Life After The Invasion (fiction)

Commodore Starship by oigaitnas

Life After The Invasion

 

Katie awoke to the sound of her alarm. She sighed. She didn’t want to get up but she had an appointment with her doctor. She pulled back the curtain and looked out the window. The sky was clear aside from the large spaceship in the air above them all. It just hung there with the underside displaying messages: Remember You Are Special! and We Love You! Katie inwardly groaned as she got out of bed. It didn’t help she was on her period and felt even more wretched than usual. She felt life sucked after the aliens had invaded. If they had been aggressive aliens intent on wiping out humanity she would have understood that at some level, but the Kren were not what anyone had been expecting.

When the Kren first arrived in their large spaceships they announced to the world they were invading us. They said they loved us and they believed they had to invade our world to save us from ourselves. All the governments of the world united with a military response against them. However Kren technology was so superior to our own that our response offered no threat to them whatsoever. They just disregarded it with a good nature and then took over our world and we all watched helplessly as they did so. All top branches of government were now controlled by Kren. They cleaned up the environment, destroyed all our weapons, and ensured everyone was fed and housed. Katie just thought of them as sanctimonious bastards. They were worse than having helicopter parents or overly zealous social workers in her opinion. And now she had to go and meet one, since her doctor was a Kren.

She showered and then got dressed. Though she didn’t feel like eating she made sure she ate and drank something as she knew her blood sugar levels and nutrition would be monitored and if her doctor wasn’t happy with it then Katie would be told off and she didn’t want to risk ending up in Re-education again. As she ate she watched TV which had become a mixture of bland and annoying due to the constant updates from the Kren. She sighed again and switched it off. She left her apartment and entered the lift and stood in a corner watching the display counting down all the way to ground level. Once the lift doors opened she left the building and headed for the subway.

On the way she spotted a Kren in the street since they were rather unmistakable being eight foot tall with green and bluish skin. They were bipedal like us but instead of arms and legs they had two sets of tentacles which they could manipulate the ends of into any shape. They also had large soft eyes. This one was making a cooing noise at a human couple holding hands that walked by it. For some reason humans showing signs of affection to each other delighted the Kren. Katie walked past grimacing as usual. The Kren seemed to ignore her. Luckily once she got to the subway there was a train leaving almost immediately. She hurriedly squeezed through the doors just as they began to close. She found a seat and stared at the blackness outside the windows once the subway car started speeding along. On the walls there were messages: Remember You Are Loved! and You Are Special! There Is No One Else Like You! She tried to ignore them, though she was grateful there was no one else exactly like her…

For once she arrived at the medical centre on time. They gave her a blood test, checked her blood pressure and temperature, changed her pad, and lastly did a data scan of her. Then she sat in a small white room waiting for the doctor.

“I see you are currently menstruating.” said a robotic-sounding voice. Katie was startled and looked around to see her doctor slithering into the room. The doctor was using a computer synthesised voice, as all Kren did due to their physiology; they could not speak human languages unaided.

“Um yes.” Katie confirmed not really wanting to talk about it. The doctor she knew as Doctor Fy-Lo nodded it’s head. It had a data pad in it’s right tentacle that it seemed to be consulting.

“You are aware if you were impregnated you would not have to worry about the effects of the menstrual cycle, at least during the term of the pregnancy.” Doctor Fy-Lo’s large soft eyes looked into hers.

“Yes I’m aware of that.” Katie replied flicking her long dark hair out of her brown eyes. The Kren had the annoying habit of telling you things you already knew.

“According to this you prefer to mate with other females of your species. You are aware that impregnation can only occur with medical intervention this way?”

“Or a turkey baster.” Katie added. The doctor gave her a puzzled look and then continued on undeterred:

“If you were to mate with a male of your species then impregnation is more likely and will probably not need medical intervention.”

“Well sorry I’m not interested in being with a male of my species.” she said mimicking the doctor’s robotic voice. “And why do you seem so keen to get me pregnant anyhow?”

“We notice you have never given birth to any offspring and thought you might be happier with some.” The doctor informed her seemingly ignoring her attempts at mimicking them.

“The last thing I need now is some screaming brats. Maybe in the future…” her voice trailed away. She had never seriously thought about having kids.

“The records state you are still single. We could assign you a mate that we think would be compatible with you.”

“I’m used to being on my own.” she answered skeptical about what sort of match-up the Kren would make for her. “Besides why do you care so much? And why do I have to come here so often?”

“You come here regularly because we are worried about you. We want you to be happy. Assigning a mate will give you some companionship and make you feel less lonely.” Fy-Lo replied.

“Maybe I don’t want to be happy.” Katie stated. The doctor looked at her in shock. They then consulted the data pad.

“Our information shows you have been sent to Re-Education three times now. It does not seem to have had much effect, but we can send you there again if you think it will help.”

“I don’t want to go back there.” Katie informed Fy-Lo.

“Then what will make you happier?” Fy-Lo asked their eyes looking into Katie’s with almost a deep sadness.

“Maybe you can’t fix everyone.” Katie suggested looking away. The doctor looked at her silently for a while, as if it didn’t know what to say.

“You are an interesting species. Very creative, but also very destructive. We try to make things better for you all, but some of you resist us and we don’t understand why.” the doctor stated.

“Did you ever wonder if by getting rid of our destructive side you also destroy our creative side as well? That maybe to have a creative nature we also need to be destructive?”

“Your destructive nature was going to destroy yourselves and possibly take all the other species of this planet with you. If this was the case, maybe the cost was too high. Maybe your creative side is worth sacrificing if it means you all survive.” the doctor informed her.

“Yeh so you came to this world to make everything suck.” Katie replied belligerently.

“Made everything suck.” the doctor repeated. There was a pause. “When we came to your world many of your governments were spending more resources to harm others of your own species than they were for education or healthcare. In parts of your planet your people were starving to death or lacked decent housing while in other areas food was being thrown away. The biosphere was dying. Many species were becoming extinct and your own species didn’t seem to realise that you too would become extinct eventually because of this as well. None of this planet’s species exist anywhere else. Once the biosphere is destroyed they are gone forever. You were fortunate to live in a prosperous area of this world. You always had access to food, healthcare, decent shelter, education, and anything else you needed. The fact that your skin has low levels of melanin also helped you, for a reason we don’t quite understand. If you had been born in some other area of the planet your life would have been very different. So maybe our coming to your world may “suck” for you, but I don’t think other members of your species living in other areas of this planet would say the same thing.” There was a silence. Katie felt slightly uncomfortable though still rolled her eyes at the lecture from the doctor. “All we are doing is trying to curb the worst excesses of your species, even if some of you are rather self-involved.” Katie could feel her face go red.

“I’m sorry I just miss the old days when I could drive a car really fast down the road, or eat a nice big steak.” Katie said. Doctor Fy-Lo looked at her and shook their head, or at least did the Kren equivalent of it. The doctor consulted their data pad again.

“Maybe Re-Education is pointless for you. Maybe we should send you to Re-Processing.”

“What’s Re-Processing?” Katie asked with a feeling of rising concern.

 

Joanne Fisher

 

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