An Invasion of Green Aliens

Dear Tristan,

I don't believe you'll receive this, situation being what it is around here, but I thought it'd be best to reflect on what little I've gleaned from my experience resisting the invasion. To record it for posterity, with the hope that some clue resides within my observations, that may be of use if society ever reemerges from its current cruel masters.

In one sense this catastrophe is a relief. My generation's been patiently, anxiously waiting our entire life for the collapse of the global society. If it wasn't nuclear war and winter, it was bound to be ecological collapse (whether a lack of biodiversity – like the food chain collapsing when a critical species goes extinct, or the creation of an inhospitable earth through global warming, sea level rise, and a super-heated atmosphere like Venus), antibiotic resistance, the second coming of Christ, a devastating WW III occasioned by religious hatred in the Middle East, a pandemic whether by Nature's invention or our own, a White Sky caused by the disintegration of the moon by a rogue black hole, an asteroid impact, a giant solar flare, a super-volcano explosion like the caldera in Yellowstone, or an alien invasion from outer space or some other humanity annihilating calamity.

With all these possible anxieties (and more), it's a relief to finally experience the apocalypse even if it only approaches inch by inch and yard by yard.

I noticed it first where my lawn meets the woods. Down where the shade ceases and the sun reigns. In retrospect I must have seen this alien before, but its existence had failed to impinge on my consciousness. I didn't realize the creeping, subversive threat was already spreading its tendrils across the United States.

At first I gladly joined the fight, enlisting my neighbors as allies against the invasion. We wielded whatever we could find close at hand; shovels and shears. The enemy seemed to die beneath our tools, but it was August and we didn't realize its death was only slumber, for it needed the Spring and Summer sun to fight with full strength. In this sense, the enemy was like a strange permutation of those great Victorian villains of the night.

The next spring it return, and we cut it back again with great slashes, but this time, it resurfaced within days, undaunted by our pathetic tools. In desperation we turned to weapons of war, weapons of mass destruction. These inflicted a significant number of friendly fire incidents, wounding those on the front lines, but

When the enemy receded for the fall, we began digging the earth, creating moats, between us and the enemies fibrous fortifications. We thought our defenses would impeded its movement in the spring, but was were wrong.

Next year they ambushed us. During the preceding Spring, Summer and fall, the enemy'd dug tunnels and appeared from behind, putting our trenches to naught.

It was some time in the second year, that I was alerted to the progress of the foreign invasion across the State. Enacted so silently, so skillfully, it might more rightly have been termed an infiltration, as the enemy stood in plain sight, beside other, more respectable citizens of the natural community. But before the enemy had withdrawn its mask of peace and announced the end of mankind as its ultimate goal. I was one the of the minority, initiated as a witness the danger, one of the useless, bleating, unheeded Kassandras. Indeed my former acquaintances, began to believe me afflicted by some strange malady of insanity, but no, it was they who couldn't see the end of the quintessential American yard even though its end was approaching day by day.

In that third year we surrendered our forward position, retreating with the vain hope of staunching the invasion before it could reach our houses. It had become a flood of green, lapping at the cement and cinder blocks which formed the base of our fortresses. Outside only the tallest man could keep their head above the new tide, while others swam beneath its waving surface.

With their victory complete outright war was abandoned. Now we were the minority, but resistance did not cease entirely. The war became one of intelligence and investigation. We would find out the alien's weakness and learn how to destroy it. To do so we ventured out, swallowed up immediately by the growth. But it was easier to study this way in an aspect of peace. Bending down, I examined the roots. Red, wrapped in green as if the plant had blood, coursing through it, the blood of the humans it had displaced. For you see, the desperate and the well to do, fled.

We thought the invaders would be generous in victory, that they would let us keep our islands of serenity in a great sea of green tinged with red. But no, it wasn't so. The aliens began to remake the city in their own image. Roads, sidewalk, driveways, other paved surfaces were the first to be torn down. Reaching up out of the earth like bloodied fingers, our overlords ripped our feeble asphalt and concrete coverings apart. Still some held out hope that our shelters would be spared.

Then, one day, our compatriot and spy, Ethan, reported what we had all feared. There were aliens in his basement. They'd dug tunnels underneath his house and come up through the cement. We sent out desperate calls on the few radios available (our telephone poles had been toppled weeks earlier). We learned that our location was the worst, but elsewhere the invasion was proceeding just as surely. No one offered comfort for any adults, but the town's children were offered sanctuary at distant shores, and so they were sent away (as you well know). Then a former mayor gathered the town declared his intent to return to direct conflict. Since the enemy would show no mercy, he would lead any willing to take up arms once more and fight even if defeat was already our fate.

Some went with him, though less than half, and we huddled in our shelters, whose fragility had been revealed by our relentless foe. Outside we heard such monstrous noises, of the hack of sharpened tools on flesh, the ghastly spreading of chemical weapons, and the flash and hiss of fire. The day turned early into night, as flame spread, and many within cursed the foulness of those who resisted in vain, for some fortresses caught fire, and the whole sky turned as black as charcoal. When the day broke it was smeared with smoke and some warriors did not return home from their ordeal.

Afterward their leader spoke excitedly of the thousands of enemies mown down by steel, glyphosate, and flame, but when the others spoke it was of the necessity of surrender. He called us and them cowards, and when everyone renounced his tactics, he left us. The next day he was found, tied to a particular vigorous specimen.

Now we have scattered as our shelters have been cracked like crab shells by a gull, and we seek only to rise above these behemoths and see the sun. If you read this my son, maybe you will see some clue, and if not know we have done everything possible to slow this invasion where we stand. 

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