《St. Charles and the Children from the Sun》 Chapter ONE - PRIDE I remember clearly the day the Sun went out. "Lagrange Point orbit reached," the captain of The Covenant said over the intercom. I peered out a porthole, a look of joy upon my face. It was easy to feel joy back then. I was only twelve. "Look, Grandpa!" I said. "Fireworks!" The Earth below glowed in hues of green and yellow, as auroras roared across its atmosphere. The entire planet seemed iridescent and alive, like the language of the Spitfires. Streams of radiation poured into the poles as the wind from a thousand atom bombs blew chunks of the Sun at us. My grandfather smiled warmly, to hide his tears from me. He knew -- and I guess I did too -- that every living thing we''d left behind was succumbng to the effects of the solar radiation we''d released to kill our alien guests. By the time we landed, some sixty-five days later, those we''d left behind would be counting the days they had left before radiation sickness and cancer took their lives away as well. "Yes, Regina," Grandpa said. "It is beautiful. But remember..." He choked up and stopped talking. "Remember what?" I asked. "Everything," he eked out, before pausing again to regain his composure. "Try to remember everything. This is your time now." I thought about something my dad had talked to me about, back on Earth before we left. He said the Spitfires used what he called crystals of time to steal a bit of mass from a star like our Sun, and use it to cheat time. He said it was that same way we steal a bit of centrifugal force from a planet to slingshot rockets into space. We had just done that to our dear Mother Earth, and then her sister, the Moon, slingshotting The Covenant while on our way into Lagrange orbit to hide from the Sun. The Spitfires would slingshot their way through time by flying into one star and coming out another, many light years away. That was how they found us. One day they came out of our star and landed on Earth. It was during World War II. They came out of nowhere. Quite literally, in fact. Two showed up in Washington D.C. in The United States, and at the exact same time, two others appeared ar 10 Downing Street in London. They appeared before President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at a moment of our most dire need. As Christmas 1941 turned to New Year''s Day of 1942, Churchill braved Atlantic waters infested with German U-boats to confer with Roosevelt in private about the event. Afterwards, he addressed The United States Congress. "We are masters of our fate. The task which has been set before us is not above our strength, its pangs and toils not beyond our endurance. Salvation will not be denied us. In the words of the Psalms, we shall not be afraid of evil tidings. Our hearts are trusting in the Lord." In 1942, German Axis victories took Stalingrad from Russia. They threatened to do the same to the oil fields and factories of Caucasus. Africa began falling to the superior tanks of Rommel, as he pushed the British Armed Forces around at his will. And seemingly from everywhere, U-boats preyed upon the weak from ocean depths, while the Luftwaffe rained hellfire from the sky. Things weren''t going any better in the Pacific Ocean. Japan lorded over China, killing with impunity. They stole Indonesia from the Dutch, and the Philippines from the Americans. Even the mighty United States Marines were no match for the Imperial Japanese Navy after Pearl Harbor was destroyed. For the Allies of the free world, hope had reached its nadir.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Yet Roosevelt expressed optimism. "The price for civilization must be paid in sorrow and in blood. It will not be impeded by the faint of heart, or by those who put selfish interests above the interests of their nation. It shall not be imperiled by betrayers of Christianity -- would-be dictators who in their hearts and souls have already yielded to defeat, and thus woud have the rest of us do likewise. "We are The United States of America! This is for our victory!" And this is why the Spitfires came to us. They called themselves something else; an impossible-to-recreate palette of swirls and colors that floated in the air. We humans called them Spitfires because they looked like dragons. These dragons were not borne of fantasy and legend. They were born on some planet halfway across the galaxy. But like those dragons borne of fantasy, Spitfires were terrifying. They towered over us in height, and with their tails included, exceeded our height in length by three-fold and more. They even exceeded us in the number of their limbs, with four legs and two arms, all ending in huge feet and hands that gave them the power of a jet boat when they swam. They covered their hides with refractive scales made of titanium and molybdenum, thick like battle armor. Besides this armor giving them weight so they could better sink to the bottom of the ocean, they decorated themselves with spikes and knifed-edge razors to be all the more intimidating. Oh, how they could have feasted on us in our most darkest hour! As we fought like children over scraps of land and tiny thatched roof hamlets, they could have wiped us off the face of the planet with their acrid breath. But that wasn''t why they came. Instead of coming as an army, they came as emissaries. Instead of many millions, only four appeared. They came in silence and unarmed. Unarmed because they had no fear of us, and in silence because they didn''t speak. Rather than having a language that relied on sound, theirs was made of light and motion, drawn from tablets hung round their necks. When touched, these tablet brought the very air to life. Images in three dimensions danced above their heads, controlled by magnetized fields of plasma. And though they couldn''t communicate with the leaders of the western world, they could paint pictures for them. At first they painted pictures of fear and brutal governance, where those they deemed unworthy would be slaughtered by the millions. We''d grown so fat and lazy, the well-off among us humans. We thought nothing about unwashed masses being born and bred for servitude. So shameful we were in our indolence, that monsters of our own kind rose up, to our left and to our right, to crush us in the middle. Monsters bearing human names, like Hitler and Mussolini, Hirohito and Toyo. Back then it was thought that the Spitfires were not monsters. Monsters were borne of men, and the Spitfires came as saviors. Like angels sent from Heaven, they bore kindndess as their weapon and wisdom as a shield. With their help, enemy codes like ENIGMA and PURPLE fell to Sigint and GCCS. Hiltler and Hirohito lost the power of surprise their tanks and ships once had. With their plasma tablets, the Spitfires taught our leaders how to comminicate and our soldiers how to fight, and how all of us could be better served if we treated one another fairly. They furthered our intelligence by convincing us to give up on kingdoms and on empires, and create governments run by the people. They taught us to care for those who love us, and have mercy on those who don''t. With that, monsters borne of men died off. The Axis fell