Whispering Tales of Silence

                                                                      Word Count - 2247

Whispering Tales of Silence
by Thushari Wasana Nanayakkara

We are in the middle of yet another meeting with the alien chief, Garaayak and his team. 

Words flow from all sides, but we still couldn’t arrive at a mutual agreement.  Leaning back in my chair, I let my eyes sweep through the occupants of the oval shaped boardroom table and counted.  There were eight of them and ten of us. 

There was a time when we used to think that an alien ship parked above the city is just a phenomenon in the movies; like in “Alien Invasion 3003”.  Unlike in the earlier millennium, sighting of UFOs is very common in this present day.  A UFO passing over our galaxy or over the planet is not an unusual thing at all.  Although space travel is common, none of our space travelers had come to direct contact with any aliens.  Their ships had been spotted numerous times but they had never responded to our calls.  Eventually the human race arrived at two conclusions; one is that their communication system runs on a different platform and frequencies that our signals cannot be picked up and translated.  The other is that they were not interested in communicating with inhabitants of other planets.

A valid human – alien connection had never happened before and this was the first time we had come face to face with aliens.  Unfortunately, this first meeting didn’t take place under pleasant circumstances. 

We didn’t know of the aliens’ arrival until they were practically on top of us.  We were taken unaware and by surprise.  When we woke up one morning, they had parked their mother-ship over the city and had even set up monitoring camps by stationing smaller ship units in various places of the city.  The forces were restricted to their camps by the aliens and there was no way to get them or ammunition out of the camps.  Judging the situation, we didn’t have much of a choice but to surrender.  But for some unexplainable reason, they extended the hand of peace and discussions started between the humans and the aliens for sharing the controlling power of the earth.  The humans have been offered a share in the control under an alien ruler with certain conditions laid down for aliens’ living conditions on the earth.  Basically, the world is to function without any change under an alien ruler, absorbing and welcoming the aliens as part of the community.  That really didn’t make sense!

As discussions continued, many spaceships arrived at various cities of the world.  They parked themselves above these cities terrorizing the civilians with their presence.  Our discussions with the aliens dragged through the night.  Once finished, we continued into the next day scheming up various plots to buy us time until we find a way to get rid of these beasts. 

I looked at the alien seated next to me.  There was nothing pleasant in the picture that met my eye.  The physical appearance of the aliens didn’t surprise us much as they had a certain resemblance to the imaginary aliens we had seen in the movies throughout the years.  But these aliens were surprisingly skinny and when bare bodied, they looked like walking skeletons covered in a layer of gray-blue skin.  Their bodies were similar to a human body that had been starved for many months, but judging from their movements, they didn’t lack strength. Their foreheads were large and there were no ears or any hair on their heads.  The pupils of their large eyes were a shade of luminous purple.  Unlike our eyes, their eyes slightly popped out of the face structure like small mountains and angled towards the nose.  The nose was abnormal.  It was just a single hole without any protection.  They spoke with much effort.  They took a long time to speak with their lipless mouths as if their jaws function in slow motion.

“Share the planet with these monsters?  God, our children will never forgive us!”

Children?  Thought of children reminded me of my 8-year-old son, Hans.  With the situation we were going though, it brought a slight sting to my eyes rather than a smile.

“The delay in accepting our terms is most displeasing” Garayak slightly tilted up his chin.

Pleased or not, their expressionless face didn’t offer much.  Why do they offer us a choice at all?  They are powerful enough to take over.  We realized it when they jammed the whole communication system and took over the TV and radio transmissions even without leaving their ship.

So why do they want peace with us?  What can we do that they can’t do?  Why the empathy for the human kind who are going to be their slaves in one-way or another?  The choice is to choose between being willing slaves or slaves in chains?

“Oh please!” I silently grind my teeth giving in to the emotions my thoughts evoked.

Come to think of it, we have had the signals.  I remember about a month ago Chief getting all worked up and throwing a newspaper at our face at the Security Meeting. 

The headlines read “Aliens Strike Again – Another Heard of Cattle Taken by Aliens””

“Cattle?  Again?”

“They are after food”  It was a easy conclusion.

The leather covered high back chair let out a shriek as the Chief suddenly sat with a thud.

“Probably some disaster has destroyed their food.  Or a sudden population boom”

“Carnivorous?” Agent Dew was thinking aloud.

“May be”

“I mean what if they started abducting humans?” questioned another Agent. 

“Then they would have moved in by now”


Even as at now, we are assuming that they are only after the animals.  Expecting them to be carnivorous than cannibals.  But this friendly gesture towards the humans, an open invitation to share power when they can have it all, triggers reasonable doubt.

Did aliens realize that we are in a helpless situation?  We didn’t know how to fight them.  We have few of them captured and secured in underground cells.  Yet we still couldn’t find any method of destroying them.  Whatever harm done to them, they mended their bodies beautifully like mythical creatures.  I couldn’t believe my eyes when the alien pulled out the bullet I drove through his heart and how he healed himself in a matter of minutes.  They resisted all types of poison including the deadly snake venom brought from India.  When something didn’t agree with their system like the snake venom and the other lethal poisons that were injected, their body had some method of absorbing it into their digestive system and getting rid of it by simply throwing up.

