Stranded

   The situation was becoming more and more uncontrollable. Bodies had ben found everywhere now and people were starting to wake up, to ask questions and to really ask the questions that they should have been asking for years. They were protests all around, riots and even murders due to the revelations that had occurred recently. All wars, all confrontations of any kind, had been stopped. It appeared to have been a miracle but it had nothing to do with that. Miracles didn’t exist anymore, magi died and only truth was there to comfort the lives of so many people that now found solace in the new reality that was hitting everyone straight in their faces, in their families and communities. Everything was there and people had to take their stand.

 The director of intelligence reunited with the president that week. No one knew about that meeting except top officials in the government. The two men discussed the best course of action. As predicted, the intelligence leader wanted everything to be covered, to be hidden from the people and blame everything else for the deformed bodies that were being found. But the president knew very well that the people knew the truth and they weren’t going to throw it away just because two men said something that was obviously not true. They had to find the way to reveal the truth but in the best way possible. That was the idea of the president and he knew he had no choice in the matter.

 The announcement was done the following week and everyone in the country, and the world, was shocked in the most violent way. People knew but they still couldn’t believe it. It was too much for many and the predicted suicides happened, impossible to be stopped or prevented. Some murders too, in the name of so many things that people didn’t even understand. Others, in the other hand, turned to science and objective thought and tried to adapt to the new reality but no matter how smart a person was, the concept that they were dealing with was too grand, to big to understand in one take. It was obvious humanity would take several years or centuries or who knows how much to understand what was happening and its consequences.

 The first case, the newspapers said, had been the one of Michael Collins and his sister Colleen. They were two teenage kids that had wandered into a deserted area and had been the first to be found dead and deformed by a local policeman. The case was almost a cover up if it hadn’t been for the pictures that policeman took before his companions and members of military intelligence arrived. That case was twenty years old and the man had hidden the pictures for eighteen of those years until he decided he needed money and attention and revealed them to the world. However, the world thought it was a hoax.

 But months after he revealed his pictures, more images and proof started being revealed in other countries, less prone to cover ups. And then it happened, bodies began to pile up very high or so it seemed. They were everywhere, appearing in forests and rivers but also in homes and office building. There was a famous case when four bodies were discovered on top the tallest building of the capital city. No one ever knew how they got up there, especially because the bodies belonged to four farmers from a remote region. But there they were, deformed ad the rest. It caused so much sensation and fascination that it became the case that everyone went to when talking about the subject as whole.

 The medical colleges reunited to settle how deformed all the bodies were and which were the main characteristics. They agreed that the most obvious new feature on the bodies was the loss of both eyeballs on the victim and the elongation of the eyeball cavity by several centimeters. The head of every victim was also modified, now looking a little bit larger, to adjust to the new cavities in it. The mouth in all victims had dried up, the lips almost disappearing. The nose of many had shrunk somehow, probably asphyxiating them if they weren’t dead by then. All extremities were incredibly thin, as if they had been deprived of everything a human needed to live. And another shocking fact was that none of the victims had their sexual organs. Everything had been removed.

 When that report had been releases by the medical associations, even those that still did not believe in what was happening was caught by the amount of detail and proper investigation these men and women had done. They had checked over one thousand bodies for their report and had no way of being wrong or been exaggerated. Every single body had the same issues and one more, with which they closed the inform: every body was radioactive. They had discovered this by accident with one of them but then checked them all and every single corpse was deemed extremely toxic. Of course this was very bad news for the teams working on the matter.

 Every doctor and nurse was checked for radioactivity and no one was found to be seriously contaminated, although some did have some in their bodies. The government guaranteed they would be well taken care of by the state but no one believed in anything the government said anymore. Now it was obvious they had been covering everything up and people wanted head to roll. Elections were scheduled within the next month and a new party, founded by the people, won the election. The new president was one of the women that had done the autopsies on many of the corpses. People trusted her.