in disgrace, their leaders thrown from power. After victory in World War II, the Spitfires moved peaceably into our oceans. They began to emigrate, bringing fathers, mothers and their young. They built underwater cities cloaked from our view by their superior technology. We thought nothing of it until the fateful day of July 7th, 1947. That was the day when, against the wishes of its leaders, a Spitfire on a reconnaissance mission entered the Earth''s atmosphere in its craft. It had no way of going home, for it had deserted its post. It also had no way of landing, as its craft wasn''t suited for the task. So it crashed instead, in the New Mexico desert near a town called Roswell. The Spitfire did not live long after that, but living wasn''t its intention. Delivering a message was. And with its dying breath, it drew patterns in the air. The first part of the message was easy to decipher. "We are coming," it said. The rest of the message was not so easy to decipher. It may have been in part because the alien was dying as it drew its words, painting pictures in the air for people unfamiliar with its language, many even unknowing of its presence by the thousands in our seas. But soon, descriptions of these patterms of light reached those who knew how to read them. Armed with this information, men in power realized that these beings from another world did not descend from Heaven. Shooting out of our Sun, these monsters came from a different realm altogether. From a place where angels fear to tread. "To steal your oceans," was the last part of the message. Chapter TWO - ANGER "Wir werden erst von Frieden sprechen, wenn wir den Krieg gewonnen haben!" General Georgy Zukhov offered the man deference for his outburst only due to his status. "We will talk of peace right now, Herr Hitler¡ªhere and at my leisure. This war will not be won by you. Not today, not now, nor ever." "F¨¹hrer Hitler!" the man demanded, almost screaming. "F¨¹hrer und Reichskanzlerund!" General Zukhov kindness towards the man had reached its end. As commander of the Belorussian Front, his army would soon be set upon the German Reichstag, consuming it in fire. With no country and no government, and soon, no army to command, Adolf Hitler had lost all claim to any title. Even so, despite the position of superiority the General now held, Zukhov heaved a sigh. There were bigger monsters in this war than mere mortal men. "As General of the Chief of Staff, and Minister of Defense for the Union of Soviet Republics, I know about the Spitfires." Hitler blinked before responding. "The British fighter-bomber? Ach, my Luftwaffe would have taken London if given more time." Zukhov slowly shook his head, keeping fallen leader in his steadfast gaze. "No. Not the British Aircraft. The alien sea dragons." Hitler now blinked rapidly. "I don''t know what you mean!" His words came clearly as a lie. The tension of the moment made it hard to sound convincing. General Zukhov barely bothered with paying the man heed. "Herr Hitler," he began, trying to not condescend. "F¨¹hrer Hitler for now, if you wish. These monsters came to us first in Odessa, offering their hideous wares." "Nein!" Hitler blurted. "That''s not possible!" He then clamped his mouth shut. Zukhov continued. "The Motherland denied them everything, so they left for Venice, to seek you through Mussolini." "Nein," Hitler repeated, sounding less than convincing. "They set out across land and made it to Liechtenstein. A hard feat for what we know are water dwelling creatures. They convinced you to annex Austria, to consort with them in the Adriatic. From there, they fed you lies, as you now try feeding me." Hitler hung his head. There was no use in denial. General Zukhov, as a member of the Soviet Politburo, knew as much¡ªif not more¡ªabout the alien sea creatures as did the German Abwehr. Zukhov no doubt also knew that the Spitfires had abandoned the Reich, fording the English Channel to take sides with Great Britain. "How¡­" Hitler stammered, sounding miserable. "How did you deny them, when they offer so much?" Zukhov stood at attention. "I am only a soldier, and not a politician. But I can tell you this¡ªtheir promise of technology for no cost other than their benefice is nothing but a ruse." "A ruse?" "They have ulterior motives. They want more than to just live at peace in our oceans." Hitler disagreed. "They seek out the deep rifts. At seven kilometers or more down." Now Zukhov disagreed. "Out intelligentsiya tell us that depth is not what they need. They only go so low to find warmth at volcanic vents." Hitler looked confused, so Zukhov kindly continued. "Our world is too cold. They need heat from the Earth''s core to keep themselves alive." "But it gets cold in Venice. And in Austria, there''s the Alps." "Yes. For a length of time, these monsters can survive in colder climes. You''ve seen them in their armor, da? Made of titanium and magnesium? They wear thick rubber underneath, wet suits to keep them warm." Zukhov paused to scowl. "You do know they''re cold-blooded? Like lizards, or like snakes." Hitler barely nodded. It was clear this so-called mere soldier of the Russian army knew more about the aliens from outer space than did the leader of the Third Reich. Zukhov carried on. "They keep their armor heated using a hidden power, a thing not run by gas, nor using any fire." This was something Hitler knew. "They call it atomic power. A source that''s like the sun." The sound of the war raging outside invaded the German bunker. The concussion from a bomb shook the walls. "Those bombs will soon fall here," General Zukhov warned. "I''ll be gone, but you''ll remain, to suffer defeat."Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! "Wir werden diesen Kampf gewinnen!" Herr Hitler cried. "Nyet," Zukhov countered. "You will not win. You have already lost." "The American King Roosevelt has died! An angel visits with me in this very room! Like the Miracle at the House of Brandenburg, Fate holds me in her hand." The thud of more bombs falling coated both Hilter and his angel with dust. "Her wings will not embrace you," Zukhov said of the angel. "She uses them to fly to safety, as soon so shall I." The two men stood in silence, as the dull noise of a war being fought from afar filled the room. In a moment of respite, Hitler smiled at his conqueror. "Will you have a seat?" he offered, gesturing towards a table. "And perhaps, a brandy with me?" With their aides and bodyguards shifting uncomfortably on their feet, the two foes sat and drank. "Tell me more about this power," Zukhov asked his host. "What the dragons use to heat their armor." "It comes from the sun," Hitler said brightly, the warmth of brandy and false hope in him. "The crushing of an atom, thus breaking it in two." Zukhov knit his brow, drinking before responding. "How does this heat their armor? Is it an engine of some sort?" "Nein! There is only pressure, yet it comes with great power." Zukhov looked doubtful, so Hitler continued, proud to have at least one thing left him in this miserable war. "Certain elements, like uranium and plutonium, they fall apart under pressure, and make heat like a furnace." "It sounds dangerous," Zukhov