From the Journal of Steven Keys- January 8, 2019
Had dinner with Yumiko this evening. We cooked fresh fish over an open fire on the edge of the island. It’s weird; Nadine has only been gone for four months, but it seems like years now. I suppose that’s a side effect of your planet being invaded and occupied by an opposing force.
After, we took a walk along the beach. She very tentatively reached over and took my hand, and I admit that I jumped a little. But then I calmed myself and locked my fingers in hers and it just felt good. I was always prone to over analysis, but right now I’m asking myself what a relationship would be like in this new world we find ourselves living in. And not just for myself, either. As I sat down to write, my thoughts were drifting towards children. Why would you even consider bringing one into the world as it is right now? Yet, if we do not continue to breed and this war lingers, we risk our numbers falling and becoming an extinct species. Counterpoint: the idea of breeding merely to create cannon fodder is repugnant. What the hell is wrong with me???
Maybe I should just let this thing happen and see where it goes. We’re both adults, and we both have needs. Why think about it beyond that? If I’m being bluntly honest, the idea of her warming my bed, curled up next to my body… a little human contact would go a long way for me right now.
From the Journal of Steven Keys- January 10, 2019
The morning got off to a strange start today. I was preparing to go teach my class when a knock on the door came. It was a note asking me to head directly to Colonel Runton’s office. My initial assumption was that it couldn’t be good news. Of course, there’s rarely such a thing as good news these days, so that was a solid bet, but when I got there, he surprised me. He gave me a new assignment.
Yesterday a new contingent of teachers and scientists arrived on the island. Like many of the others, they were smuggled away from the mainland and took small boats across the water to get here. So far, we’re keeping the Omegan eyes away from us here. If we’re ever to mount a solid military response to these bastards, we can’t have them figuring it out before it’s way too late.
What Colonel told me, though, was interesting- these guys weren’t all Japanese. Two are from India, one from Pakistan, one from China, and one from France. And they aren’t all physicists or engineers; the French guy (Pettit) is a sociologist, the Paki (Pradeep) is a psychologist, and one of the Indians (a woman named Shareen) is an anthropologist. The idea is that we need to really begin gaining an understanding of our enemy if we’re going to fight back and win. So we’ll need weapons and the ability to engage them in combat, but we also need to know some basics about the Omegans themselves. Such as…
Why are they here?
Runton asked me to head up this new task force and we met immediately this afternoon. They are an interesting group, and I was fascinated to watch Shareen and Pradeep deal with one another. Their two nations have been enemies forever, and now here they are working side by side to try and save the world. But they are professionals and were able to put that animosity aside, for which I’m personally grateful. I think Pettit might have been sweating it, too. Anyway, we got started by asking ourselves the basic question of why the Omegans are here, and while we didn’t solve it right out of the gate, it was helpful to really review what they had done so far.
Take the destruction of the cities, for instance. It’s clear that they could have continued raining down death from orbit until we were completely wiped out, so why did they stop? They could have left the atmosphere a mess, but they’ve scrubbed it mostly clean. Yet there is no sign of large-scale landing, so colonization doesn’t seem to be their goal. Intelligence suggests that they haven’t done much in the way of building anything either. Their forces are scattered around the planet, and they mostly seem to be using existing structures for living purposes and headquarters.
It’s all damned confusing, frankly. But Pettit said something late in the meeting that really jumped out at as. If they aren’t looking to kill us all and move in, then there must be an object or objects more important here than humans. Logic tells us that they want something; we need to figure out just what it is. Hell, if it isn’t that important, maybe we’ll help them find it if that will get rid of them. Or maybe we can bargain with it if we find it first. Who knows?
So tomorrow we’re going to start developing a large scale map of everyplace we know them to be and look for patterns. What is the geographic territory like? What resources are nearby? What machinery are they using? What’s the weather like? Maybe if we examine every minute detail of what moves they’re making, we can find out what they want and put an end to this war while there’s still a civilization left to be saved.
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