Alien Invasion 2020 - Skolastica Sirens

The tree of knowledge was not a myth.

It was a metaphor. And also a tree on the planet Skol. The tree of knowledge didn’t impart knowledge. It inspired those who saw it to seek knowledge, which was how the Skolastica became the smartest creatures in the universe.

L’Sandra loved climbing the trees in the forests of Skol. Her people lived in the temperate zones of the planet, only traveling to the sweltering knowledge regions for their coming of age pilgrimage. The roots of the tree had spread through the continent, and L’Sandra could hear its song, calling her to learn.

Despite their incredible intelligence, the tree knew the humans were coming before the Skolastica did. Its song intensified, and the Sirens sang louder. Then one day, the tree went silent. The Skolastica panicked. (Sometimes, panicking is the smart move.) Their heart, their joy, and their inspiration to pursue knowledge faded. L’Sandra felt her soul withering and she argued with her siblings as to who was to blame. (They knew it was the humans. They also knew not to punish a lesser life form for natural behavior.)

The human ship landed in fiery crash, and the forest started to burn. Without the knowledge tree to consult, the Skolastica had to rely on their memories to contain the fire.

L’Sandra sang for hope.

Creatures emerged from the ship, and when L’Sandra sang, they seemed drawn to her. Her brother joined the song and the creatures swayed, mesmerized. They had strange, bubble heads and they wore their atmosphere on their backs.

As they sang, another fireball raced through the atmosphere. Another alien ship crashed. Why were they all crashing? Did they not have knowledge of how to land?

The tree answered: “It is your song.”

L’Sandra glanced at her brother, disheartened by the answer, but he was grinning with glee.

“We are powerful,” he sang. “They are ours.”

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Chris.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Aster Supremacy

“Don’t tangle with the Aster Supremacy!” Indominus growled.

“You puny humans can’t win. You have tiny brains, stiff limbs, and you can’t breathe under water or in space! Can you braid your legs? No. We are the superior beings!”

The rotund human with his feet up on the table didn’t look impressed. “So do you want a tank for the act, because we’ve done the lone alien bit before, and it doesn’t sell like it used to.”

Indominus wilted and untwisted his legs. He’d always dreamed of joining a human circus, and it seemed ironic that his people had chosen to start their invasion by targeting a traveling carnival. (They thought the word would spread faster if they commandeered an elephant.) Human broadcasts displayed clear fascination with contortionist abilities, and though Indominus was pretty average among his own kind, he could turn heads on Earth. He would have been a big fish in a small pond had his people not declared war with the orcas last year. 

“I’d prefer a tank,” Indominus sighed, pressing his beak to his water tank, inhaling some fresh water, and pushing it out through his gills. It felt nice to feel the water running down his skin. Earth air only felt nice when the humidity broke sixty percent. “But I’m not sharing with the fish.”

“How’d you do that with the water? Is it a birth defect or did you get implants to sell this act?” the man asked, watching the glistening water drip off of Indominus’ elbows.

Indominus turned to show off his gills. “Neither. I’m an actual alien and my race plans to take over your planet. We’ve nearly conquered the oceans, and by next year, this whole continent will be submerged. That’s why I only suggested a six month contract.”

“Fair enough,” the man said. His apathy was intriguing. The circus had always held great fascination for Indominus, but it seems this man was so accustomed to the amazing, he wasn’t impressed by anything. Even a supreme alien race. Indominus felt a rising urge to conquer the man and make him see wonder. He twisted his arms and legs, then sprayed water from his gills.

“Ok, kid. You’re hired. There’s a mop in the hall,” the man said, barely looking up from his computer.

Indominus was appalled. He felt the venom pooling in his cheeks and he stalked to the hall. He could kill this man, but then he’d have to find another circus. He only had six months left to live out his dream and this was where it started!

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Lillian Mesarch.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Araknitpede Probe

When we saw it, we knew it was the legs of the operation.

It was a rainy Saturday morning when the space probe landed on the roof of the Pono Public Library. Mandy’s knitting guild peeked out of their meeting room to see the commotion, needles at ready. There wasn’t a fighter among them, but in these tough times, the ladies, gentlemen, and genderqueers knew anything was possible.

They heard a ratta-tat-tat on the roof, and then the strange, cybernetic creature crawled in through the book drop, giving a thumbs up, as if to let everyone know it was okay. Despite the gesture, Mandy was not reassured. A narrow beam of purple light shot from one of the cyber-spider’s many eyes, passing over the books and landing on the computer bank in the middle of the floor. As it scurried over to the computer, the humans hiding under the tables screeched and ran for the book stacks. (Not that libraries had very impressive stacks these days.) The spider-bot tapped on the monitor, then the keyboard. A beam of light pierced the ceiling and the computer exploded. The spider-bot jumped back in surprise, but gave a thumbs up to let everyone know it was okay.