mused. "How does it not explode?" "It does! Ferociously, if unchecked. But it can be controlled by shielding." "And if you don''t have this shielding?" Hitler splayed his hands with his fingers wide. "Foom," he said while smiling, puffing out his cheeks. "It sounds like a weapon. Could it make a bomb?" Hitler pondered the notion. "I suppose it can." Zukhov was less amused. "Our intelligentsiya say the Americans do just that¡ªthey seek to harness atoms, to make bombs that burn like the sun." Hitler struck the table with a fist, a noise more startling than the war. "They got it from the aliens! Those bastards play all sides!" "They do not play our side. We sent them away with nothing." Hitler leaned in close. "They will not let you win. They''ll come for when they need you." Zukhov poured himself another drink. "We''ll see," he said as he sipped. Hitler leaned back in his chair, twirling the brandy still in his glass. "We sent them packing, too, you know, these blasted Spitfire aliens. After we refused them favor, they sided with England." Zukhov raised his eyebrows, saying nothing as Hitler continued. The F¨¹hrer sounded wistful, as if talking about lost love. "At first they gave us so much¡ªarmor to make strong tanks, and rockets and missiles and engines. Nothing is beyond them! All they asked was that we hide them, to not let others know they exist. They told about this incredible source of power, crushed atoms that blow up cities, to burn and kill our enemies. "So it is like the sun, we said back to them. Does it burn as hot? Oh ja, they said right back. Like the sun, and even hotter. It will heat the Earth so much, those left beneath it die." The joy of this knowledge soon left Hitler''s face. He looked sallow and withered. "They''re lizards, as you say. Cold-blooded, like a snake. They say our world''s too cold, that they need heat to stay alive. Where will that heat come from, our scientists then wonder. Will you give us the bombs we need to defeat our enemies? Jawohl! All that and much more! Many hundreds, even thousands, bombs of atoms blowing up in the sky, to turn our enemies below to ash. To burn their cities and their factories, their navies and their men." "That sounds like a horror," Zukhov fairly conceded, his face sallow as well. "Hell loose upon the land." Hitler nodded gravely. "And as this hellfire burns, we asked, what becomes of the Earth? Does it not get hot?" The realization hit Zukhov like a hammer. "So the monsters will then be no longer cold! The Earth burns like a furnace!" Hitler nodded again, more gravely than before. "And what becomes of us, do you think, soon after? Do we suffer? Do we perish?" "It''s hard to think we wouldn''t." "And at their benefit. They grow strong and we grow weak." "And then they conquer us." Silence again fell, save for the thuds of war. "How do we stop them?" Zukhov asked after a while. "The Americans, or the monsters?" "Do you think if the Spitfires give the Americans bombs made out of atoms, that they then will use them?" "The existence of such a weapon implies the possibility of its use." Hitler twirled his brandy a final time before downing it all. "I wish I would have stopped them," he said to his empty glass. "I wish I would have never let the Spitfires start this war." Zukhov stood up to leave. His aids and bodyguards snapped to attention. "Well, it is your fault, Herr Hitler. We sent the aliens away from Odessa by giving them nothing, and when they approached you next, you gave them everything." "Not everything, Generalfeldmarschall. When we said nein to their bombs, they left to side with Churchill." "I am just a soldier. I''m not a field marshal." Hitler ignored his faux pas, the brandy warming him inside. "And when Churchill also denied them favor, the heathens set sail for America. There, they found every terrible thing they ever needed." He looked up at his victor. "Tell me¡ªwhat do you think it will be like, as the Earth grows hotter and hotter? As the years go by, for decades and maybe longer, with each year growing warmer, becoming worse than the last?" "Each year growing worse?" Zukhov pondered. "Year after year after year?" "For decades," Hitler repeated. "Maybe centuries. Never colder. Always hot." Zukhov thought for a moment. "I don''t think I want to live in a world like that. I don''t think I could. I don''t think any of us could." "Ja. I don''t think so either. I think we''ll die like it''s a wasteland, our bones bleached on the sand." Hitler slumped ever further, acknowledging defeat. General Zukhov made a gesture, and an aide was at his side. With another gesture, the man gave Zukhov his sidearm¡ªa Tokarev TT-33. Removing the magazine, Zukhov left the pistol with one round in the chamber. He placed it on the table. "F¨¹hrer Hitler. F¨¹hrer und Reichskanzlerund," he said, "if you find the future distasteful, you might use this to relieve your pain." Hitler looked up and smiled. "Perhaps, too, if I may ask? Could I also relieve the suffering of my family?" Zukhov thumbed three bullets from the magazine for the pistol. He also dug in a pocket and placed a silver snuff box on the table, along with the bullets. "These cyanide capsules might work better, just in case you miss." "Danke, Generalfeldmarschall. You''re a good soldier indeed." The general snapped to attention before turning and marching away. He was long gone into the war before the gunshots sounded. Chapter THREE - SLOTH BC3F4A spoke to Mother in waves of color, using motion instead of sound. "DEPENDABLE AQUIFEROUS SUBSTRATE. (Approximate) USABLE SURFACE - TWENTY-FIVE (percent)." For nearly four hundred years, F8EFCE had been known as Mother on Settlement 248-239-206. As the current leader of her species, all Harvesters reported to her. And the report BC3F4A gave pleased her. A usable underwater surface of only one quarter of a planet was not a large amount, but it met the criteria for habitat cultivation. BC3F4A viewed her home settlement through the eyes of a stranger, having been on harvest duty for one hundred years. She was the first to come back with a report on a planet that held any reason for promise, one called 180-560-680. Still, she was tainted with disdain. Settlement 246-239-206 had lasted all of 400,000 years¡ªa drop in the bucket when compared to age of the Empire. The settlement before 248-239-206, where Mother''s gene line originated, had lasted twice as long. Now, with its scant usable underwater surface and the wasteful ways of BC3F4A''s horde, 180-560-680 would be lucky to last 100,000 years. And then what? The descendants of that planet''s Mother would birth another cadre of Harvesters, to find another world to infect and destroy. This is where BC3F4A turned her disdain into rage. Due to her status as Original Harvester of Settlement 180-560-680, she would become the new Mother of her species, yet the reign of her kin would not last but for a fracion of the time that Mothers of ages past had enjoyed. Indolence affected her species. According to legend, as their lifespan grew tenfold and more over eons, now surpassing four hundred years, their numbers dwindled in kind. And with only a thousand millenium before 180-560-680 must be abandoned, their