Home>>read The Invitation free online

The Invitation(37)

By:Michael McKinney


Carol Myers, witnessing these things, is beside herself with questions that come with a terrible, dubious foreboding. Who exactly is the man that she calls husband? Who is Ken Myers, and how could he have any possibility of knowing what was going to happen tonight? His strange, imperturbable demeanor of showing no shock or surprise in the face of what is nothing less than astonishing have many thinking that he is much more than he appears to be, and first among them is his wife. She suddenly recalls the incredible story she was told by the President’s mother. A vague, uneasy, apprehension grows within her as she approaches her husband.

“How did you know about this? Tell me, Ken. Who are you? Tell me!”

“I am Ken Myers, your husband, the man you married. But you’re right, I’m more than that.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Everything will be resolved, Carol. Trust me.”

As the President is saying these words, an audible gasp is suddenly heard. When Carol looks to see why, she and more than two billion others see something in the sky above them that is beyond the ken of all human experience. After decades of books and movies speculating about what the face of an alien creature would look like, there, projected across the surface of that enormous object hanging in the sky above them, with no fanfare, no announcement, no prior indication of any kind, almost a third of humanity is suddenly looking at something that is now looking back at them. It’s the face of a being from another world.

They see a creature with brownish-gray skin, large, yellow eyes that are very expressive, with a head smaller than a human cranium. No hair can be seen on the creature. Small inlets under the large eyes, and open slits on the side of his head suggest sensory organs of some type. Though astounded, most people assume they are looking at a projected image. They have just seen Steve Kearns on the same visual platform in the sky that now shows a very different face. That could not happen they reasoned, unless what they were seeing was a reproduced image. Despite little sense of general alarm, the size of the image they are looking at is humongous, and though people are relatively contained in their response, animals respond very differently. Dogs bark incessantly, farm animals are spooked, birds still in flight since the object’s initial appearance try in vain to outrun the perceived threat. For humans the initial and prevalent response is not fear. They have seen this colossal object in the sky for nearly two hours now, watching first an incredible display of patterns and colors at once energizing, and tranquil, a display that seemed to awaken a nascent sense of harmony, and concord for those who saw it.

After that, seeing a man with no legs and one arm have his body literally remade in minutes has the effect of engendering a sense of auspicious and benevolent expectation. Most people are not afraid. To the contrary, uncounted millions in their muted sense of collective wonder, find these astonishing events hypnotically captivating.

Several years before, the discovery of living subsurface bacteria on the planet Mars, was hailed as the greatest discovery in the history of science. No one could have known then, that the ultimate implication of that discovery of life on another world would soon present, and confirm itself in stunning, living reality.

Then suddenly, the moment waited for finally comes, as three clearly articulated words are heard by all.

“People of Earth.”

Many lurch back as if shocked to hear something they were already keenly expecting. The sound of his low-pitched voice seems to have no particular point of origin, as if the open sky itself was its source.

“As I speak to you now, I speak in all languages to all the people of your world. We are the Linesians. Our planet orbits a star twenty-six thousand light years away. For millions of years we have monitored the emergence of civilizations across the galaxy. We have known of your existence since before your ancestors walked upright. We have been witness to your dramatic history. We have seen with more than passing interest humans emerge from the grim struggle of your earliest beginnings, through the long journey that has become the story of mankind. In less than one hundred centuries you have reshaped the surface of the world, and established your modern civilization. From scattered tribes of primitive nomadic hominids of no more than a few thousand, your numbers now are in the billions, and you now hold within your fateful power, the very destiny of your species. Through language, culture, and the accumulated knowledge of science, human capability, and understanding has increased exponentially.

“These things we have seen. We have also seen the senseless blight of war and conquest, and the human misery it spawns. We know your aberrant tendency toward violence is the primitive legacy of a savage past. The brutality and chaos of your world spring from ancient, inherited reflexes of fear and aggression. Throughout the galaxy millions of planets are inhabited by beings much like you, with similar histories of struggle and conflict. What humans are now experiencing has been repeated countless times across this galaxy, and beyond. All sentient beings come to a threshold point in their civilization’s history when they must collectively choose to renounce the futile confusion of war and aggression. For mankind, that time has come. It is nothing less than a choice between the past and the future, between fear and imagination, a choice that cannot be avoided. Not choosing is to choose by default. The hour is late for Homo sapiens. You now stand on the brink of an imminent global cataclysm. Your actions make certain a catastrophic worldwide upheaval, impossible to avoid, will be experienced by your descendants, who will pay the terrible price for centuries of careless damage inflicted on your life sustaining ecosphere.