I don’t remember where it started.
All I know is that I am now standing in a line with my family, waiting to be judged by some extraterrestrial force. We’re on a massive ship, presumably floating somewhere between earth and the moon. It’s a big open foyer–its walls and columns and ceiling all made of black steel– with multiple lines of people going into different chambers, and windows all along the outer walls. Outside of them, all there is to see is black sky and tiny little blips of light that are already-dead stars.
We’re getting closer to the entrance of our chamber, and on the far side there is a creature scanning thumbprints on a large cylindrical machine. I notice there’s another line of humans coming from the other side of the chamber, hinting that this massive ship is double the size I had previously thought.
We’re approaching the creature, and I finally get a good look at these entities that have sucked seemingly every human on earth into the sky for their judgement day. Is this…armageddon? Is it fucking ALIENS that judge us during the rapture? I don’t think it’s the rapture… but it’s almost definitely the end.
The creature scanning thumbprints must be no taller than 5 feet, and it isn’t built as oddly as I was expecting in all my years imagining what aliens actually look like. It has black, leathery but shiny skin, and a silver iridescence. It has 4 limbs, like humans, two “arms” and two “legs”. Only, the arms have tiny extra hands coming out of where the ulna would be, and the hands look more like black skeletons. Its legs look incredibly strong, with large thighs and feet that look like a frog’s, leading me to assume these things could jump and run very fast; either that, or evolution allowed them to skip the whole ankle thing since they probably come from somewhere with little to no gravity. It has crablike little eyes and two small antennae sticking out of the top of its head.
This one in particular is holding a clipboard in its right main hand, and a pen in its tiny partner hand, while using its left two hands to usher in the next human. It’s almost my turn– I agree to go first before my sisters and my mom, because for some reason I’m not afraid– and I still don’t know what they’re judging. While I approach the creature closer, I begin to hear a tiny clicking sound, seeming to come from the thing’s antennae as they rub together curiously. As I get ushered up to scan my thumb, another family steps in from the line from the other side of the chamber, and I look to the creature. It’s clearly my turn, and because I don’t know what these creatures are gathering on us (maybe they’re trying to build an army or something?), I don’t want to appear weak.
“Back up, it’s our turn, you can go after,” I say to the girl who walked up first and attempted to press her thumb to the pad on the cylindrical machine.
“Fuck off,” she says, and attempts again to press her finger.
Listen, I get it, we’re all freaking out. But again, what these…things want from us, I don’t know. I look to the creature again, its pen hand ready to write, as if it’s curious about what I’m going to do next. I grab the girl’s hand and yank her away. She tried to defend herself, cocks her fist, and to my own surprise, I catch it mid air, stick out a straight arm, and push her onto her back. The creature nods in approval, scribbles something in a scrawl that I can’t read, and ushers me to press my thumb. I do, and then walk through the doorway past it and wait for my mom and sisters to come in behind me.
The room we’re in now seems to be a large waiting chamber. Families sit together in small circles all over the floor; some lean against the black sparkling windows, looking out into the nothingness. All there is to do is wait.
We wait and wait and wait. There is no way to tell how much time has passed, when an ear shattering gong sound rings through the entire ship. It shakes the ground, and those of us who are standing fall to the floor with a collective shout.
“Bombs…it’s bombs!” I hear someone shout.
“Bombs?!” another voice shrieks as we see a large metal material the size of a semi truck float closer to the ship.
I pull my sisters and mom close and we all get on the floor, curled up with our hands behind our heads. The gong sounds again, staggering my thought process.
I look up for a moment and see a large opening appear in the ceiling of the ship, and the large metal bomb sinks into the chamber. The floor we’re sitting on shifts, pulling the circular room into an asterisk shape, with all of the humans in the “arms” and the bomb at the center. A large metal wall forms between us humans and the bomb at the focal point.
“They aren’t trying to kill us,” Mia says.
“What, how do you know?” my mom asks, as Sophie and I wonder the same thing.
“They’re protecting us… I think they’re going to destroy the earth.”
We can only hope that she’s right, because a ticking sound has ensued.
I curl back up into a ball, my head in my hands against the floor. I feel fear. Real fear, for the first time in my life, that I am about to die here with those I love. My heart feels like it’s up in my throat, my body is trembling, my face feels like it’s on fire.
Then a large crack. I can feel the vibration of the outer ring of the explosion getting closer and closer. I hear screams echoing around me, those of my family, those of strangers, those of myself. It’s coming, faster every millisecond, and suddenly, it passes like a wave.
I feel no pain. Am I dead? My face still feels hot, is my skin melting off? Am I in shock?
After a moment, I lift my head from my hands, and look around to see the rest of the humans doing the same. We’re alive? We’re alive! We’re all alive!
I manage to crawl over to a window through the legs of my fellow confused humans, and see a smoldering rock floating through space, that I once would have recognized as earth. They did not destroy the entire planet, only the outer crust. Again, we wait to see what will become of us next, and my family and I decide that these creatures came to save earth from humans, but want to give us another chance, we think? That would be the only reason that they haven’t killed us yet, and removed us from the planet before pillaging its lands. I think back to the girl I attacked in the thumb-scanning chamber, and feel a twinge of guilt, seeing as it was probably pointless…