 But the new president was also bombarded with questions. What was happening and why was this happening? Were there new cases? Were there under some kind of attack? Of course, she was unable to answer any of those questions. She had no idea about any of that and the scientific community was as confused and restrained as the rest of the world. They had no idea how to deal with everything, trying to help people as well as they could but that wasn’t enough. Most were just shocked and would never be okay again. They had seen their family members die and didn’t know how and it was obvious there was something else beyond all of this massacre and mystery but it was difficult to figure out. That was until one last piece of the puzzle came to be.

 That piece was another finding of bodies. A large mass grave in a remote area. A native community had found it and all the forces of security converged there as well as the associations supporting the families of the victims. They wanted to know who was the victim now but they found out much more than that. They dug up a huge piece of the land, discovering not only human corpses, deformed as the other ones, but also animal corpses that had been horribly modified. Some people screamed when they saw those, unable to understand what would cause nature to mutate like that, to create some sort of monsters. The answer was close by and it was discovered by the end of that year.

 More bodies but these weren’t human. They were something else. They did not seem to have been dead for a short time and it was concluded they had died at least a thousand years ago but the other bodies were recent. It was a mystery no one ever solved but it didn’t change anything. Because the world confirmed what it already knew. Creatures from beyond the star were there and they had been killing people, no one knew if intentionally or not. Those bodies confirmed they had been there for a while and that maybe that had found a way to adapt to society. Maybe they had found a way into the human heart.

 Further investigations revealed that all the deformed bodies belonged to former extraterrestrials. Apparently, they had found a way to adapt their physicality to our own and had been living with everyone else for years and years. They had no sexual organs and it was confirmed that none of the victims had children, only adopted ones. How people overlooked that important fact seemed strange. But what was even stranger was that those creatures had been living on Earth for so long that they had to become humans. They had to turn themselves into something else because they had been left there, stranded probably. And people know begged them to reveal themselves completely but that didn’t have to happen because they were all dead and no one knew why.

The bugs

Carmina Wolf was an entomologist, specialized in bees and wasps. She had travelled the world tracing this little creatures and now headed off to her final destination: a UN summit in Geneva where she would be able to present her findings to a panel of experts put together by the FAO.

On the plane from Seoul to Geneva, she just kept thinking of the potential of her discoveries. It was terrible, of course, but it also meant something could be done. Nothing is definite when you realize it on time, or she thought.

The flight was really long but she couldn't sleep so she forced herself to watch some movies, none of which ere very interesting. She took her blanket and tried to sleep with some music on but then people started making noises. It was really annoying to get to Switzerland with no sleep and now people weren't helping. She heard them open their window shades, so she pulled the blanket over her head.

She stopped ignoring them when they started to scream and gasp and talk fast and loud. Suddenly all shades were being pulled up, so Carmina took a look through the window. She certainly wasn't expecting that...

High above the clouds and higher than the plane, a fire ball appeared to be falling down. The plane was very far but the ball could be seen easily as it's light was blinding, all white and powerful. It certainly was a scary moment but, for some reason, people were generally calm.
Short after, the pilot announcing all flights were asked to change course and go south. They haven't been asked to land anywhere close but there was still a possibility to do so.

An hour later, the ball of fire looked smaller but equally as bright. Carmina thought of the people below, and how scared they must have been. She checked her on board computer and realized they were flying over Russia, a country frequently hit by meteorites. A scientist she had met in a conference had told her so. But this meteorite looked massive or maybe that was because she had never seen one.

Suddenly the pilot spoke again and, this time, he said authorities of all the countries in the vicinity had decided to ground the planes. Carmina's one had to land in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. The pilot did not know for how long they would have to stay there but authorities were trying to keep the planes down for the minimum amount of time.

It was shortly before landing that the explosion occurred. It felt and sounded awful. The plane was hit by the sound wave and turbulence was really bad. People were screaming, babies crying, food trays hitting the ground and even bags falling from the overhead compartments. Everyone was a nervous wreck so, when the plane landed in Astana, it was not a surprise when everyone applauded and cheered the moment. They were all grateful to be alive.

