Futurism logo

Brutalist Stories #26

Black Lung

By Brutalist StoriesPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
Like
Centro de exposições do centro administrativo da bahia

Fifteen years? Seems longer somehow. Fifteen years ago they appeared in the sky. From Zero, things hit One pretty quickly. Boom, they were just there, one minute we’re alone in the universe, well, at least some thought so anyway. Then the next minute, a couple of dozen ships are there in the sky. Floating up there, what are you supposed to do when that happens?

There was this fear, it took hold of nearly everyone. I’d dreamt about it, this particular type of fear, I’d even tried talking to a few people about it before, but no one ever really understood what I meant. It’s bizarre really, I couldn’t tell whether the dreams were prophetic, you know, were looking to the future somehow, or if they held something about the past.

This fear, was it new? Or was it that old that we’d simply forgotten about it? Just the same way you’ll be put down by your father one day, and he’ll never pick you back up again and you’ll forget over time what it was like to be that small, to be held entirely in your father’s arms. Well, one generation, at some point in our past, they were the last to feel that they might be the last.

Oh sure, it’s all a gradual change really, but there really was one set of humans one time that thought, shit, we might be the last. Then the next didn’t think that, they had something better, some idea of a future, then more and more, until fifteen years ago and we were king of the hill, the only threat to our survival was ourselves, and no one ever really took that too seriously in the first place.

Then the oxygen seemed to be sucked from the air, these things appeared in the sky and everyone held a collective breath. Those dreams I had, end of the world stuff, how do you convey that? How do you tell someone else what it’s like to feel, to see, to experience the end of the world? Impossible. Then they came, and well, I guess what I had dreamt, it was from down there somewhere, in my gut, or deep in there somewhere, in my mind, because sure as shit everyone else seemed to know what to feel, how to feel.

It wasn’t blind panic, it wasn’t that potent rage we’d seen so many times come from our stories and films. What did we think we were, heroes? We’re deer caught in the headlights, and when the headlight is some sort of alien ship coming from the cold nothingness of space, we’re not even deer. We fell apart, they dismantled us, so easily, and now sat here, waiting to be processed, whilst they terraform our planet and turn us into paste for their food, what are we supposed to do? Fight? The dreams never showed any fight. Just fear, and that’s all we’ve got now.

Building inspiration: Centro de exposições do centro administrativo da bahia

science fictionliteratureextraterrestrial
Like

About the Creator

Brutalist Stories

Short sci-fi stories in 500 words or less deriving from the stark style of the functionalist architecture, that is characterised by the use of concrete.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.