Beyond Myth and God

They changed the world in an instant. Amid sweltering heat from temperatures we hoped had reached their zenith after breaking nighttime records set hours earlier, the early morning sky filled with ship after ship.

Massive hulls hurled their shadow across deserts, cities, and oceans, giving us the only shade we'd had for weeks. Spurning the weedy exhortations from mobiles that this is not a test stay in your homes people thronged outside. All eyes on the morning sky. 

We were definitely not alone. 

The first broadcast had come through an hour earlier, "We come in peace." CIiche, cheesy, we needed to hear it. Because no matter how cool you think you're going to be when aliens visit your world, you're never fully prepared. Besides, earth's weapons would be like tossing spitballs at those behemoths.

I'd ignored the first stodgy bleatings from my mobile. Easy to do as the heavy heat had fried tech worldwide. Phone calls were nearly a thing of the past. If the sound wasn't a bleary shriek it was too thick and low to parse separate words. The heavy heat distorted the sound, seeminly making it too much weight for the waves to also carry. 

Truth is, I hadn't been fully awake but with three a/c units sluggishly attempting to cool the basement, their hot breaths barely a more noticeable cool than the soup in which I lay, I wasn't blissfully asleep.

"Mom. Get up. Something's going on." Una, my 18-year-old was helping her sister Ki to stand. This last heatwave had beggared our lives down into the basement. Upstairs the heat had been victorious, claiming all living spaces above us. We huddled underground waiting for the hot tendrils to declare their victory here too, one we wouldn't see.

 We moved slowly, making our way up the stairs and out the door. Usually the heat kept everyone inside but now, it was a world filled with people. Everyone of them looking up. "Oh my god." Because what other original words do you say when space ships glut otherwise ordinary skies.

Feeble whispers moved through the gathered crowd, but all eyes gazed up. I stood between Una and Ki waiting. There wasn't anything more to do. The sky rippled and cleared as if a weak signal suddenly got stronger. A woman appeared everywhere. We didn't need to gaze up, she stood before all of us.

"I am Chikere," she said. "Long ago I came from earth. I know this, me, us, is shocking. However, we don't have much time for niceties. Your planet is changing, dying. If you want our help, we are here to give it."

"When I left here a long time ago, I was on a ship bound from my home to a place I knew would not be good.

 We'd been taken from our homes, from yards where our children had been playing barefoot moments before. Men with guns appeared. They shot most of the children, leaving their broken bodies discarded like rubbish on the red ground. White men murdered my watoto that day. 

I was numb, in shock. Who were these men? "Who are you?" I screamed. A big gun slammed into my head, blood ran in my eyes. Fear, untethered to anything boiled up out of me, agony and madness entombed me. They put us in chains and over days tramped us down to the water and their ships.

This was terror. Each day they spat on us and each night they took us, women, children, boys, men. Pawing our skin with their rough pink hands. Forcing drunkenly impotent cocks into our unwilling bodies, they fucked us in shame and disgust. These were not human beings, these ill-developed creatures spat unwanted and unloved from dark pits. I could not imagine where they would take us and what they would do, if here in our lands, they feasted like bloated rats.

My will crumbled when I saw the ships. Remaining in our own lands, on our shores, we had a chance at escape. To return to bury our watoto, to grieve. Away from our home with these creatures, we would be lost forever.

Chikere told her story to each of us. Her voice certain, solid. "My insides shrank in away from my skin."

"Over the passage, I learned to say nothing, to be nothing. I knew there'd be a chance to escape. I had to be ready. I had to be invisible. I put away my will. Hiding it for when it would be needed. I listened. I obeyed. If the man who was using me required me to grin up at him after he spilled his seed across my soiled face, I grinned in rapture. I gave no trouble.

That first night on the ship, the smell was already powerfully unbearable. Bowels emptied where they could, unable to hold back ugly fear. It was a rich taint of sweat, injury and mortality. 

My mouth had tasted no water but the sour spendings from turbid cocks for so long, water itself was as much a dream as holding my dead babies. They chained us to the ship's floor. We'd had more freedom in our ankle and neck chains on the road. 

