The assassin looked just as she had in my childhood dreams. Only this time she was looking directly back at me. I turn to run and feel the sting of her arrow in my back. Then the world fades to grey.
I wake up in a dense forest with trees taller and thicker than I ever imagined I would see. Trees bigger than anything in such a setting in my realty. Blinking as my brain attempts to cope a shadow even darker than the dense but dappled canopy above falls over me. The assassin pulls down her balaclava. “You’re in my world now.”
She takes me into a walled city. The wall looks like it is made of steel blocks. It reminds me of Legos. She brings me through a city of beauty, elogance, and harmony. In the center is a palace. The walls here are only waist high and there are no guards. We enter the palace and are sent to a mid-sized chamber.
A man enters. He is dressed in pants and a tunic. He wears a red robe open in the front. His skin is a dark and mottled green that is still reminiscent of the pale blue of the assassin.
He looks me up and down. “This is the one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She saw you.”
“As always. Since she was a child. Every time I go to that plane I feel her mind on me.”
“I will take this to the Council.”
It was just as it was in the films, but nothing like the movies. The air was hazy with dust and ripe with the smell of spilled blood. The earth broke open. The seas boiled. People on the streets sucked into the void. Those in buildings captured by the hypnotic pull of the light.
A single hurricane engulfs the entirety of Central America and sits for days lashing the countries with wind and filling the streets with water. A polar vortex so cold that any time spent outside is death stretches from south of Chicago to the Northern Territories. Tulsa, Memphis, both Kansas Cities, and more lost to massive tornadoes. From northern California through British Colombia lost to earthquake and tidal wave. Australia engulfed in drought and flame. Volcanic eruptions in Europe and along the Ring of Fire. Floods, fire, landslides, and lightening storms in India. Scandinavia, Russia, and northern China a sheet of ice while northern Africa suffers heatwaves, drought, and desertfication. Overcrowded refugee centers spread disease. Countries unable to help their own people. Starvation. There is no escape.
The assassin and I go underground. “Is this what they were talking about?”
She shrugs. “It is a major event.”
“Why send you? Why send me?”
The assassin didn’t roll her preternaturally large black eyes but I knew she wanted to. “I follow the chaos. Since you could see me when you shouldn’t the Council believes you are somehow connected to me and the events to come.”
“To come? You mean this isn’t it?”
“It’s part of it.”
“Are we meant to stop it?”
“It is amazing that your species evolved intelligence,” at a muffled cough from one of the other alien leaders it self corrected. “An elevated sentience. Your planet has one of the most diverse ecosystems we have ever encountered. It also has one the most extreme environments we have seen. The evolutionary competition here has an elegant brutality to it. It really is no wonder you turned out the way you have.”
“Every simulation that began with a peaceful overture ended the same way, in violence.” The cougher taking over the narrative. “Originally we planned to only take enough to salvage the race. About 300 people from each culture. But while we were debating your short lived species escalated the situation by reproducing to the point of extinction.”
“To give the current ecosystem a fighting chance we decided billions of you needed to go. Your barely evolved state justified a culling.”
“You did this? You set off the Apocalypse?!?”
The original speaker answers, “I argued for a nice, quiet plague. I was overruled. Your people decided their fate themselves. This is the result of what you have done to your environment. And each other. We’ve just accelerated the consequences.” He shakes his head sadly. “Humans show such flashes of wonder. But it is always wrapped in layers of savagery.”
“What happens next?”
“Your people, though short lived, are adaptable and prolific.” The cougher explains. “By the end of the decade to come there should be millions of survivors left scattered throughout the planet. More than necessary in my opinion. Over the next few earth centuries we will monitor your people’s progress to ensure that the situation has been correctly adjusted. “
“If we can’t be fixed?”
“The race will be terminated.”
“You’ll destroy us?”
“Not all of you. A few thousand will be kept in zoological facilities under strictly controlled circumstances for experimentation and observation.
“But you need not worry about this. Your mental connection with Amlia has provoked our interest. Until we understand it you will remain separated from your people.”
“If this is not what I want?”
“Child, we are not asking.”
Or
At the moment we have no places for such a species. Until we locate suitable –
“Isolated.”
“Yes, until isolated planets can be found we will process your people and place you in stasis.”
“Hold on. Why do you keep saying your people and what do you mean planets?”
“Planets because there are too many of you for one. Also, based on your people’s violence fraught history it has been decided to separate them. Three billion will stay on earth, and the other four billion will be separated and placed on two different planets.”
Another alien spoke excitedly, “It’s all a grand experiment. Earth is the control group. It will be left unaltered. We are terraforming an earthlike planet and will be placing two billion of you on this world, after your people have been altered. Mostly mental, but a few physical adjustments. Really, your reproduction rate is out of control.”
“The third group will be placed on a planet much more stable than your earth. A less competitive, more supportive, environment. They will remain predominantly unaltered. The goal is to see if the issues with your species are a result of your environment or something internal. And, of course, whether you can be fixed.”
“If we can’t be fixed?”
“The experiment will be terminated.”
“You’ll destroy us?”
“Not all of you. A few thousand will be kept in zoological facilities under strictly controlled circumstances. But you need not worry about this. Your mental connection with Amlia has provoked our interest. Until we understand it you will remain separated from your people.”
“If this is not what I want?”
“Child, we are not asking.”