population will no doubt dwindle more. Oh! The indigenous primary lifeform of the planet BC3F4A had chosen to harvest! With them, her disdain turned to envy. Their lifespan was measured in decades, perhap seven or eight if they were lucky, with a usable range of only a third. Why, it took longer for her kind to digest a meal! During her grooming of the primary lifeform, governments fell under the guidance of her claw. She steered them to wage war on one another, as a way of solidifying her command. The winners of the last war she had started now trusted her brethren completely. As such, it became time to betray them. Not all at once, nor even quickly, at least not in the time frame of their feeble minds. Yet inexorably, undeniably, over the next one hundred millennium, 180-560-680 would be turned to a wasteland. Its inhabitants would die off as BC3F4A and her kin ravished its resources, then left it dead and barren, to infect another world. One of her brethren, 285790, held a different point of view. He turned his disdain toward compassion. He would run counter to the wishes of his kin, and take sides with the primary lifeform. For all intents and purposes, BC3F4A encouraged him to do it. A challenge to her rule could be mounted, as a way to bring some excitement to what was otherwise a dull and droll task.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. She sent him on a routine scouting mission to observe the primary winner of the Great War. His task was to see how their use of atomic fission as a means of destroying themselves was advancing. Upon noticing a deviation in his flight plan, she hailed him by swirling a message on his ship''s heads up display. "BOOM BOOM." "GOING DOWN," he swirled back. "(Shall I) CALL SHIPS (for backup?)" she asked, as her sensors indicated that he was approaching the point where the primary lifeform''s primitive radar might notice him. "KISS A COP," he swirled back as an insult. "(I''m) GOING WAY DOWN (to land.)" "YOU ARE DONE, SIR!" she replied, bristling at his indignation. She knew for certain he was going to die, as his ship had no way of landing on the non-water surface of a planet. "BOOM BOOM," he swirled back, signing off. A teletype dated July 8, 1947, from General Blanchard of the United States Eighth Air Force Division to the Dallas headquarters of the FBI spelled out a plausible explanation for the crash. The 509th Bomber Squadron of the Roswell Army Airfield has reported the crash and recovery of a flying disc. It is confirmed to be an experimental aircraft, hexagonal in shape and 30 meters long. There were no survivors. If there''s one thing humans do better than Spitfires, it''s lie. Even if, after seventy years, all we do is lie to ourselves, saying everything will be all right. But one thing I know is for certain. This is where we as humans say, ''Our time is now.'' The Spitfires told us to trust them, and be subservient to them. We had only to wait a little longer, and grow up a little bit more. And while we waited, they said, they''d give us so many things. And they did! Microwave ovens and medical miracles. They gave us transistors and computers and wide screen TVs. All they wanted from us was our oceans. Unknown to every one of those scaly, back-stabbing frogs, Saint Charles survived when he crashed his refractive ass in Roswell back in¡ªwhat was it? 1947? The docs fixed him up nice. The geeks even fixed his tablet, so he could talk to us in swirly pictures. And did he ever paint pretty pictures! Swirls of mist and rainbows, all dark and gloomy gray. Images that told of the Spitfire''s disgust for us mealy bipeds, that crawled by the billions on the Earth. We should''ve known that they despised us, long before Saint Charles came. The frogs don''t even have a real mother, what with being born in communal sacs and all. I''m surprised they didn''t come here to eat us. It seems the Spitfires, according to Saint Charles, forgot to let us know that they need to warm our oceans by another ten degrees Celsius or so. Maybe if they''d learn how to generate body heat, they wouldn"t be so cold all the damn time. So we painted pictures of our own, on tablets of our own design, rife with our lies and gifts of subterfuge. Today, I''m the one who paints those pictures. I am the fifth Saint George. United States Air Force General Leon Michael Porter, Director of Interplanetary Intelligence, Earth Control Unit, reporting for duty, Sir! Chapter FOUR - ENVY It was mighty human of Saint Charles to tell us how the Spitfire Horde travels throughout the galaxy. ''Tesseract Time'' is what he called it. Now we know that when they arrive, they''ll be coming at us from straight out of the Sun. Having that sort of knowledge helps us better direct our resources. It happened so suddenly back then, it seemed, when we were desperate during World War II. We let them into our lives. But all those desperate people from back then are dead. We humans have completely changed, yet the Spitfires remain the same. The same four still live on¡ªtwo in The United States and two more in Great Britain. They must live forever. The concept of time is something the Spitfires and humans have trouble understanding together, what with them ''tesseracting'' through it and all, but our scientists have estimated that they live for hundreds of years. Oh. And actually, we have three of those scaly bastards living here with us, since Saint Charles was kind enough to crash land his refractive ass into the Chihuahuan Desert. So anyway, now things with them happen far more slowly. It''s like they''re creeping in on us. Our governements. Our schools. Our factories. They make certain people rich, people they know how to use. By that fact, it stands to reason they also make people they don''t have use for suffer. There''s no doubt in my mind that they''ve committed murder. The Spitfires tell those of us who they favor that our lives will be grand. They want us to trust them, and be subservient. We only have to wait a little longer, grow up a little bit more, and prove to them just one more time that we''re worthy of their benevolence. After all, they''ve taken such good care of us for so many years. Why shouldn''t we believe them? Well. We''re waiting for our future with them all right, with their bright and shining lies. We live like tigers on the savannah, yet do exactly as we''re being told. Too many fools in positions of power think the Spitfires answer to us, what with them having come begging for a place to live with their hat in hand. Surely when their horde arrives to stay on a permanent basis, shooting out of our bright Sun, they''ll submit to our will, since this is our planet, goddamn it. My God. People are stupid. Are the Spitfires malevolent? Evil conniving bastards? We may never know. Those who write the history books will decide when we''re long dead, and hopefully long forgotten, if what we do now is what''s best for Mankind. The truth of this story may never get told, especially if those who favor folklore get a hold of it. That''s why I''m recording this journal. You know¡ªfor posterity''s sake. Well, mostly it''s for the sake of my daughter, Regina, who will outlive me when this is all over. And her grandpa will most likely outlive me, too, since he''s her chaperone. The grandfather on her mother''s side, since my parents are both dead. From natural causes, you see, and not from the radiation sickness that will claim my life one day. I don''t mind the fact that I''ll be dead when the children come back from Lagrange Orbit, hiding from the Sun behind the shadow of our Earth. Because the Spitfires will be dead too. We''ll fry their scaly asses good when we thermo-nuke the Sun, creating the largest solar flare in history, as sort of a ''Welcome to Your New Home'' surprise for the Horde when they arrive. We''ll cook them to a crisp, right inside their spaceships, every single one of them.