We stopped the discussion until the coffee was served.

I walked to the window to stretch my legs.  More than that, I needed to take a deep breath and clear my lungs before the next session starts. 

I am rated as the sharpest and the best active agent on the field and that was the solely reason why I was included in this team.  But in this scenario, all my experience or my smartness hadn’t contributed at all.  The feeling of hopelessness is all over me.  I feel as if I have let down my country.  Not just the country, I feel as if I have betrayed the mother earth and that is not a feeling that I will be able to live with. 

I drew the blinds and looked out of the window.  A fairly thick layer of snow had landed on the windowpane.  I rubbed my cheeks and felt the beard stubs.  There were more important things to attend to than a shave!  The time was ticking fast.  My eyes looked beyond the windowpane.  The familiar sight of the green turf garden was gone.  It was glistening white.  So was the side walk and the street.

“What the…”  unknowingly I let out a swear

The weather has gone crazy.  It is snowing in layers rather than in flakes!  Just an hour ago, the road was cleared of snow by driving hot bubble cars and now it is covered with a layer of snow almost two-feet thick.  This is the worst snowing winter that I have ever gone through.  I had an unmistakable urge for a smoke and I looked around the room.  At a far corner of the room, a calendar displayed “20 December 2099” in green neon lettering.  I walked over and changed it to the current date with the remote controller to read as 23rd December 2099.

With much guilt I noticed that it is almost Christmas Eve.  I tried to remember the last time I went to church.  It was far too long ago.  My wife made it a point to attend the Sunday service with my son but with most of my assignments demanding me to be on the field 24/7, it was very rarely that I joined them.  Right now, I felt like being in a church looking at the age old sculptures of Jesus on the cross and pouring out my worries to him.

Suddenly I had this urge to go down on my knees and say a simple prayer “Lord, give me strength to save my people.  We all need your guidance now more than ever”

“Jack”

My daydreams vanished as my mind touched reality.  Oh well, whenever you think of doing something angelic, the devil is always around to stop you.

“Coming” I replied longing for a smoke, now more than ever.

The Secretary had finished serving the coffee and I returned to the meeting table with a few quick steps.  The steaming coffee was a blessing in this freezing weather, which is making the heaters almost useless.  While the discussion continued, I wrapped my palms around the coffee cup to absorb the warmth.  As I set down my cup after a comforting sip of warm coffee, I casually looked at the cup of the alien seated next to me.  He was having an iced coffee. 

Then suddenly it hit me. 

Iced coffee?  The heat indicator of the cups placed in front of the aliens showed blue and not red like our cups.  None of their cups were steaming.  They all were having a chilled drink and none of them were drinking warm coffee like us.  Come to think of it, I got so amused at hearing Gerayaka requesting iced tea at yesterdays meeting.  Iced tea?  Ice tea in this freezing weather?  I tried to remember what they drank at the previous meetings.  I do remember that they refused refreshment once but other than that, I couldn’t remember.  I eyed them with great curiosity with my mind flip-flopping like a man walking on a thin wire with a blazing fire below him.

“Now let us not jump to conclusions” I told myself in trying to hide my excitement “a simple experiment is all that will take”

I took a sip of coffee and in all natural gestures, kept my steaming coffee cup closer to the neighboring alien.  I was looking straight ahead, getting involved in the discussion, but from the corner of my eye, I could see that he winced in pain and then slowly shifted his weight to the other side of the chair.  I played that I didn’t notice.  The coffee cup stayed steaming. 

“One second, two seconds, three, four, five, six..” I counted

With the eighth count, my sharp ears picked up the sound of the cup being pushed towards the centre of the table, very slowly and cautiously. 

“Hey alien, I didn’t see it”  I tried to hide the exited smile that came to my lips.

It looks like hot steam or hot water is all we are going to need to save the world.  I couldn’t believe that it took me so long to observe this!  It all fits in.  Their guards are bare bodied up to the waist and wear only a huge glittering medal covering their chest; they are accustomed to the freezing cold.  That must be their living condition.  Their planet anyway doesn’t have a sun.  It must be like arctic and they are ice creatures.  Most probably that is why their skin is of a certain shade of blue and ash!  We have never had winters as these.  The cold is so bad because they are controlling the temperature!  No doubt about that because without such a temperature and cold conditions, they will not be able to survive. 

They are offering this hand of peace because they can’t adjust to seasons of the earth.  They are after food.  They are eyeing the cattle, the chickens and ducks and any animal  that’s edible.    They want us because animals will not adjust to a year long winter, year after year.  So they want us or rather they need us, to farm their food for them.  It’s as simple as that.

By God, this is a bull’s eye!

I looked straight at the expressionless face of Garayak as he gave the final verdict.

“Your decision must be made within the next 12 hours”

I made myself comfortable in my black leather chair and said;

“No problem”

Everyone on our team, including the chief looked at me as if I have gone insane.  Chief dashed down the file he was holding in his hand. 

Hah, only if they knew what I knew!  Can’t blame them; I guess they didn’t listen carefully enough to hear the silent story of the coffee cups.

This is going to be a Merry Christmas after all.

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