shook me off and rolled away from me. Hopefully, after she’s had some time to think about the things we heard today, she’ll perk up a bit. I certainly did.
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