We never did expect them to be honest. We just went along in our established world, never expecting and never caring. And so they came. History repeats itself, I suppose.
That day, Ma had been sick. I remember well because it was Sunday, the only day Da let me watch TV. Normally I would lie on the couch, but it was Ma who lay coughing there in my stead.
I sat at the table, doing my homework. It was History; we were learning about the colonization of Africa. Did you know, I had asked aloud, that there were over 10, 000 different states in post-colonial Africa? Ma had coughed in her sleep. But I hadn’t minded. I often talked to myself.
Da was checking on the sheep. Crickets chirped outside, and I had been wondering whether to get myself a snack from the fridge or to stay put and let the gentle whirring of the overhead fan lull me to sleep. But in a blink of a second I had neither of those options, because that was when they came.
They did not come quietly. They did not come quickly. They were loud, but they were slow.
Our front door blew open and Ma awoke, her red eyes darted about. A stranger stepped inside, the weapon they held in their hands resembled a gun but was too bizarre to be so. It had blinking red lights and bottles of blue liquid attached to it; it was khaki green as the stranger stepped in but a thousand alien colours in the glow of the living room lamp.
The stranger turned to Ma; she opened her mouth to scream. And then there was a horrible, loud and piercing sound, like metal scraping against a chalkboard a million times over. When I opened my eyes without knowing I had closed them, Ma was still on the couch. Her scream had never left her, and as I stared numbly at the small red spot on her forehead I knew that it never would.
The stranger turned to me. I opened my mouth to scream and I deafened myself. The sharp pain in my ears was quickly overcome by relief, I was spared. The stranger stared at me, gun lowered. And then they beckoned.
Why did I run to this stranger? I don’t know. Don’t think I was a traitor. I wasn’t. But in a flash half my world had been stolen from me, and the stranger’s beckoning was a shred I could hang onto.
And so I went to him.
*****
I’d never known such destruction. We’d been learning about the Afghan War that week, about how there were civilian casualties all the time, bodies lying in streets. We’d seen videos even. Now I couldn’t tell the difference, not between the body-strewn cities of Kabul and the headless torsos in London.
The alien led me down the middle of the street, right through the carnage. Others who looked just like him—they all had that same pale blue skin—walked in and out of houses, high screeching sounds announcing their presence inside, a trail behind them of a person or two in shock proof of their recent exit. As it was there was a middle-aged man behind me.
We didn’t walk for too long. Soon we reached a flat open space; it took me a long time to recognize it. It was the local high street, completely levelled.
The stranger led us towards a strange vehicle. It was like a ship, but like the odd gun the stranger had used to murder my father it was a colour I didn’t know existed.
The stranger stopped me and the man, and from nowhere more of their kind came. We had our hands and legs chained; the blue chains were as thin as wire but as strong as steel.
We weren’t led onto the ship, we had thin, cold discs pressed against our eyes and when they were removed we were inside. I had a brief time to look around and to see all the people, Asians, Europeans, Americans; people from all over the world somehow brought into a single place. And then a hood was placed over my head and I could see no more.
*****
They searched us and stripped us, and when that was finished they gave us new chains. We were chained to each other and they did it cleverly too. They chained English-speakers to Spanish-speakers, Punjabi-speakers to Yoruba, Bosnian to Chuvash. Take away our speech and there is no common ground. Take away our common ground and there is no rebellion.
The ship began to move, I could tell this by the humming and rumbling. People started mumbling to themselves, a babble of different languages reverberated around the small, hot room we had been packed into. One person in particular was shouting quite loudly. He foamed at the mouth, barking sharp words in a language that sounded vaguely Russian. An alien removed him from his chain gang and took him away. When we heard the sharp metallic sound a second later, we all fell silent.
I felt dead inside. Completely sapped of my will. I looked around as much as I could with the heavy chain around my neck, and I saw that I wasn’t the only dead one. Grey faces looked back at me, a room of soulless people. We did not fight. We already knew our fate, already knew what would happen. We knew that one day this day would come, that it would happen again. Everything that happens once will happen again. History must repeat itself.
I lifted my weary hands, and I touched the person in front of me. He turned around, a young boy; his sideburns had just begun to grow. His eyes were dead.
“What are they called?” I needed to know the names of these aliens, our Masters. For undoubtedly that was what they now were.
The boy looked at me blankly. I jerked my head towards the single alien with its back towards us and I pointed at him.
“What are they called?” The boy blinked, and when I was about to drop my gaze he whispered, “Il sconosciuto.” I had taken an Italian class a long time ago, and so I understood him.
The Strangers.
*****
The Strangers took us to where they lived, which was not another planet, though we later learnt that they had indeed come from one, but another continent. A part of Earth we had never explored.
The Strangers changed things. They said our technology was primitive; they killed most of us and enslaved all the remaining. They ridiculed us. They laughed at us.
As we toiled for them, day after day in their stinking factories, they tore down our cities building by building and replaced them with their own. What was once ours was no longer.
We did try and fight once. We took their weapons and attacked them. But they gathered those who rebelled, and they killed them. We were quelled.
Decades passed and we became used to the toil. The Strangers had become used to us too, and though they hated us as much as we hated them, they gave us rights. We didn’t sleep with the swine, they gave us houses. We slowly regained a shard of our former humanity.
The biggest change came when our children were allowed into their schools. The Strangers were divided on the topic. Most said that we were still slaves, but the ones who had gotten used to us, too used to us, said that we had earned the right. That things needed to change. So they did, and our children were allowed into their schools. But we still hated each other.
More decades passed, and it seemed that we had merged together, that we had almost become one. But then there would be a riot, or a killing, and then we humans and they Strangers would remember that we were two separates. Not one whole.
*****
I looked at the diary again. A Collective Diary of Four Former Slaves, the caption read underneath the glass. I looked at it once more. And then I turned away to continue the rest of the tour with my class. Strangers, humans, side by side. And then me, the pale blue skin of Strangers and with the appearance of my human father. The diary was old, it was of another time. Perhaps if those slaves could see what life was like now, in the 23rd century, they would no longer think of Strangers the way they did. They weren’t strangers anymore, anyway. They simply were, and so were we, and we would exist alongside each other for a very, very long time yet.
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