Day Dream Log - Aliens of God

The aliens arrive in the very near future.  And they look like us.  Bipedal.  Humanoid.  You would have a easier time telling the difference between two people from Korea and Japan than you would telling the difference between us and them.  

While the scientists turn themselves inside out trying to explain this, the aliens introduce themselves to the world.  They are friendly.  They are open.  They are peaceful in their intent.  In some ways they are incredibly liberal and progressive.  In others they are more right than the most right-wing conservative.  But they are tolerant.  They listen with respect, express forthrightly where they disagree and do their best to work with us.  

They are, of course, more advanced than us technologically.  That's pretty much a given for any people that can sail the vast empty seas of the Milky Way to find us.  They don't have a "prime directive" to wait until we're ready.  They are more interested in "uplift," helping us find our way past the mistakes they made in developing new technologies.  Like cell towers in the jungle, they will lead us past the need to string wires for telephones straight to what their experience has taught them will work best.  

As one might expect, though, disaster strikes.  Nothing can go perfectly well for very long.  

It happens in the Middle East.  Isn't that where most of the disasters we perpetrate upon ourselves take place these days?  Two aid workers, working with the aliens that came to treat wounded children near the border of Syria and Iraqi are taken hostage.  A video is posted online.  They are bound, kneeling, in orange jumpsuits.  A smooth-talking spokesperson with an educated British accent tells us the aliens are enemies.  Worse than infidels.  They are devils come to lead mankind away from the proper devotion one should give to God alone.  They have caused people to lift their eyes to the skies in false home, when they should be lowered in humility and prayer.  They demand that the devils that command these two leave the Earth immediately.  If they do not, then they will be executed in the name of Allah, ever-merciful.  

The aliens do abandon the offices and embassies they've created, retreating to their ships orbiting above.  But they do not leave orbit.  This is where we see hardened resolve of beings that learned to survive and flourish after nearly destroyed themselves many more times than we've experienced.  They issue a warning of their own.  The two hostages, who only meant to do good, are to be returned to a place of safety where they can be picked up by one of their landers.  If this is done, the aliens will negotiate with their captors to find a resolution of their goals.  

If this not done, the alien communique goes on to say, if they are killed as threatened, then every member of the organization that had a hand in their deaths, "to the seventh degree," will be killed in turn.  The final statement of the communique is a plea that the group holding the two aid workers believe their resolve in this to be true and not force their hand.  

Two days after the alien communique is broadcast, a video appears online showing the beheadings of the two aid workers.  

The day after the video is posted, all hell breaks loose.  

It starts with an orbital bombardment.  The aliens news release indicate it is focused on the regional headquarters of the group that murdered their aid workers.  Greater explosive force than was used in the entirety of the Vietnam War is directed toward this site in the space of twelve hours.  

The next day, shooting stars fill the skies over the region.  The literal translation of the term the aliens use are "Orbital Samurais."  They are relative few, only a few hundred over an area larger that Texas.  But each one has the equivalent tactical responsibility of a modern armored battalion.  They can target something the size of a golf ball moving at the speed of a fighter jet two miles away.  They can be as precise as a scalpel, delivering the force of a tactical nuclear device.  

And with them, they bring their drones.  Flying drones.  Swimming drones.  Drones that stalk the ground looking like mechanical versions of saber-toothed tigers.  The various news agencies ignore the alien's term for these devices.  They use the one that has gone viral throughout the 'net for them: "terminators."  

It is a slaughter. 

Supporters of the group that killed the aid workers level claims of atrocities against the aliens.  But every claim is rebuked by the video evidence the aliens provide on their websites.  Helmet cameras from the orbital samurais and terminators record the ending of each life the aliens choose to take.  Just as they were open with the information they provided when trying to help us, they are just as forthcoming with documentation of their killing.  The images are varied.  Fighters trying vainly to stand up against these super-technological foes.  Others running, screaming for help.  A few on their knees, begging for mercy or for a miracle.  The results are the same.  The aliens are both precise and brutal.  Only fighters are killed.  

It is over in less than a week.  The initial explosion of death turn into accounts of smaller and smaller groups being hunted down.  Then individuals in widely separated areas.  Finally comes the announcement that they have nothing further to report.  The operation is complete.

After the orbital samurais and terminators boost back into orbit, a single structure is left behind.  It is a giant scale.  It is as tall as the Eiffel Tower.  On one tray, there are two coffins.  Reporters ask the aliens if they contain the actual bodies of the murdered aid workers.  The aliens never confirm this.  If you climb the structure and stand before either coffin, you see a presentation summarizing the lives and work of both of the two.  Both videos end with the uncensored video of their execution.  

On the other tray are thousands of clear coffins.  Inside each one, sealed like a fossil trapped in amber, is the body of fighter killed by the alien forces.  As with the coffins of the aid workers, if you stand before one of these coffins you see a presentation.  Instead of the story of the fighter's life, you see a short video documenting how the fighter died.  

The two trays are shown to be in perfect balance. 

The aliens announce they must leave us for a time.  They need to "cleanse" themselves.  It is part of their cultural belief.  They will come back in seven of our years, once this process is done.  They do not respond to any attempts to communicate with them as their ships, one by one, boost from Earth's gravitational pull and then seem to shrink to nothing and vanish.  

There are attempts to blow up the giant scale, but it turns out to be impervious to any effort short of a nuclear blast.  After the reporters visit and film it, give their opinion of its meaning for us and the aliens, it is rarely visited.  Everyone who does go to view it, though, comes away with the same feeling, and the same question, though often couched in a wide variety of terms.  

The feeling is, "We should have done...  Something."  We, collectively, should have done whatever was needed to resolve this problem.  It was our problem, not theirs.  It was our responsibility.  What the aliens did was like an answer to a prayer.  The result was as if God heard the prayer of one side in a conflict and acted on it.  

And the question was, "What if, next time, God listens to the other side's prayer instead?"