The Landing
Planet earth became busier and busier, the pace of life reaching beyond any plan nature or gods could have devised. Greater discoveries and bolder inventions brought humans and their surroundings closer and closer to the crisis of knowing everything and doing everything, yet their earliest folly, which had come with them and every other animal out of the primal muck of earth’s fecund womb, still hunted them every day of their lives: violence and conflict tore at the lives of people; most of them suffered; the few who did not suffer the violence of physical privation were instead plagued by the crisis of conscience created by witnessing such a cruel reality. Throughout the world, humans attempted to create a universal environment of understanding, but underneath it all, animal instinct carried the day, usually with less compassionate results than most people, if they thought about it, would desire.
Many predicted that a destructive force would bring the end of all things. Some said the earth would rid herself of humanity as a body destroys a threatening infection. Others reasoned that God would carry the pure of heart to a paradise, destroying the pathetic sinners. The notion of the onslaught of something was shared by growing numbers of people.
Then, at a time when much of humanity looked outside their own world in expectation of some great change, landed three separate alien invasions. There was no fanfare, no immediate response to the arrival of the foreigners. In fact, most people didn’t notice—even many people whose job it was specifically to notice such things.
