Our Burning World

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

My finger paused under the phrase in the archaic book. I felt oddly unsettled by what I had just read. The year was 3030, in June, I had only turned 13 a week before and so, I grew up in the filth and barrenness of what is still known as Earth, full well knowing what had caused it to be the way it was. I remember thinking wildly that whoever had written this had definitely done so before we’d known what we know today. It had clearly been scribed way back before NASA’s Extraterrestrial Exploring Rover had begun to translate things that hid in the deepest recesses of the galaxy and we learned very quickly that we were not alone. The statement must have stretched back to a time before The Occupation and before the fall of our beloved Earth, which was a long way away in most everyone’s minds.

It was clear that assertion was made before The New Pilgrims came and so, it no longer applied. There were now hundreds of thousands of screams from people free falling in space, and because of the sheer number, pitch, and the desolation state of our ozone, they could be heard on every surrounding world in the solar system.

~

My parents liked to remind me that Earth is not the same as it once was. They raised me on the idyllic pictures in our collection of ancient textbooks and tomes and things are most decidedly not like that anymore. Where I have seen blue skies and green grass on a page, there are now only the browns and sickly oranges of industry and technology. The foul residuals pollute our atmosphere even more and make life on Earth less habitable by the day. The volumes spoke of things like recycling and water conservation, but we are far beyond the reaches of aid when it comes to those things. The Earth is ruined, and those of us who stay here, do so only because we have nowhere else to go. Every planet likely contains extraterrestrial beings, and Father enjoyed reminding me that since the early 3000’s, we have learned not to trust any alien life.

The New Pilgrims arrived on Earth with false stories of persecution and loss. During talks with high-level officials, they exposed the way their government had restricted their rights and forced them into a proclaimed utopic society which only further worsened matters. The New Pilgrims’ government had promised that this would only expand upon their values, rights, and freedoms, but really, they limited those things mere months after the new change was instituted. We should have listened carefully, for later, many uncovered the flaws in their stories and the truth behind their tales.

The decline came swiftly I’m told - perhaps more so than most can remember, for we were either small children or unborn at the time of The Occupation. I do not remember because I was unborn, but the way Father tells it, everyone gathered outside and watched with amazement as several spherical ships came into view and began unloading beings from outer space in our local Wal-Mart parking lot. He could recall being surprised that they looked like us, though he said he would understand later that they had chosen those forms for a very specific purpose. It was an exciting moment for Earth, Father had told me - we would finally learn more about life on other planets and work together to make this world and every world in the galaxy a better place.

But his good intentions were not shared by all. It did not take long for The New Pilgrims to show their true colors and reveal what they really wanted.

~

With The New Pilgrims, came their rules and governmental system. Oppressive, strict laws and bills that had been put into place for control, not for aid, despite what they told the public. There were three specific edicts that applied to all beings on Earth. They governed the basics of what people were now allowed to do or not do in addition to heightened security, loss of formal privacy, and a plethora of other dystopic nonsense that the public simply did not understand until it was too late.

All citizens should clear the streets at 9 pm each night. I was young, so I did not ask what happened to the people who simply did not have homes. I learned much later that they had been removed during that first night of curfew, taken somewhere to never be seen again. The screams in the sky became louder than ever.

All citizens must serve in the military for 2 years. I was young, so I did not ask why people would make such a big deal about fighting for their country. I learned much later that the wars we were fighting were appalling - we lived and died for our captors. Bodies were not interred into the ground, but launched into space to save room for other things on Earth.

All citizens must understand the new parameters of Free Speech. I was young, and so I did not understand why I couldn’t question the way things were. I learned much later that this world is an unfair, tyrannical, hellish landscape and The New Pilgrims are everywhere, all at once.

~

The hardest part was different for all of us. My parents said it was the curfew that ruined their social lives and dinner parties which put the most strain on them. My friends would later tell me that it was the loss of late night shenanigans and increased security that had been the most difficult for them. But I remember my difficulty had lay with learning about the New First Amendment. It caused me to have the sudden realization that the words I possessed could either save or condemn me depending on who I was talking to. It was a horrible moment. It made me feel despondent and hopeless at a very young age and has stuck with me ever since.

