The First Generation

I’ve always had issue with people saying that the universe is an infinite space. From all the research humanity has done as a species on the cosmos we know that it had a beginning and it will have an end, and between these two events there is a set amount of matter. By definition, if there is a limited amount of matter within the universe the universe itself cannot be unlimited. I’ll agree that the universe is big, though. Perhaps bigger than any of us realise. What we see from Earth is known as the Observable Universe, and even that has more observable stars than Earth has grains of sand. By the time they arrived most people had accepted that there was probably life out there somewhere, then again most people had also never expected to meet an alien race because of the universe’s sheer size. All the leading scientists had said that if we had met an advanced race, as against the odds as it was, it probably wouldn’t end well for us, just look at what advanced bands of humans have been doing to the less advanced all these years. Nevertheless, they were wrong, and it was for a reason that no one could have predicted.

-x-

I gazed up at the sun. I know you’re not supposed to look up at the sun, it was a bad habit and my eyes were probably paying the price in full, but once they got accustomed to the harsh glare that our orb of life-giving flaming gasses produced I couldn’t help but admire the beauty. It was a bit of a morning ritual, every time I left the house to go to college I’d gaze up at the sun, sometimes through the gaps in my fingers if my eyes couldn’t take it, and marvel at the... fragility of it all. Just the fat that we were a simple group of walking apes that got lucky to evolve in one of the calmest parts of the galaxy on the perfect planet in our solar system. I mean, imagine if life had properly grasped hold of Mars and then we’d ended up living on there. Mars has around ten times less mass than Earth, there wouldn’t be much room that’s for sure. I sighed, shook my head, and swung my backpack over my shoulder. If anyone ever saw me performing that morning ritual on the porch of my house they’d probably think I was some sort of nutter, but in my mind there was nothing wrong at marveling over the natural beauty of the universe.

Let’s face it, there wasn’t much beauty to marvel at anywhere else. Humanity hadn’t done a very good job at looking after its miracle rock. Industry pocked the surface like acne on a young teenagers face, and humans scurried across its surface as if they were ants building a fresh colony. Well, multiple colonies. Multiple colonies that didn’t exactly get along very well. Because not only did humanity seem intent to destroy the miracle world they inhabited they looked pretty intent to destroy each other as well. Scars littered the Earths surface, gouged out by weapons of war in heated moments where the ants couldn’t get along with each other. A chuckle brought me out of my musings.

“You always let yourself get so lost in thought in the mornings,” came a girls voice from behind me. “Let me guess, you were doing the whole humanity has ruined the world bit again eh?”

I turned to greet her, a grin blossoming on my face before I could even hope to stop it. There wasn’t much beauty to marvel at in this world of man, but Elizabeth was the exception. From the streak of bright red she had died across her fringe to the quirked half smile she almost constantly wore and the ceaseless intelligence that inhabited her mind she was a true diamond in the rough. I think what made her the most attractive to me, though, was the fact she was still an enigma. I made it a point of personal pride to know as much as I could about anyone who I’d have extended contact with, whether it be family members, friends, teachers or co-students I wanted to know as much about them as I could. Yet she managed to hide anything behind a wall of sarcastic wit and that damned half smile, and I couldn’t get enough of it. She was a fresh breeze in a room of stale air, some might say I was obsessed, on a good day I might agree.

“Liz, just because I’m walking along the street with a slightly empty look on my face does not mean I’m lost in thought about how crap the race we happen to be is,” I retorted, falling in step beside her.

“Oh yeah, right,” she snorted. “It’s the same every morning. You do that thing where you look at the sun, which you really shouldn’t by the way you’re going to blind yourself one of these days, and then you walk along looking at the floor cursing how humans have messed up the planet.”

I sighed. She was right, she was pretty much always right, but that didn’t mean I had to like her getting one up on me. “Fine, maybe I was...just a little bit, cursing the rampant deforestation, pollution and negative influence of the human race.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, a cute expression she always pulled off when she one upped me, no matter how trivial the circumstances. “You’re such a doof Sam, can’t you just be in good spirits for one day. I mean, it’s all sunny today, but you’re as glum as if it were cloudy.”

I rolled my eyes at that. I could be in good spirits and she knew it, in fact after my morose morning periods I was always pretty chipper, I just hadn’t had a chance to down a cup of coffee yet. It was crazy how dark everything could end up looking with a little bit of caffeine coursing through your veins to boot the brain up its proverbial backside.

