They Heard Our Cries
The saucers didn't land. They manifested. Silent. Sudden. Across time zones. Growing in number.
Foggy Holler, West Virginia: Mary-Louise Henderson dropped a bucket by her tar-patched trailer. The saucer squatted where Carter's corn used to grow. Soldiers circled it, ashen-faced. News drones whined overhead.
Outside Rafah, Palestine: Jamal Khalidi froze, clutching the frayed photograph of his children. The sleek disc hovered above the rubble of his sister's home. He had gone through so much in the last few years. What did this mean?
Petare, Caracas, Venezuela: Sixteen year-old Mateo Flores froze on the rooftop where he slept, staring at the disc hovering over the collapsed water tower. Below, gang gunfire crackled like fireworks. The craft’s light made the peeling murals of revolutionary heroes look like ghosts.
Near Kolwezi, Congo: Mama Naledi paused, the heavy cobalt ore basket straining her back. The craft rested beside the poisoned river, humming softly. The mine's distant rumble seemed to falter.
They appeared in thousands of other places: over Honduras' narco-state terror. Chicago's neglected South Side. Haiti's earthquake-shattered landscape. Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar overflowing with refugees. Papua New Guinea's brutal poverty. The Rural Mississippi Delta's deep-rooted hardship.
It seemed endless - slums, refugee camps, sacrifice zones - our hidden shame all highlighted by the silent visitors.
For two days, the world held its breath. Pundits screamed "Salvation!" or "Annihilation!". Social media fractured. Armies mobilized, impotent against the silent visitors.
Then... on the third day, at the same time - alien voices called out for a single person at each of the saucer's thousands of locations:
"Bring us Mary-Louise Henderson.""Bring us Jamal Khalidi."
"Bring us Mateo Flores."
"Bring us Mama Naledi."
They were found. All of them. Dragged from sleep, interrupted at work, pulled from prayer or caught mid-stride in lives already stretched thin. Each escorted toward the impossible light - some stumbling in pajamas, others squinting against sudden glare, all hollow-eyed with disbelief.
Inside each vessel, the experience was identical. No monsters, only a profound, observing presence. "Speak of your world," the voice urged, resonating within their bones.
And they spoke. Plainly. Of the specific, grinding agony of a world they were forced to live in. The theme was a common one among the thousands of the chosen.
Mary-Louise (Foggy Holler, West Virginia): "They tore the mountains open for coal, then gas - fattenin' themselves while we starved. Left us with black lungs, flooded hollers, and sons in the ground or strung out. The men in suits never came down here - except to lie. They call us lazy, but it's their greed that bled us dry."
Jamal (Rafah, Palestine): "They erased our villages; stole our orchards and homes. They put checkpoints on our roads, bullets in our bedrooms. When we bury our children, they call it self-defense. When we speak, they call it hate. We are punished for existing."
Mateo (Petare, Venezuela): "They broke the country and left us the pieces. Politicians stuffed suitcases; bankers fled. My brother joined the gangs - blood or be bloodied. Now we trade in bullets while the generals feast. They promised revolution... but only the rats got fat."
Mama Naledi (Kolwezi, Congo): "They dig with our bones. They poison our water, steal our children, and call it trade. Our blood powers their cities. They do not see us - only the metal. Even the silence here has sorrow in it."
Four lives. Four tongues. One shared pain.
And in every vessel across the globe, thousands of others spoke the same truth. Different words. Different scars. But the same wound.
Each paused as they recounted their lives - some trembling, others numb. And in that pause... they all felt it: a deep, resonant understanding radiating from the presence that listened quietly.
It wasn’t pity. They were sure of that! It was pure, undeniable empathy. They felt seen - truly seen - for the first time in their lives.
Emboldened, they leaned forward, voices thick with years steeped in struggle and sorrow, echoing the same terrible truth.
"We suffer," they cried - not in one voice, but in thousands - raw and broken, each shaped by war, hunger, and loss. "Not because we must... but because they will it so. The greedy. The indifferent. The ones who turn cities to ash, hunger into law and pain into policy."
Afterwards... there was silence. Deeper than the void between stars.
Then... the words resonated across the globe. They echoed on every screen, heard through every mind.
"Judgement. Rendered."
"Your time of choice is ended. Ours begins."
Suddenly, the sky tore open. Tens of thousands of additional saucers descended in perfect, terrible silence. Beams of cold, surgical light lanced downward. Tanks, jets, missile silos, gun emplacements - the icons of power - vanished, dissolved like salt in water. Instantly.
The beams evolved into waves - sweeping outward from every craft. Across every continent and ocean, from the tallest peaks to the buried veins of cities.
Men, women, and children - everywhere - gone. There was no sound, no resistance, no time for screams.
Inside the thousands of vessels that made first contact, they stood - Mary-Louise, Jamal, Mateo, Mama Naledi and the thousand others chosen.
The warm empathy they once felt was gone. It was an illusion - a projection shaped by their own needs.
Before each, a light began to form, faint at first, slowly growing brighter. One by one, they vanished - until only Mary-Louise remained.
She looked at her hosts - aghast, broken by the horror she had seen. She fell to her knees. Only a guttural gasp escaping... Barely a sound. Barely a word.
"Oh..."
And then she was gone.
In that moment, the experiment ended.
In time, the observers would try again... to replenish Earth.
EPITAPH
Submitted for your approval: On a quiet planet, orbiting an unremarkable star, there sits a monument - not of stone, but of absence. A species called humanity.
It was given hands to build, minds to reason and hearts to care. And in the end, it was judged not for its failures but for its indifference to suffering.
You have just witnessed the final chapter... slipping beyond the threshold, into that shadowed realm where reason and nightmare meet.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
attribution: 640kb.neocities.org
Date: 04 june 2025
Date: 05 june 2025 (ver 1.1)