In those first few years before this epiphany, I was quite blissfully ignorant of the abhorrent effects of The New Pilgrims on our culture and society. But as I grew older, I began to understand what my tiny child mind could not: that every aspect of our lives was now controlled by The New Pilgrims and they did not have our best interests in mind. Our media, our laws, our bodies, everything was now tied to their rules and ideals. That’s probably how I ended up in the situation I did - that foul, interrogative mouth of mine landed me in hot water that I was not yet ready for. At the tender age of 17, I was taken by the police and brought before our overlords.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just me that was taken in, but several of my friends as well. We’d had the hapless idea to rally against The New Pilgrims together, led by the loudest of our order, Mark. We attempted to create an underground movement to overthrow their inhumane, imperius rule. We thought that surely, many would be interested in our cause, but the meeting we organized was poorly attended and very nervous. There was a struggle with the police when they arrived shortly after our meeting was underway, their cars appearing seemingly out of nowhere in the dark alley downtown. The blue and red lights signaled our failure as they lit up the place, casting dreary shadows over everything in their path. We had falsely assumed that the cover of darkness would aid our mission, but sadly, we were easily found out. Mark and his best friend Jacob began throwing punches and the youngest of our group, Jayden was shot in the first few minutes of our arrest. I can still see her coughing harshly as scarlet streams cut the air, I can see the oil dripping from the android officer’s faces, and the horrible sight of the boys’ hands cracked open and cascading blood. It felt like it was my fault. I cried hideously, but it was no use. My grief fell on deaf ears and we were removed from the street, the cacophony of noise dying once each police car door was snapped shut.

~

It’s important to me that I make you understand - I never intended to be the one to do what I did. I was never the bravest or brightest, or even one that identified as a leader. The New Pilgrims murdered my friends, and that’s how I became who I am today. Love and loss are heavy things, and they change you irreparably. I have never once since that day breathed clean air, never seen the ones I love again, but I would still never change what I did, or what happened. I know what I did will matter someday, people must be fighting and who’s to say it’s impossible that they might win like we did?

Destroying the compound felt like a poetic choice. It was flashy and bright, the center of The New Pilgrims’ technology and communication and would hopefully ignite the flame we needed. More people had to be emboldened to join our cause, or we would die out and never see our ultimate mission completed. This - a public destruction of the overlords would have to do the trick. The upper echelon of New Pilgrims lived and operated out of DC, so they were close to us. This meant that we had a better shot of planning something actually effective if we worked hard and fast.

And so we did.

Ultimately, I decided to go in with my school friend, Lex, since everyone else was incarcerated, dead, or unwilling to help. Lex was a confident, strong, loud as fuck type of person. They were fun and carefree, but also complex and thoughtful. We had met at school and instantly hit it off. I could go on and on about them, and I like to, because then they’re alive again. But there is more to this story than love unfortunately - there is also great, painful loss, and I must tell that too.

~

We entered the compound under the cover of night, each of us dressed in some manner of mismatching shades of black. We must’ve been quite the pair of young, stupid revolutionaries, thinking that we could have possibly planned enough for this to work. The plan was to sneak into the main command room and take out the communication system that had been crafted from the old NASA EER. The New Pilgrims had wired it into their system and we knew from NASA’s website that it could be deprogrammed by an astronaut, but since we had none of those, we had hypothesized that blunt force trauma would be perfect for our cause. This was just another example of our poor planning. But we couldn’t have known. I’ve learned so much since then. We didn’t stand a chance.

Lex went bravely headfirst into the unknown first and paid dearly for it. They looked back as they were being taken and screamed for me. I ran after them, in shock, unsure of what else to do. I’m still not sure I know the real reason The New Pilgrims let me live but that heroic person was cut down. Perhaps it was because I was weak and they sensed it. They thought that I was not the one to fear and if they’d left Lex alive, perhaps that would have been true. But they didn’t. And although it broke me to see the horrid scene unfold, Lex’s ultimate sacrifice emboldened me beyond what I thought I was capable of.