They were evacuated through the inflatable slides on each door, to make it faster. Then, the pilot stayed with the airport authorities to assess any damage to the plane as the rest of the crew helped the passengers to a bus, which took them to the terminal.

Carmina was tired, from all that had happened and because she hadn't slept for a single minute but when they entered the building she realized it would take even more time to rest. The place was filled with people, both incoming passengers and people who had not been able to board their flights. Her group stayed in a corner, to have better control over everyone according to a stewardess.

Everyone fell silent when every single TV set on the terminal started broadcasting images of the meteorite and how it had it the ground with violence. Although the news station was in Russian, every passenger could understand that the meteorite was big but, thankfully, not the kind of fire balls that cause extinction. However, it had fallen near Omsk, a fairly large city in Russia. Imaged of destroyed windows, trees on fire and a houses destroyed was broadcasted for the remaining hours and, against all odds, Carmina was finally able to get some sleep.

When she woke up, it was dark outside. She went to the bathroom where she met a woman crying with her daughter sitting by the sink. The woman tried to clean her tears fast so Carmina wouldn't see her but it was to no use. In her stall, the entomologist heard the woman speak in Russian to her daughter, again crying unconsolably. It was heart breaking, even without having a clue about what was going on.

When Carmina came out of her stall, the woman was not there. She washed her hands, her face and tried to comb her hair with her fingers but the result was not very good. She came out of the bathroom and walked around, watching hundreds, maybe thousands sleeping on the floor. All the screen were turned off and only security agents roamed the place, gently smiling when she stumbled upon any of them.

She arrived at the food court and realized how hungry she was. But every store was closed, which was obvious because of the time of day and the current situation. The tables and chairs that were normally for eating were now occupied by people trying to get some sleep.

Carmina decided to step outside, to a little balcony the terminal had for plane enthusiasts. It was very cold but that didn't bother her. She looked and counted the planes on the tarmac. There were at least twenty and suspected there were more on other places of the airport. Suddenly the door of the balcony opened and an older woman came out. She looked at Carmina and smiled and contemplated the place.

After some time, the woman spoke:

- It will keep happening, you know?

Carmina did not understand.

 - What?
 - It will keep happening, more and more frequently.
 - The meteorites, you mean?

She nodded. Carmina started to feel colder but was mesmerized by the odd look and mysterious attitude of the older woman.

 - This world... We just live here. It isn't ours and it certainly isn't living forever.
 - You think were all going to...?
 - Die?... Maybe. Not necessarily but it's no secret we are heading in that direction.

It was so strange. It was if... She knew more. As if she knew the same thing Carmina had suspected months before.

 - Sorry... Are you an expert of sorts?

The woman laughed and looked at her.

 - Not really, child. I'm just aware of things around me.

The woman looked one last time towards the tarmac, smiled at Carmina and entered the building. The young woman did the same, as she was feeling too cold. The words of that woman were all around her mind but it was silly to worry now. She had to sleep as the following day was a hard one.

All planes were allowed to take off so she got to Geneva in time for her speech. She wasn't able to change clothes and excused herself for her looks but told the audience it was worth the speech. Everyone laughed of course. Then the presentation began.

Carmina had been working on this for five years now, since she had finished her studies. And the findings of her research could not be contested. She announced to the audience that the bee population around the world was decreasing due to various reasons, primarily climate change but also human interference. She declared that the decline was so representative, that in some places many flowers and plants that were abundant were now almost extinct. And she announced the same was happening with crops, although no one realized it because of the amount of cereals being planted.

In short, Carmina had discovered that food, was going to be more and more scarce due the disappearance of certain insects. Without them, hunger could strike anywhere. She closed her presentation by saying that recent events had made her realize how fragile the world was but that we had time to make things right, to find our true place in the universe. And she did believe it, more than ever before.