“Suspect apprehended. Your world is now safe,” it said in a synthesized, not-at-all-calming tone.

“You just blew a hole in the library!” Mandy exclaimed, stalking out of the meeting room to confront the spider-bot. “Do you know how hard it is to get funding to maintain these facilities!”

“You are armed,” the spider-bot observed.

“These are knitting needles,” Mandy grouched. “Do you know what that means?”

The spider-bot gave a thumbs up, then lifted two of its legs. Metal boots folded back to reveal delicate, pink-knit booties. “I am programmed to knit and fight crime.”

“And do property damage, too,” Mandy pointed out.

“I am programmed to repair,” the spider-bot said. Leaping to the ceiling, it quickly spun a web to cover the hole in the ceiling. Then, using a bluish beam from one of its side-eyes, it scanned over the web, creating a solid, metal structure, that would probably hold up better than the original ceiling. 

“What about the computer!” Mandy hollered. But it was too late. The probe took off and the spider-bot was gone.

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Timmy McDrawerson.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Glossalite Conquest

When you gotta eat, you gotta eat. 

And the Glossalite race was a race of eaters. Xagral the Ravenous fancied himself a king, but after he ate most of his subjects, there wasn’t much of a kingdom left. He was on the march to expand the borders of his empire yet again, in search of something satiating. It had been decades since he’d seen another Glossalite, which was for the best. The others usually picked a small planet to rule and were satisfied with the local food, but not Xagral. He wanted to taste all the planets!

The little blue marble popped up on Xagral’s radar, and he licked the console to redirect his ship to the fertile food source. He knew from the broadcast signals that the locals used to call their planet ‘Earth.’ The Glossalites had avoided the planet, first because the dominant land mammals were natural predators to tongue beasts, and then later because everything tasted like metal and nuclear waste. But the humans had blown themselves to smithereens a few decades ago, and now the toxic taste was starting to lift. If he moved in now, he could make sure he was the apex predator.

With a few more licks of the console, he moved his ship into a stable orbit and scanned the planet below. The cockroaches had survived the nuclear holocaust. Xagral wasn’t surprised. The cockroach existed on seventy-two conquered planets, and was delicious on all but three. There were a few other small creatures on the ground. The planet was ripe for conquest!

And so he landed. He opened the door. He tasted the air. 

As soon as he stepped into the sunlight, a giant, winged creature swooped out of the air and grabbed him by the shoulders. It was delightful to tour his kingdom from the air, but as a career eater, Xagral knew this thing meant to eat him.

So he looped his giant tongue around its neck and ate it first.

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Abigail Mesarch.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Mermidal Incursion

It comes from below.

The Mermidal people had always known the path off their planet would be down, not up. Born on a super-Earth only five light-years form the center of the galaxy, nothing could survive on the surface. Their technology could barely get them half-way to the ocean’s surface to explore. Deep sea life was the only life, and it killed them to know there was a whole universe out of their reach. 

Nodan wasn’t willing to let cosmic rays hold hir down. Unlike the other warriors who tried win honor by creeping closer to the surface, Nodan knew ze had to go down. The deeper ze went, the stranger the life seemed to get. Some of it was edible, but most was not. Then one day, ze saw bubbles. Something was expelling gas eighteen miles beneath the surface of the ocean!

Donning hir armor, ze followed the bubbled and found a ring of energy. A strange life-form passed through the ring. It was a wormhole! This was how hir people could finally explore the universe!

The alien life form had a strange shape, and Nodan could not allow this enemy incursion into hir territory. Ze watched its movements, but it didn’t seem suited for deep sea living. It had no fins. And then, it activated the most heinous and blinding light Nodan had ever encountered. Ze squeezed hir eyelids closed, relying on smell and the movement of water currents. The Mermidal were solitary creatures, but Nodan knew if ze attacked alone, ze would lose. 

Their people would have to come together to fight this enemy incursion, or their entire world would be lost.

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Charley.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Toastacorn Device

Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself?

The question wasn’t even on Hap’s mind as they worked in their lab on the gas giant of Toastopia. Hap was one of the foremost experts in gravity technology. They’d gone beyond detecting gravitons. Now, they were making them. 

Then one day, everything got turned on its head. 