They bloodied Lex. Focused on them with particular brutality. Though my arm was also dislocated in the struggle, they dealt them the greatest damage. We sat in a cell for a few hours after interrogation and I learned more about things I’d never known. They reset my arm and I held their head as they lay, struggling to breathe. I heard stories about hateful families that could not love, bullies that had bled them dry of money and respect, and a constant barrage of people wondering loudly about who they were or /what/ they were. I learned how my friend had become so strong, and I wept for their struggles. They dried my eyes and refused my pity, and together, we made our final stand.

~

This next part is hard for me. I can only remember so much because my mind has willfully blocked most of it to spare me further agony. There are flashes though, perhaps to keep their memory alive and honor their suffering, perhaps from the sheer trauma of seeing torture and death at such a young age - probably both. Whatever the case, recalling the torture and pain that Lex endured is not something I enjoy doing, but I shall do so to honor them and their great oblation to our cause and our people.

We managed to break out of our cell - not by any superheroic action on our parts, but by a defector from within The New Pilgrim’s ranks. He released us and we rushed to the room that he told us held the EER machine and some very important hard drives and other surprisingly-easily-to-destroy pieces of technology. We went wild with anything we could find. At first it was tube light bulbs, then bystanding chairs or phones or whatever we could get our hands on. Buttons fizzled, wires were severed and sparking, and then, little fires sprouted everywhere. They took my hand and we watched it burn for a long, languid moment, basking in the exquisite heat of our labors.

Then, they came. It was as though the entire place was full of deadly clones in a split second, each with weapons, which they used to collectively beat Lex to death. By the end, their broken jaw, legs, and arms looked gruesomely positioned in incorrect poses and I was vomiting and sobbing piteously in the corner. They ignored me while they took Lex’s body and hauled it out of the room. That was the last time I saw my valiant friend.

One of the New Pilgrims finally turned on me, but I had the end of a tube light bulb in my hand and when they came close enough, I lashed outwards, tearing the metal across their eyes and cheek. The scream was unimaginably terrifying and I knew I had done what I’d intended. Without looking any further, I sprinted out of the room and barricaded myself in a supply closet nearby. I was silent as I could be, covering my mouth and crying noiseless tears as I took stock of everything that had happened. An experience such as the one we endured could not help but change you. I saw things differently then, and had a newfound hatred for our captors beyond what I had before. I lost all of my friends - Mark and Jacob, Jayden, Lex, and I wanted to make them pay for taking them from me.

In the end, they did.

~

Once the compound was destroyed, The New Pilgrims had no choice but to detonate the base to clear it and destroy all of their technology, lest any humans get their hands on it. They seemed to know that they had been defeated in this part of the world, and all around the country, there were reports coming in that announced The New Pilgrims’ ships' departure from our atmosphere and their entrance into the deep chasm of space once again. It was a bright and hopeful day for humanity, though we were scattered and leaderless because of it.

Still, better leaderless than captive.

Things are better now, all things considered. The people who had been launched into space were carefully extracted by several, cautious trips in old ships made from recycled parts, and buried. Most families were able to be there, but some bodies were not recognizable, nor did we have the records to identify them in any other way. But each body had their own plot, nameless or named for anyone to visit. We learned hard the value of life and the goodness of humanity and therefore, we were all equals, living or dead.

The radios are always on and tuned to foreign stations now, listening for anything that might help us and any news on The New Pilgrims abroad. And although our government is scattered and broken into many factions, as we come together again, things will become easier and we will form something great. You must never allow yourself to despair, for hope is what your people will look to you for now. As you step into my role, you will inherit a great weight of responsibility and leadership that I do not bestow on just anyone. You, Rhida, will continue on when I pass, and so now, I hand the duty to you.

Take heart, child, and listen to the latest transmission we received:

Succès en France - les Visiteurs ont été vaincus. Nous partons pour l'Espagne dans une heure. Vive la France, vive la Terre.

So you see now, my dear? There is hope for our burning world.