The saucers didn't land. They manifested - silent, sudden - across time zones.

In moments, they were everywhere. Petare, Venezuela. Kolwezi, DR Congo. McDowell County, West Virginia. Rafah, Palestine.

Wherever the world had learned to look away, the discs appeared: over mass graves and poisoned rivers, over bombed-out hospitals and gang-controlled streets, over every forgotten corner of engineered suffering.

News drones buzzed. Armies mobilized. Pundits screamed salvation or end-times. For two days, nothing happened.

On the third day, every saucer spoke - one name per place.

"Bring us Mateo Flores."
"Bring us Mama Naledi."
"Bring us Mary-Louise Henderson."
"Bring us Jamal Khalidi."

They were found - along with thousands of others. Dragged from sleep or work or prayer. Escorted toward impossible light, hollow-eyed and trembling.

Inside each vessel, the experience was the same. No monsters. Only a profound, observing presence.

"Speak of your world," they requested, in a voice that resonated within their bones.

And they did.

Mary-Louise spoke of mountains gutted for coal and gas, poverty, opioid overdoses and buried sons. Jamal chronicled neighborhoods bombed, stolen orchards, checkpoints and the mass graves filled with children.

From Mateo came the reality of a broken nation where gangs replaced hope and revolution fed only the powerful. Mama Naledi's account was of poisoned rivers, stolen children and blood turned into cobalt to fuel the devices of the modern world.

Thousands of others, chosen across the globe, spoke too. There were many different languages but one shared pain.

As they paused, each felt something unfamiliar: not pity, but understanding. It was 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 said, "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."

Then came silence. Deeper than the void between galaxies.

"Testimony evaluated," the voices said, everywhere at once.

"Judgment is rendered."

In that instance, the sky tore open. Tens of thousands of additional saucers descended in perfect, terrible silence.

Living light erased tanks, jets, silos - every icon of power - instantly. The waves continued, sweeping the entire planet, entering every crevice.

A conversation cut mid-word. A key turned in a door that would never open. A half-eaten meal.

Humanity vanished. No sound. No resistance. Gone.

Inside the first vessels stood the chosen. The warm empathy they once felt was no longer present. It was an illusion - a projection shaped by their own desperate needs.

The same ominous light now formed before each of them - final, impartial, inexorable. One by one, they too vanished - witnesses to judgment, not exempt from it. Only Mary-Louise remained.

She looked at her hosts - catatonic, broken by the horror she had seen. She fell to her knees. A few guttural words escaped. It was humanity’s last testimony.

"We failed."

Then she was gone.

Judgment was final.