When the numbers of the dead became too great to ignore, they took us out of the dark bowels, our feet stepping into sticky wetnesses I didn't want to linger on, out into the sunshine. "For our health," they said.

Cold buckets of water lashed our skin and soothed our mouths, refreshing us for another night of use. Always at night as if the dark gave them power. Unchained to do my nightly duty, I watched for my time.

On a ship of starving people, he was fat. Corpuscles of unruly flesh spilled out in layers.It forced him to struggle to put his cock in me. And when his need and frustration were too great, he lashed me with anything he could reach.

I played the shy slave, respectful of his sensitivities. On the night of my death, I told him I needed to relieve myself and he waved me aside to do what my body needed out of his sight. And I ran. Away from grasping hands and screaming voices. I didn't hesitate when I made the ledge. I scrambled over and was in the dark water before they could seize me.

I dropped deeper till my breath bubbled out and the ocean took its place. Instead of the death I wanted, these people, the Taiwo, found me. They saved many of us."

Beside Chikere a tall woman stood. She was a giant, nine feet or more. The Taiwo. "We picked them up. We gathered everyone we could."

The Taiwo. Another civilization. From another planet. From another freaking universe. They were here on earth, speaking to us. Directly to each of us. Outside with no TV, no phone? Didn't matter, they stood beside us and talked to each of us.

Standing outside with my daughters I think I was crying. We held hands, amazed. The sky was filled with ships, huge things with solar sails, rippling in the sky. One hour since they'd shown themselves, and rewrote what our lives could be.

We were sick they said. Infected by the usual virus they'd seen on other worlds, greed, fear and madness. Among the vast numbers of worlds, not a single planet wanted to risk our disease spreading among their worlds. We have all fought for peace, but the worlds know, balance is the key. A lesson earth couldn't seem to master.

"For centuries before the Taiwo took me from the waters they tried to help us. Tried to contain the virus. They couldn't let us infect other worlds. And it was never our place to sanction mass killing thus the net. Look up."

Like scales following from our eyes, we saw our universe for the first time. Planets were all around us, closer than we knew. Billions, trillions of faces looking at us. For the first time, I understood all we had lost. The chance to know we were never alone. The joy of sharing with others from everywhere.

"Markers, runes, drawings, mysteries were left behind to help you wonder at the world. Sites of beauty and power. And when you turned your minds to science, the magic of the universe, we guided you as best we could."

The Eigyr, a people of slender build, clearly where our ideas of the gender-fluid species came from stepped forward. Their ship was golden sunlight. Instead of undulating like the others, it pulsed gently. Chikere acknowledged them, continuing her story.

"You failed to make use of all of your gifts no matter the nudges you were given by your prophets and gods. Now you have no more time. This world is dying quickly. These ships will take you to safety. Look here." She pointed up and in the sky was our recent visitor.

"What you call Oumuamua is a vessel from the Dawa people. The ships are built so your bodies can withstand how we travel. You truly will see such things as you've never dreamed. The universe is a wonder and we are eager for your company."

My brain was stumbling to catch up, to get that this was real. This was happening. We were leaving earth? We had to leave earth, it was dying. I was tingling and shaky. The Eigyr were speaking.

"We know this is abrupt. This planet is ebbing faster than we anticipated. There is much more to tell you, but you will see for yourselves. We are not offering you perfection, but life. Instead of a world full of myth and false gods, you will see where myth was born. You will live the way you believed you could."

Chikere took over. "We are not taking all of you." My heart stopped. "Look at your skin. You will be known by your heart. Only you are permitted passage."

I was confused. I looked at my children and there they were, glowing hearts in the shape of an old timey locket, glowed from them. I looked around at the warmth that came from so many. Others had no hearts around them. I imagined the rage they felt.

"Those left behind. Most of you will die, the ones who live will change and we will be watching."

Chikere and the visitors gave us Noah's arc alright, but an arc for Black, Indigenous, People of colour, all the people who'd been left out. I didn't know then how they selected us, I learned that later, but for now I was grateful.

All the people this world had tossed off as though we were not worthy, our hearts lit up the sky. Chikere smiled, her dark skin shining to lead us all home.

And then we'd learn where monsters and demons came from.