“Look, You know what I’m like without my morning brew,” I mumbled into my scarf, pulling it tighter around my chin before stuffing my hands into my pockets and huffing noisily. “Get a cup of piping hot mocha into me and I’ll be right as rain, before that you’re just gonna have to deal with me all glum and... well... you know.”

She pushed my shoulder lightly, “Yeah right, I’ve got something that’s gonna chirp you right up, coffee or not.”

“Short of a miracle I really don’t think you’re going to be able to pull that off,” I remarked snidely. I knew full well I was acting like a petulant child, and she knew full well I was laying it on thick to try and irk her.

“Oh yeah? Well how about...” she paused and coughed before putting on a much deeper voice, the kind you’d hear from the announcer at a wrestling match or something, “The end of the human race itself.”

I quirked my eyebrow at that. For a start, though I hadn’t checked the news this morning, I’m pretty sure the end of the world would have been reported weeks before the event. Well, unless the government were trying to keep it all under wraps so we didn’t all panic and go crazy and out of control or something like that. Then again, that was something that only happened in movies, or at least I thought it was. Nevertheless, the concept of the end of humanity didn’t exactly fill me with joy, it filled me with a disturbing sense of dread. I didn’t want humanity to end, I wanted it to get better, a sentient species would probably be a force for good if it weren’t so gluttonously out of control.

“Yeah, good joke Liz, end of the human race you really had me going for a second there,” I snorted, “as if you’d be all happy go-lucky if the end of the world was around the corner.”

“Hey, it’s not a joke... well okay, it’s being reported like that by the tabloids...”

“It’s being reported by the tabloids and you thought I’d eat it all up?“I asked, genuinely worried she might have thought I was that dense.

“Well... You haven’t had your coffee yet,” she murmured, her breath creating sad little puffs of air in the winter chill.

“I may not have had my coffee but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, I’m not exactly going to gobble up some half baked fringe theory like the rest of the sheeple out there,” I gently pushed her back in retaliation to her earlier shove.

“Yeah enough of the human bashing, you know you are one of us too?” She pushed back again, slightly harder this time. “Although, I do sometimes have my doubts about that.”

“Yeah alright smart ass, what are all the tabloids reporting to be our destruction this time then? A solar flare that’s going to wipe out the internet? Have scientists found a rock on mars that looks a little bit like man so all the conspiracy theorists are freaking out? The papers love a good alien panic story now and then,” I ended with another push, that one almost making her topple over. She scowled at me for that one, I never knew when to tone down the push wars a little, and it had ended up with Liz on her butt more than once.

“Well, according to scientists the Earth is moving through some sort of condensed super cluster of meteor and asteroid activity, it’s going to be completely harmless but the tabloids are all acting like there’s something huge out there waiting to smash into us and wipe everything out, it’s dumb right?” She said, pushing me again. I wasn’t expecting her to put as much force into the push as I had, and as a result ended up just as sprawled across the ground as she had on multiple occasions.

But then it sank in. A condensed super cluster of meteor and asteroid activity? The only such thing I could think of was the Taurid cluster, but Earth moved through that stream of matter every October, and considering it was January that was a very unlikely occurrence indeed. It wasn’t like entire clusters of asteroids and meteors didn’t pop up overnight, either. Maybe there was some sort of truth in what the tabloids were reporting... then again, they could just have it as wrong as usual. Scaremongering for clicks had become common practice in the online news circles, so it likely wasn’t something that I should be concerned about. But still...

“When is this meant to be happening then?” I asked, not realising Liz had burst into laughter the second I had stumbled down onto the grassy verge beside the path.

“Oh, well, the websites said it was meant to be happening today,” she said through her chuckles as she wiped a tear from her eye. “Here, let me get you up.”

“You’re telling me that we’re meant to experience heightened meteorite activity today, that might bring about the end of the world, and people are only just reporting it today? This is the sort of thing papers get all worked up about and cover for weeks,” I said as I took her hand and pulled myself back up to my feet.

“Well, I mean, I guess?” She replied, clearly unsure of herself.

I rolled my eyes and pulled out my phone, quickly sliding over to the news tab on my browser. I let out a disgruntled hum. She wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t checking a tabloid site. It was everywhere, not quite the end of the world, but a definite increase in meteor activity, and a bunch of tips on the best way to see the best natural firework shows. Something didn’t sit right with me. This wasn’t the sort of thing that just appeared, planet Earth was armed to the teeth with satellites and scanners designed with the explicit purpose of finding asteroids and meteors before they came anywhere close to the planet.

For someone who looked up at the sky so often, it absurd to think that I hadn’t seen it coming. Then it landed right in front of us.