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Good riddance! The next day after that, the flare heads straight for Earth where it''ll fry me, too. Not all at once, nor even quickly, but over the years I''ll get something like liver cancer, or maybe my skin will fall off. I don''t really know. I try not to think about it. The children will be safe, though, hiding from the Sun. At least as many of them as we can pack into the evac tubes. Then when it''s all over, they''ll come to what is left down here and make a new world for themselves. One without the Spitfires, after all these stupid years. May God have mercy on us. My daughter, Regina¡ªI''m sure she''ll be saved. I kept her BMI under twenty so I know she won''t get scrapped. Sometimes it was tough on her, making her stay supermodel thin, but every precious ounce matters, you see, when you''re evac-ing into space. When the children do come home, if I''m not around, could someone please get this audiotape to Regina Therese Porter in Sector C-12? She''s in Convoy Six on the Covenant, under Mathisson''s command. It''s one of the amazing secrets how we''ve been able to pre-select certain children to be chaperoned by grandparents and launched into outer space. We shove them into fallout shelters that are actually spacecraft hidden in underground tubes. They think they''re doing a drill, to protect themselves from biological attack, or some other sort of crap like that, by some make-believe fake enemy. I''m not sure what the story is that they''re being told. We''re all compartmentalized, purposefully and willingly. We each know certain bits of the truth, and probably whole chunks of lies as well. Since I am the latest Saint George to Saint Charles, it''s my job to lie both to him, so he doesn''t catch wind of our plans, and to others as well, as I hand out the crap the first two Spitfires give. Those frogs are smarter than they give the appearance of, despite not being able to talk. I mean, how does a civilization advance without ever using words? They do know what they''re doing though, giving us glitzy bits of tech, like glass beads to an Indian. Silicon chips and nuclear fusion, mag-lev trains and better Wheaties. Little do they know that those are the exact sorts of things we intend to use to deliver them to their doom. My gosh though, but I am so darn sick of being a goddamn liar. The rest of the world gets to sit around on their ignorant asses, never even knowing that these scaly bastards exist, conniving and scheming to scam us. Of course, we do the same exact thing¡ªto them and to us and to everyone. I swear when that stupid flare hits, and the burnt husks of the alien horde start drifitng past, I''m gonna stand on the highest roof and scream the truth to the world. I mean, it''s ridiculous. Really. Some newfangled device or odd-ball concoction will appear from a dark secret place, supposedly serving to better our kind. It falls to my responsibility as Saint George to hand out these little miracles. "Where did you get this?" a benefactor might ask, as I hand him the means to make millions. "Oh, you know," I''d say. "From them." Then I''d put my finger to my lips and wink like the sly fox I think I am. People will believe anything if you sell it right. It''s a good thing, you know. We settle down, we have some kids and raise a family. These are pragmatic dreams. Those of us who live in the lies figure we''ll all be going to hell anyway, for the terrible things we''ve done, But we''re taking those damn frogs with us in a self-righteous blaze of glory. Any of us still left alive when all this is over, gasping and bleeding and dying, will hold our heads up high to say we did this to set the future right. What a bunch of idiots. I hope I''m one of the dead ones. Chapter FIVE - LUST I''m going to tell a tale that''s classic in its tragedy, about the foibles of Mankind and how he destroys everything he holds dear, all in a quest of pride to prove himself superior over the Universe. I ought to know best how to tell this tale, for I shall help destroy it. Our faith, our hope, our vanity¡ªHa! I shall certainly destroy our vanity! I am the last Saint George, fifth in a line of great Keepers of the Dragons. Officially, we call them Spitfires. They have a name they call themselves, at least I suppose they do, if anyone can figure out what their gobbledygook swirls mean when they paint the word for it. I would suppose that they like the name Spitfire. After all, the Brits named a fighter plane for them. I call them frogs when I¡¯m able. And stinking bastards under my breath. I always knew we should never have trusted them. All meek and mild and sweet and benign, letting us lead them around on a leash. Yet they weigh in at one thousand kilos! They¡¯d eat us like chicken if they weren¡¯t so fond of fish. And that¡¯s all they really want, so said they say, as their fine Prime Minister Churchill relayed to our Mr. President Roosevelt, when he passed their bounty to us. Just let them eat as much fish as they please, and live on the bottom of the ocean. Great. Thanks a lot, Great Britain. Now The United States will shoulder the blame for destroying the world. Of course though, truth is, we all played a part. Notions like nations and governments and laws don¡¯t matter much when its planet pitted against planet. At least, I think the Spitfires have their own planet. They must have had one at one time, before they started tesseracting through the galaxy. It''s hard to get any kind of useful information out of them other than what they want to give us, with them being so silent and slow and ancient. I mean, I am the fifth in a long line of Saint Georges, but there has always been just one Spitfire named Saint Charles, because they live for centuries. Well, they used to anyway, because not anymore they won''t. I¡¯m going spend my last few days writing these memoirs of sorts. I¡¯ll lock them away someplace sacred, where I hope they will stay for the next hundred years, because if those damned frogs ever drop from the sky and land on our heads a second time, it won¡¯t be until then. One hundred years to a Spitfire is like next week for us, and I want the truth to be told should they come knocking on our front door again! I will start with myself. The first Saint George was Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He met the very first Spitfire, but he doesn''t really count as the first, because officially there was no Saint George until there was a Saint Charles. Now, almost a hundred years later, I¡ªUnited States Air Force General Leon Michael Porter¡ªwill, God and the Good Lord willing, be the last Saint George. We must pray that the Spitfires don¡¯t believe in vengeance. For what hope do the godless have when the Devil has already taken from them everything they hold dear? I will next recount my first contact with these beasts. My call to duty came a few days after I re-upped my enlistment for the fifteenth time. It was a solemn moment that came at six hundred forty-five hours. ¡°General Porter?