It was a good thing the Toastacorns didn’t keep change keep change in their pockets, or it all would have fallen out the day Hap turned on their anti-gravity device. Rather than float a pad of butter in over the test-slice of bread, every Toastacorn felt their feet pulled up to the clouds. Fortunately, the device didn’t propel them out of the atmosphere, but the fact that it worked as well as it did gave Hap a new idea.

Space travel!

There was a planet Hap wanted to see. One where the toast always landed butter-side down. In the face of such amazing feats of engineering, such injustice could not be allowed to persist!

With the positive media spin firmly applied, the Toastacorns rallied behind Hap and the space engineers. Hap couldn’t figure out how to turn off the Toastacorn device, and the rockets kept going down instead of up. But soon, they blasted a hole through the stale crust of their planet a slipped free on a butter-coated rocket.

The donut hole had unfortunate side-effects for those left on the planet, but ship after ship followed the S.S. Breadbox into the stars, on a mission to defy gravity and save their toasted kin from gravity.

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Ines.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Suntillian Occlusion

She’s got nerve… no wait! She is nerve!

She had a globe for seeing, three for hearing, two for smelling, and X-ray vision. All were vital to help this snowshoe cyclops survive on the ice planet of Suntilly. With a body made of neurons, she had a brain the size of… herself… and she used it to hunt wild mountain boars. For sport; not for eating. There was no globe for eating. 

Mountain boars made decent pets and even better coats for this bag of neurons. The more she could tame, the fewer dropping there would be on her ski slopes and glacier trails. 

Winter was coming, and Nelly wanted a new pet boar to keep her company through the cold months. Her X-ray vision helped her spot a bony creature trotting across the land. It was smaller than the normal boar and trotted on two legs instead of four. It had two globes set in bones, and a hunk of hot, metal melted the ice behind it a few paces back. These weren’t the first extra-terrestrials Nelly had encountered, and her incredibly large brain told her to drop to the ground and lay low until they disappeared.  Digging her snowshoes into the glacier, she sounded the alarm for the other Suntillians. When they put their globes together, they could hide themselves and their precious boars, making the planet look uninteresting and uninhabitable. Outsiders made Nelly nervous. She just wanted them to go away.

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Pete.

Alien Invasion 2020 - Tillandsian Spies

A good spy knows how to keep up with current events.

And on the gas giant Tillandsia, the currents were strong. The world had no water, but the air was so thick that their very thoughts caught the wind like dandelion seeds.

Elis worked in Tillandsian Intelligence, and he had a lot on his mind. In studying signals from outer space, he’d found some disturbing messages from one of the other planets in the inner solar system. The local science had come into conflict with religious symbology and internet memes, and Elis couldn’t tell if the six-pointed stars were being celebrated or used as variables in a math equation.

His trusty pet Flufferpup could sense the disturbance in Elis’s mind and she trotted over to cheer him up. Flufferpup was sort of a dog, cat, space-crab mix with five eyes, one of which helped her see Elis’s ongoing thoughts. Flufferpup didn’t seem to realize that thoughts weren’t edible, and the more she pounced at them, the more Elis laughed and let the currents carry his troubles away.

Pumping his four tentacle wings, Elis floated upward into the thick atmosphere. Sometimes, he likes to watch broadcasts about jellyfish, because only when humans learn how to talk to the tentacled Tillandsian spies and respect their intelligence, would they be ready for first contact.

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist, Jeanne Louise.

Alien Invasion 2020 - The Boxtopus Emergence

The Boxtopus race has gone postal!

There was a rumor that the Boxtopus was created by humans as the result of genetic experimentation in pursuit of a better postal worker. It first crawled out of an Amazon factory following the great bidet shipping crisis of 2035. 

But then the Boxtopus began crawling out of rural mailboxes as well, leaving trails of slime and junk mail. Fortunately, the slime caused the junk mail to biodegrade at a higher rate, dissolving useless credit card offers into fertile garden soil.

Then there was that strange incident in 2037, when every human on Earth received a newspaper delivery (whether they had a mailbox or not). The headline of the inaugural Earth Times told of the glory of our new, benevolent alien overlords. With its ability to send tentacles through alternate dimensions, the Boxtopus resolved all issues with the global distribution, thus ending world hunger and food waste. Naturally, there were protests, but the hunger strikes of the elite 1 % were quickly overshadowed by the joy of over one billion people no longer suffering hunger and food insecurity. 

As we approach 2040, we are well on our way to building a vast fleet of spaceships and exploring the stars with our new friends. And despite their intergalactic spaceship revelation, there are still conspiracy theorists who claim that our benevolent alien delivery-critters were grown in a lab right here on Earth!

~FIN~

Special thanks to today’s contributing artist Joseph B.