President Grant stood up and walked by the window, hands clasped behind his back, watching a hawk circle the South Lawn.
Everyone left the room but one person.
"Arthur," the President said without turning.
"I spent all night wondering what I'd say today. And the terrifying realization I kept coming to is that I'm just a guy in a suit. I can't even get Congress to agree on a highway bill. How am I supposed to help when aliens get here? Any person with a brain would guess that if the aliens have the technology to travel in space going near light speed, they will have no problem destroying Earth. I hope the aliens are nothing like humans."
"Why's that?" Arthur replied.
"We are a virus," his voice dropping to a hollow rasp. "We've spent ten thousand years perfecting the art of killing. We split the atom not to power our homes, but to threaten our neighbors. We poison the very cradle that carries us through the void. We call it 'ambition' or 'survival,' but to the outside looking in, we are a horror story. We do this to our own; what would humans do to others on different planets?"
"Humanity isn't the protagonist of this story, Arthur. We're the cautionary tale."
...
Miami, Florida
The silence that followed the President's address was more deafening than the speech itself. In the living room, the Lowell family sat frozen, the blue light of the television casting long, flickering shadows against the walls.
"Well, it seems like they don't know much either; we can only wait until it arrives to know what's going on," Daymon said, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, hopefully, they are not hostile. What if they want us to be slaves or something? I wonder why they didn't think about that," Ryan said with slight worry in his tone.
"I'm sure they had thought about that, but they don't want people to panic. If they are actually coming to make us their slaves, it's not like we will have the ability to resist. It was better not to even bring it up and instead make the aliens' arrival seem as harmless as possible. It will only cause unnecessary chaos if everyone thinks they will die in less than two weeks," Drake added.
You could see the fear in Ryan and Daymon's eyes as they realized how dangerous the situation truly was.
"Don't be scaring the kids and have them overly worried. There are billions of people on Earth, and if something happens, there will be people to hold the sky up. We will not be their first target. We just will have to hide or something. Let's wait and see; worrying now won't help anything," Malisa said in a nonchalant tone in an attempt to ease her kids' fears.
No one made a comment on what Malisa said, and the room remained silent as everyone was in their own world, thinking to themselves.
Drake was deep in thought from the pressure of not knowing if he could keep his family safe when the time came.
The realization of everything just now hitting Daymon was making him realize how dangerous the situation truly was. He honestly didn't fully believe that aliens were coming; it was just too crazy to believe with just a few words on the internet.
Ryan, on the other hand, was worried but also excited about it all. He was thinking about what aliens could possibly want and if there would be a chance to get superpowers from all this. He read and watched a lot of anime and novels. He might be a lazy kid that hates doing things, but that's only for things he doesn't want to do.
Malisa was just worried seeing her family worried. She didn't think too much about the alien stuff; she felt like that would be a problem for the government or something to solve, not them.
She just had the task to take care of her family, and with that in mind, she put on something funny and light-hearted on TV to watch, to erase the silent atmosphere.
.....
For the first 48 hours, the "Alien Arrival" was the only thing that existed. On TikTok and Reels, the vibe was a chaotic mix of existential dread and aggressive irony.
A dance challenge called the "Probe Slide" went viral within six hours. Teenagers filmed themselves packing "interstellar go-bags" filled with nothing but snacks and chargers, joking that they hoped the aliens had better Wi-Fi than their parents.
Creators began posting "Arrival Outfit Inspo," featuring holographic fabrics and silver face paint, treating the end of human isolation like a high-stakes Coachella.
While some joked, others dove into the deep end of the digital abyss. On forums and encrypted message boards, the speculation turned feverish.
One faction argued that these weren't strangers, but "landlords" returning to collect rent on a planet we had mismanaged.
Audio engineers pulled the three seconds of static from the President's broadcast, running it through spectrographs and claiming to find everything from DNA sequences to the date of the "New World Reset."
Satellite images of the approaching craft—blurry as they were—led "digital archaeologists" to claim the ships were shaped exactly like the pyramids, proving every conspiracy theory from the last fifty years at once.
By Friday, the initial shock had settled into a strange, heavy tension. You could see it at the grocery stores, where shelves were half-empty not because of a shortage, but because people didn't know if they were buying for next week or for the end of history.
The crime rate was on the incline. But it was still a controllable amount for the government; there were no big riots or the sort.
In the cities, people stopped looking at their phones and started looking up. The sky hadn't changed yet, but the way people looked at it had.There was a sense that the people had finally found the one thing they could all talk about at once—even if no one knew what to say.
As a whole, there wasn't too much worldwide panic. Surprisingly, most people seemed optimistic about it all, or they weren't taking it seriously enough. It's hard to say.
A lot probably didn't care about such things.
Whether the world ended or not, they had to work to afford their next meal.
No matter how destructive the environment became, those who needed to work kept working.
Only the rich had the luxury of staying safe at home.
If some people didn't pay their rent for the upcoming month, they would be evicted.
...
As the days ticked down, the majority of people continued their normal lives, while some prepared as if doomsday were around the corner.
The Lowell family didn't feel the need to do too much differently. Drake was in the military for a few years, and when he left, he decided he wanted to build an underground bunker under his house for a worst-case scenario.
It has weapons and tons of supplies inside. Plus, his house is kind of isolated; his next-door neighbor is minutes down the road from him.
So they were already prepared.
Drake called his parents, who live in Ohio, to make sure they knew about everything that was going on and what the plan was if the worst happened.
Drake lives in Florida, which is like a 16-hour drive to his parents' house, so they were just planning on heading there a couple of days before the aliens' arrival date. They were even planning on bringing their dog Midnight with them.
The plan was originally to stay home, but since his parents are too old to be traveling, they decided to just meet up at their house.
Drake called his younger sister and her boyfriend, who are staying in Missouri, to meet up there too.
Malisa did try to convince her side of the family that stays in Washington to come, but they didn't want to head to Ohio. They thought they were safe enough where they were.
.....
On the 16th of March, 2024, it was the day of the aliens' arrival.
Many tuned in while looking up at the sky, while some, like the Lowell family, stayed inside their homes to watch the live stream. On the screen, there was a 2-hour, 34-minute timer counting down to when they would make it to Earth.
The Lowell family was already at Drake's parents' house, talking amongst themselves.
The atmosphere grew quieter and more tense as the time ticked down. In the last minute, the president walked to the desk and sat down, catching the attention of the whole house.
"We are in contact with all the powers of the world this very moment. No matter where the aliens land, we will receive the news immediately. So everyone, please just remain calm when the timer reaches zero."
After he finished, he sat there waiting, staring into the camera.
The timer reached its last seconds; all around the world, everyone was watching it.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
0.
Seconds went past, then minutes.
Everyone just continued to stare at the screen, waiting for the president to talk again.
"I don't know why, but I had expected something more exciting to happen when it reached zero," Ryan commented, breaking the tense atmosphere.
"That is why the government said to remain calm when it hit zero; it's not like the alien spaceship will crash into Ear..." before Daymon could finish his sentence.
The whole room started violently shaking. Ryan could hear things falling off shelves and breaking. There was an overwhelming noise coming from somewhere, to the point that it entirely confused him.