¡± ¡°Yes sir?¡± ¡°Department of Defense. National Security.¡± Those frog lovers never use names. ¡°Yes sir?¡± I said again, this time sounding confused. ¡°We¡¯d like to talk to you about your new assignment.¡± When the Defense Department calls to talk about ¡®your new assignment¡¯ and you¡¯re a career officer in the military, there¡¯s only one thing you say. ¡°Yes sir! Right away, sir!¡± I¡¯m going to guess I wasn¡¯t their first choice to be the next Saint George. In fact, I¡¯m going to guess that the big brass at NSHQ had a second and third choice in mind before they finally got to my name on the list. I¡¯ll never really know though, and it doesn¡¯t matter anyway. What got me the job wasn¡¯t my people skills, or any diplomatic finesse, that I will say for sure. What got me the job was my goddamned ability to understand the frogs¡¯ stupid language. I mean, it¡¯s not even made out of words, or sentences or any sort of structure. You just swirl a bunch of plasma in the air, and get it to make colors and pretty shapes. At least, I think we use a plasma stream. I¡¯m not much of a tech geek, but the way you talk to a Spitfire¡ªif talking is a word you can use¡ªis by controlling a cloud of particles ionized in the air, making them dance for you. We have a machine the size of a bus to make the jets of plasma we use. The Spitfires make theirs with a tablet they wear around their neck. They poke at it and click on it with their claws, and all these colors and shapes fly out, bouncing around everywhere, swirling in the air. I don¡¯t know how Winston Churchill did it or understood it, almost a century ago. I have a stinking feeling that he just nodded a lot. It makes better sense to me then as to how we got into this mess. My first lesson for learning their language seemed like a parlor game. I¡¯d guess at the sparkles and swirls as they stormed forth from our bus-sized machine. At times, a human voice would accompany the swirls, until I got the hang of it. Now, a human voice booms out only when a Spitfire wants to make a point of emphasis.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Or when someone in a control room far away thinks I might get us killed. Swirling superheated jets of plasma can be life-threatening at times. Anyway, it was fun for a while, learning their stupid language. It goes something like this: A column of brown smoke, unmoving. COMMAND! Like, an order is coming soon. Flecks of blue spark from the brown. (We) WANT. The next swirl will be an object. The blues sparks flatten out, and sit atop the brown. OCEAN. Water in huge amounts. The blue then curls down and envelops the brown in a rotating ball. EXIST, meaning a place to live. ¡°We want to live in your oceans.¡± That''s what that one means. It was pretty much all they ever say, except when they want to eat fish. Mastering their language made me very useful. In fact, the Earth Control Unit of the National Security Department gave me the obtuse title of a Super User. I have access now to all the secrets in regards to the Spitfires. I know more than the President, the Speaker of the House and the Director of National Intelligence. Combined. After I became Saint George. I met Saint Charles for the first time. It was six months into my training, and I''d already gotten quite used to talking to the Spitfires who officially reside on our planet, the two in Washington, D.C. Saint Charles lives in New Mexico, you see, and nearly nobody knows about him, at a place code-named Silene. It actually lives in Utah. Our base is in New Mexico. Its existence is so darn secret that we even lie about where the bastard is housed. It makes sense when you think about it. There is that big Salt Lake, you know, so it''s easy to create an aquarium large enough for it to live in. It¡¯s actually a terrarium, I suppose, if that''s what they¡¯re called¡ªa two hundred million liter fish tank that has a beach it can crawl onto if it wants. It¡¯s a good thing the beach is there, because it¡¯s nearly impossible to understand the gobbledygook it swirls when it paints its words underwater. "(I am) SAINT CHARLES" it swirled at me the first time we met, in the air above its tablet. It clutched it in its left front paw while tapping with its right. ¡°Yeah, I know that,¡± I said to myself under my breath, in good old plain English. God, those frogs were huge. "(My) HONOR (is to be) SAINT GEORGE" was what I swirled back that day. We became friends, I suppose, more or less. No. On second thought, we really were. The beast did come under the guise of saving us lowly humans. That¡¯s why we called it Saint Charles¡ªa prominent figure from the Reformation. It thought of us as children, I suppose, or more perhaps as its subjects, since Spitfires don¡¯t really have families. We were certainly its students at our first Sunday school lesson. Every day back then, when we could figure out what the heck it was swirling, we learned more horrible truths. With no family structure, the best way to describe their society is a hive. A military caste system of sorts, like bees or ants, though more sophisticated. And if the bees living in the hive were the size of orcas. Each individual in their society has a tablet personally tuned to their biorhythms, telling that individual everything their caste was allowed to know. Saint Charles was a big bee in its hive. It had access to almost everything. When it purposefully crashed its ship in the Chihuahuan Desert near Roswell, it tricked its fellow bees into thinking it had died. Now we little humans know what the intentions of its species are, because this frog, in a singular act of humanity, has betrayed its own kind. I should pause now, and not call them frogs for a while, because that''s not what they look like at all. They look like dragons out of Chinese folklore, though gray rather than green. They have six limbs, like a bug, walking on four of them when on land, with two arms on shoulders beneath a long snake neck. Walking is kind of a general term, because being water borne creature from outer space, walking is impractical and almost impossible. But they do crawl while clawing the ground with their long talons, and their belly scales reticulate like a snake, from their chins to the tips of their tails. In fact, when they have a mind to, they can move quite fast. At last, so I''ve been told. They rarely do, you see, as they prefer to do everything slow. Two tentacles sprout from their snouts, each at least four meters long. Their only useful purpose, it seems, is to crack in the air like a bullwhip, for emphasis or when seeking attention. They''re probably an antiquated defense mechanism, because they could