used technology far beyond human understanding to wipe out our societies in one fell swoop, along with our ability to fight back. Before you hear why I’ve called for all of you to hear my words, I would first like to show you something.”
He gestured to Hackett, who in turn gestured to me and a couple of other councilors to rig up the screen. The projector screen was something almost out of science fiction. It was a paper-thin sheet of transparent material that felt like cloth, sounded like sandpaper when you unfolded it, and stretched to over a hundred times its initial size. Sergeant Waters and Corporal Hackett had helped us set two twenty foot poles in the ground near the platform. The poles stood twenty feet apart, and we stretched the projector screen across the entire expanse, locking it in place around the poles with what looked like bungee cords.
Once Hackett saw that we’d made sure the screen was ready to go, he took the projector out of the case and walked into the crowd about fifteen deep. The people parted for him like he was Moses. He set up the projector on a tripod and pointed it between the two poles. The whole thing looked to be about as big as the old digital cameras from before the invasion. Not much more than an old pack of smokes. That made me think about the last Camel I’d smoked. Twelve years ago maybe. My pulse still quickened at the thought of puffing on a fresh cigarette.
The crowd’s murmuring turned into a loud buzzing as Hackett set everything up. The instant he flipped the switch to the projector, there were a few seconds of oohs and aahs before everyone fell silent as Colonel Hardaway began to talk again.
“Twenty three years ago, the aliens destroyed all of our infrastructure, then all of our military assets,” he said as a shaky video of an object large enough to blot out the moon slid into view on a black sky.
The view was from a satellite that was either orbiting the moon or thousands of miles above the planet. The object, what had to be the alien ship, covered almost a quarter of the Earth behind it. The scale made it hard to estimate just how large it was, but I decided it was entirely too damn big. The clip went black and immediately a new one played, the alien ship blotting out a quarter of the planet while white fireballs poured out from below it and plunged into the atmosphere. Within seconds there were bright flashes on the surface. I watched as North America swung into view and then was inundated with a swarm of plasma bolts. Idaho was hidden from view by the ship, but I knew exactly where two of those bombs hit.
“Within two days, the aliens began using dropships to bring down their tower components,” the Colonel went on.
We watched enormous thrusters bring down objects that looked like metal fence posts, land them gently on the ground, and return to the ship. The satellite had a hard time zooming all the way down to a landing site, the alien ship blocking the view most of the time, and the haze of looking almost horizontally through the atmosphere to the ground below it made the video foggy. The clip went black and a new one started. Gasps from the crowd came when we watched a tower come together, three gargantuan posts that raised themselves onto their ends, the other ends touching the sky.
The clip switched to another tower, this one built near a city. The city could have been any Midwestern capital like Omaha or Minneapolis. It had been too long for most of us to remember what particular cities looked like unless we were looking at geography textbooks. The city in the video had high-rise buildings. I estimated them to be in the forty story range, though I was just guessing. When the alien tower assembled, it was at least five times taller than the largest skyscraper in the city, and at least three times as wide at the base.
“Two days after that, the aliens began using dropships to assemble massive complexes,” Hardaway said as the video showed another
He gestured to Hackett, who in turn gestured to me and a couple of other councilors to rig up the screen. The projector screen was something almost out of science fiction. It was a paper-thin sheet of transparent material that felt like cloth, sounded like sandpaper when you unfolded it, and stretched to over a hundred times its initial size. Sergeant Waters and Corporal Hackett had helped us set two twenty foot poles in the ground near the platform. The poles stood twenty feet apart, and we stretched the projector screen across the entire expanse, locking it in place around the poles with what looked like bungee cords.
Once Hackett saw that we’d made sure the screen was ready to go, he took the projector out of the case and walked into the crowd about fifteen deep. The people parted for him like he was Moses. He set up the projector on a tripod and pointed it between the two poles. The whole thing looked to be about as big as the old digital cameras from before the invasion. Not much more than an old pack of smokes. That made me think about the last Camel I’d smoked. Twelve years ago maybe. My pulse still quickened at the thought of puffing on a fresh cigarette.
The crowd’s murmuring turned into a loud buzzing as Hackett set everything up. The instant he flipped the switch to the projector, there were a few seconds of oohs and aahs before everyone fell silent as Colonel Hardaway began to talk again.
“Twenty three years ago, the aliens destroyed all of our infrastructure, then all of our military assets,” he said as a shaky video of an object large enough to blot out the moon slid into view on a black sky.
The view was from a satellite that was either orbiting the moon or thousands of miles above the planet. The object, what had to be the alien ship, covered almost a quarter of the Earth behind it. The scale made it hard to estimate just how large it was, but I decided it was entirely too damn big. The clip went black and immediately a new one played, the alien ship blotting out a quarter of the planet while white fireballs poured out from below it and plunged into the atmosphere. Within seconds there were bright flashes on the surface. I watched as North America swung into view and then was inundated with a swarm of plasma bolts. Idaho was hidden from view by the ship, but I knew exactly where two of those bombs hit.
“Within two days, the aliens began using dropships to bring down their tower components,” the Colonel went on.
We watched enormous thrusters bring down objects that looked like metal fence posts, land them gently on the ground, and return to the ship. The satellite had a hard time zooming all the way down to a landing site, the alien ship blocking the view most of the time, and the haze of looking almost horizontally through the atmosphere to the ground below it made the video foggy. The clip went black and a new one started. Gasps from the crowd came when we watched a tower come together, three gargantuan posts that raised themselves onto their ends, the other ends touching the sky.
The clip switched to another tower, this one built near a city. The city could have been any Midwestern capital like Omaha or Minneapolis. It had been too long for most of us to remember what particular cities looked like unless we were looking at geography textbooks. The city in the video had high-rise buildings. I estimated them to be in the forty story range, though I was just guessing. When the alien tower assembled, it was at least five times taller than the largest skyscraper in the city, and at least three times as wide at the base.
“Two days after that, the aliens began using dropships to assemble massive complexes,” Hardaway said as the video showed another
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