snap an arm off with one if they cared to. Or maybe they''d use them grab you by the throat and drag you into their razor sharp claws and spiked teeth. They also use them, I''ve been told, to eat with sometimes. I''ve never watch them do it though. It''s gross. Everything about them is surprisingly surreal. I still swear to God they want to eat us. "(They) COME DOWN" Saint Charles once swirled to me while standing on the beach of its terrarium. "(To) STEAL (your) OCEANS" it added soon after. I had been briefed on this prior to our first contact. I learned about the plans the Spitfires had for our oceans while training to become Saint George. Wreck is a better word to use, I suppose, for what they want to do. It turns out that the reason why the world has ten thousand nuclear weapons is because all that fissionable material will one day be used to raise the temperature of the oceans by ten degrees Celsius. Stupid frogs are cold blooded, you see, and our world is too darn cold. That''s why they wear those big metal suits, all shiny and irredescent. They''re a source of heat. With Saint Charles help, we now plan to use those weapons to betray its kind. Unknown to all the other Spitfires, and probably to Saint Charles as well, the missiles we point at one another in a feint of a nuclear holocaust have dummy warheads on them. Empty, just like the frogs¡¯ empty promises of living with us in harmony. There is nothing in them. That fissionable material they taught us how to make is being used for our own evil intent¡ªbasically just one gigantic atom bomb, fitted on a mag-lev rocket, now in Lagrange Orbit around the planet Mercury. We''ll explode it near the Sun when the frogs fly out of it to take our planet away from us, frying their invading fleet in a nice big bright solar blast. It''ll cook them as they swim in their cans. Then in another day or two, all that ejected plasma from the Sun will reach our dear Mother Earth. At first it will just be a freak show, as auroras light up the sky. Then it¡¯ll melt the transformers at half the power stations on the planet, and knock out anything that runs on a chip. About ten days after that, it''ll start killing us. At least, I think it will. The geeks keep that side effect of the plan sort of a secret from us. But that fate awaits just the people who are standing on the planet. Saint Charles, you see, in a second act of infinite benevolence, gave us the plans and means to build spaceships of our own. We''ll use them to hide our children from the Sun in the shadow of our Earth. Saint Charles and the Children from the Sun. It has a nice ring to it. Someone should write a book. And I guess that someone is me. Chapter SIX - GLUTTONY Communicating with a Spitfire is like pulling teeth. I remember my first day on the job. "Don''t do that," my trainer said over the loudspeaker, from a room safe and far away. Even after a year of training, and over decades of Saint Charles living in a fish tank in Utah, we still can''t seem to figure out how to speak to them in their own language. But my superior was undoubtedly right. Saint Charles itself became concerned, and it''s behind a foot thick of Plexiglas. Which is another invention the Spitfire gave us, in case you didn''t know. "Yes sir," I said. "But why?" "It''s a fault of the system. You string those plasma streams together and you might set the air on fire." Well that''s a nice fault for the system to have. I huffed, both upset and embarrassed. "How does he do it?" I asked of Saint Charles. The loudspeaker seemed hesitant. "It has that quantum thing," the loudspeaker replied, referring to the tablet the Spitfire wore around its neck. "We don''t." One of the Saint Georges before me, I''ve been told, fried himself to a meaty crisp while conversing with Saint Charles. Not to mention the unknown number of tech guys and maintenance men who singed themselves from time to time while working on the generators. As recently as the late Eighties, the frog almost never came out of the water, as it was safer for it to be in there when we conversed with it. It made it nearly impossible to understand anything the beast said. "(Can we) DO BETTER (with communicating?)" I once swirled to the Spitfire. "CALL ME" it swirled back while hiding under the water, an allusion to using an ear splitting vocalization machine that created sonic waves. I believe it forced us to communicate with it that way at times because it liked the tingly sensation the sonic waves made on its skin. I put on my sound dampening headgear, making myself as deaf as a Spitfire. I still had to use the plasma generators though, as Saint Charles only understood colors and shapes and swirls. "WHY (are) YOU (here?)" I swirled to the beast. It certainly didn''t seemed comfortable, crammed in a giant fish tank. "HEART BOUNDLESS" it swirled back. It was an interesting array of reds, blues and blacks. "HOPE EVERLASTING" it swirled next, by changing the blue swirls to green and white sparks. I had no idea what it meant by saying that. Not too long after that little chat, and I got my first real briefing on why we were hiding this guy in the desert. "Sit down," my commander said, after I entered his office and saluted. "Yes sir." I respectfully took off my headgear. "What to you think of the Spitfire?" he asked me, point blank. "It''s an entire world no one knows¡ª" I began as a scripted reply. My commander interrupted. "It is?" I knew better than to open my mouth. "Hundreds of people know about this project," he said. "Maybe several thousand." I measured my next response. "The world contains almost fifteen billion." I must have said something right, because now my commander puzzled. "Can you explain to me the meaning of the word paradigm?" "Yes, sir!" I said with enthusiasm, as a way to stall for time while I thought of a definition. I''d better know the meaning of words, considering my current assignment. "Ah¡­ it''s a way of viewing the world. A set of reasons, the rules. The belief in a specific system of logic." "Yes. That''s pretty good. So then," he said, hesitating. "What would be a paradigm shift?" "When the rules and beliefs change. Suddenly, typically" I added as I watched him puzzle some more. He leaned far back in his chair. "Welcome to your first briefing," he said without smiling. "Yes, sir," I said, confused. As the silence between us wore on, I broke it by saying, "I thought I''d already been briefed." I was fricking Saint George after all. The hero of the Golden Legend. The dragon slayer from Silene. My commander leaned towards me and became more or less jovial. "You have been briefed on the Spitifres with the type of information we let leak to spies." "Spies?" "You don''t think that, with an alien from outer space the size of a dinosaur living in aquarium the size of Nevada for the last ninety or so years, that we haven''t drawn a crowd at least once or twice?"A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. He didn''t really say that to me as a question. "How many people in this building right here do you think know about Saint Charles? Or anything about any Spitfire? "Dozens, sir?" I offered as a guess. "Let''s go with scores. And we can''t just outright kill these people when they decide to retire. Can we now, General?" "No, sir," I tried to say without gulping. He stole a quick glance about. "You''re going to be briefed on a Project we also have going on here that only three people in this building know about. The fourh one now sits now before me, and another one swims in a giant tank wearing green metal scales as clothes." I immediately sat bolt upright. "Yes sir!" My commander twisted his face. "You"re not gonna wanna call me Sir anymore after this," he said. He showed me a silent movie of Saint Charles swirling plasma. "This is what it calls what we call Paradigm Shift." Near as I could tell, Saint Charles was swirling "THE HORRORS." "(I am) SAD" I swirled to the Spitfire in the hours after my briefing on Paradigm Shift¡ªthe project that Saint Charles called The Horrors. "KISS A COP" it swirled back to me. To a Spitfire, this means, ''Go to Hell.'' I''d been told during my first briefing¡ªI mean, my first fake briefing a few years ago¡ªthat Spitfires sometimes used human idioms as a way of showing they aren''t afraid of us mealy little bugs that crawl on Mother Earth. "(You) KNOW WHY" it added after a while, to further show me its fearlessness. "ARE YOU MAD (sir?)" I swirled. "MAD ENOUGH SIR!" "(You) MAKE (me) LOOK DUMB." "(I) DISLIKE (the) WEATHER" it swirled. I knew what that meant too. The Spitfires were all about peace and love and understanding these days, as I now knew in Paradigm Shift, twenty dozen of these stupid frogs swam around in secret isolation, building their future home in the warm troughs of the Indian Ocean. Only one of them¡ªour beloved Saint Charles¡ªever told any of us mealy humans the truth. When the rest of the Spitfires arrive they plan to subjugate us, and The Horrors would begin. They''d turn our oceans into saunas by irradiating them with our own nuclear warheads, poisoning the atmosphere and making living on what little dry land would remain become a battle with never-ending hurricanes. Apparently, the Spitfires were immune to radiation poisoning. "WOULD (we) DIE?" was the next thing I swirled. "YES" Saint Charles swirled back. "EVENTUALLY." Over millennia I assumed. Nailiing down a time frame while talking to these guys is a nightmare. And that''s where our conversation ended. I knew then why our version of Paradigm Shift differed slightly from The Horrors of Saint Charles. In Paradigm Shift, we didn''t just fry the invading Spitfire fleet when it came flying out of the Sun to lord over us. We also plan on poisoning the Spitfires living in the Indian Ocean. It turned out we intend to poison Saint Charles as well. I told my commanding officer without any hesitation that if we were going to kill it, the deed should be done by me. It was an easy enough thing to do. Just feed it genetically modified fish that carry the alkaloid Lycorine; an irritant that makes tulips toxic. Fun fact here, boys and girls. In 1943, when Winston Churchill met the first Spitfire, there was a famine in Norway. They had no hay or oats to keep their livestock alive. So they set them loose in the fields of flowers the Norwegians were famously known for. All the cattle died. A bovine''s four chamber stomach can''t digest Lycorine. And neither can the stomachs of these stupid Spitfires. "(I''m) SAD," I swirled again, after Saint Charles knew I had poisoned it. "YOU ARE DONE (sir)" it swirled back. Not angry, not KISS A COP. Just telling me it understood. "PLEASE?" I swirled after a while, not knowing what else to say, or how to swirl anything that looked like sympathy. "NO." "I AM SAD!" "YOU ARE DONE." I wasn''t going to beg. These stupid damn frogs intended to kill us all along, from the very beginning. So we planned to kill them first, with poison fish and solar flares. Then once we were done with them, we''ll probably kill ourselves. But at least they didn''t get to do it. "(Can we) DO BETTER (with communicating?)" I swirled, not knowing how much longer Saint Charles was going to live. Not much, I was guessing by the looks of it. "NO." "TELL (me) WHY (you are here.)" I was referring to Saint Charles himself, living in a fish tank in Utah, and not the Spitfires living in the ocean, or in outer space. I think that''s what I said, anyway. What came next almost set me on fire. "FIVE SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO," Saint Charles swirled in the throes of death, letting it boom through the loudspeakers as well, "WE BROUGHT FORTH TO THIS PLANET A WORLD CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY, DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL ARE CREATED EQUAL. WE ARE IN A GREAT WAR, TESTING WHETHER SUCH A WORLD CAN LONG ENDURE. IT IS PROPER THAT WE DO THIS." I was aghast. Amazed that I still was alive, what with so many charged particles soaring through the air. Saint Charles continued to boom. "THOSE WHO STRUGGLED AND DIED HAVE CONSECRATED THIS HALLOWED PLANET. THE UNIVERSE WILL NOT LONG REMEMBER WHAT WE SAY OR DO, YET WE RESOLVE THAT THOSE WHO HAVE DIED DO NOT DIE IN VAIN. THIS PLANET SHALL HAVE A NEW FREEDOM." "FOR HUMANS" Saint Charles swirled with what I could only think was its dying breath. I wanted to cry but I don''t think I did. Either way, if I had, the air around me was so ionized after Saint Charles" eloquent speech that any liquid my eyes might produce would instantly be vaporized. I left the room before my clothing caught fire. I re-entered it once it had been scrubbed. Surprisingly, the beast was still alive. "SAINT CHARLES?" I swirled to the Spitfire in as pleasing a way as I could. "CLOSE (your) EYES. BE (at) PEACE." The beast boomed back at me using its awesome canned voice, at a volume it knew was deafening. "SEE THINGS AS I DO." I puzzled over its words for a moment while scrambling to put on better sound dampening head gear. Despite it being ancient, the beast now most certainly had not long to live. I swirled the things I thought its species might want to do. "RETREAT? REGROUP? REVENGE?" "NO" it swirled back every time. "(There''s) CONFUSION (in) ME" I swirled. "DOUBT REIGNS. WHY EARTH?" "(We) KNEW (you for) TEN THOUSAND YEARS. TEN THOUSAND (more we) SEARCHED. (We found) NOTHING GOOD. ONLY EARTH (was good.)" "BUT TOO COLD." "YES. TOO COLD. (We had) NO (other) CHOICE. ONLY EARTH (was good)." "WHY BETRAY (your species) ? WHY TELL (us your) PLANS?" "EASE (my) MIND. (Be at) PEACE." It struggled to swirl its words. I knew our time together was short. "CALL (me a) GOOD PERSON," it said. This caused me to cry. I had to confess my sin. Not to Saint Charles, who knew all along that it was me who poisoned him, but to my Lord, Jesus Christ, for knowing I killed one of God''s kindest creatures. "IT (was) ME! (I) POISON(ed you!)" "(I) KNOW. UNDERSTANDABLE." "I''m sorry!" I cried out in human words, my tears making it too hard to swirl plasma. "(I) KNOW," it swirled as it died. "Saint Charles!" I screamed, booming as loud as I could. "You''re a good person! You are!" Stone deaf as I was with my head gear on, I felt more of what I screamed than did my Saint Charles. Here is another fun fact for you kids to know. Apparently, Spitfires die just like we do. You just have to get close to one of them.