Into the Light

[Content warning: suggested violence, existential themes]

I sat in the blackness of the theater with my sister sobbing quietly at my side. If it hadn't been so dark, I'm sure that the faces of my fellow moviegoers would have matched my own. Shock, terror, confusion. My sister inched ever closer, and a disembodied voice filled the room. I thought it had been in my head but the sounds of surprise that flurried around me brought me to the understanding that it wasn't in my head, or at the very least it had been in everyone's head. The whole theater, maybe even the whole world heard this voice.            

I use the term voice loosely. There were no sounds, but there was an immediate realization of what was meant. There's no way I could truly explain it but I’ll do my best. There were no words, no language, but a feeling of grief and anguish. Almost as if a whole history of future memories had been implanted into my head. In a split second, I knew what was going to happen and that there was nothing that could be done to stop it. 

I grabbed my sister's hand and squeezed it hoping that I too could convey what I wanted without words. When I felt her squeeze back, relief and panic overtook me at the same time. I had known that meant she wasn’t gone yet, but it also meant that she had yet to be taken. We all would be in one form or another and I prayed that however I was taken would be quick and painless. We waited with bated breath for the lights to come back on. That was what would trigger it—the descent into a quiet and orderly madness. 

The wait seemed like eons. No one spoke, the only sounds were a few occasional coughs or sniffles and more often the quiet sobbing of people who knew their fate. I couldn’t cry. I felt too dry as if something had sucked all the moisture from my body. My tongue had laid like a rock in my mouth. I rubbed my free hand across my jeans with an almost velcro effect, while my other hand still held my sister’s in its grasp. It felt cold and was shaking, although the shaking could have been me. I couldn’t tell what my body was doing really, I could only exist.

There was a faint rumbling that began to grow louder with each passing moment. The sound of every door into the theater bursting open. The sounds of weapons being readied. Then it happened. With a loud thunk, the lights flickered on. They were so blindingly bright it took my breath away. All I could make out were helmets and what looked like riot gear. Though I knew that it wasn’t any government forces moving in on the theater. I felt my sister being torn away before I saw it happening. My eyes were open, but it was as if they couldn’t focus. There was a ringing in my ears. I had heard her scream my name but just as quickly as they came, they were gone. I couldn’t do anything but stand there.

I fell to my knees as I surveyed the theater. There were a handful of us left, along with a few lifeless bodies strewn across the seats. In the panic of the moment, I don’t recall hearing any gunshots. Not many had fought it. We all knew what would happen if we did. The voice had told us. But it’s human nature, I suppose, to fight for your life no matter how fruitless the fight may be. Maybe they didn’t believe it, it felt too real for me to question it. So far everything that voice said would happen had happened. We were all “to be chosen for an objective” and were “to be taken without exception in the light”. It sure looked as if that first group was chosen.

Those of us who were still there were left to wait, again. I had wondered if there would be another moment that the voice invaded our minds while we sat there, but it didn’t happen again. We waited for longer than we did in the dark. Still silent, not daring to utter a word, much less any notions of protest. I preferred the wait in the dark quite honestly. There weren’t any corpses. It didn’t do me any good, but I couldn’t look away from them. I had never seen a freshly dead body. They almost didn’t look real. 

I took the time to look around the theater to try to avoid the vacant stare of the corpses. The doors had all been shut back to the way they were, and the screen was again showing the movie, but there was no sound. The normal theater litter of candy wrappers and stray pieces of popcorn were joined by spatters of blood and dirty footprints. I got lost in thought for a moment. It was almost peaceful to just dissociate and let my mind wander. I didn’t have to do anything or think of anything that was going on. 

The rumbling noise had returned. Once again it grew louder and louder. The weapons, the bursting open of the doors. It was our turn to be taken. I had stiffened my body, not so stiff as to be seen as struggling and be done away with, but stiff enough that I wouldn’t just fall to the ground as I had wanted to. I felt a pair of arms reach up under my own and I let myself fall back onto my heels to be dragged away. 

The world outside looked so much different than it had before my sister and I went into the theater. The sky was a strange shade of orange and looked almost as if it was glowing. The air felt hot and viscid. The space around the theater was filled with what looked like armored rovers and big shiny tents almost resembling tin foil. There were bodies moving around every inch of the space with a methodical urgency. They were indeed on a mission. The theater was in the middle of town, so I assumed it must have been a central gathering place for more than the moviegoers. 

Sweat had suddenly started pouring down my brow. My arms weren’t free to wipe it away and I winced as it dripped into my eyes. I felt my body continue to stumble backward as I was dragged further and further away from the theater. We finally came up to a large tent where we were all ushered in one by one. It felt like a medical institution inside. I had guessed they were going to do physicals to see what group they would sort us into, but that didn’t make sense. They had already divided us when they first came and took my sister and the others. 

It had turned out to be an examination. They took no notation of any information that I could tell, but after a certain amount of time, we were stripped naked and led to the very back of the tent. It took a long while to get through everyone who had entered with me. We each moved to make room for the next person to come along. There was no sense of shame among the entire group about being nude. It seemed all of us knew that it was the least of anyone’s problems. I imagine there were no emotions felt, aside from fear or the sad acceptance that I could see in a few eyes. 

We were marched out of the tent after the last of the people had been stripped. They packed us all in an odd-looking truck and slammed the heavy door shut. I sat up just as the engine began to rumble and fell backward as the vehicle lurched forward. I looked around at the faces of those there with me in what little light had found its way into the space. Almost all of the faces I saw now echoed that sad acceptance I had seen before. A neutral, dead-looking face, hanging long and tired. 

We traveled for what I assume was hours but very well could have been mere minutes. Time seemed to be moving differently. With no way of counting the time I was at the mercy of speculation. There was no point, I knew, so at the time I didn’t think about it too hard. I just waited to get to where we were heading. Would it be to an aircraft commandeered, much like the earthly weapons they used against us? Or would it be one of their own that would take us up to a much larger “mothership”? It turned out to be somewhat the latter. 

The twists and turns and stops and starts of the ride made my stomach churn until finally, we seemed to stop at our destination. The door was opened and we were met by a swell of people who arrived before us. There wasn’t a discernable line that had formed, but they all seemed to be corralled into specific spaces. There didn’t seem to be anything external that I could notice that would warrant the groups to be separated in that way, but I also wasn’t aware of what exactly they wanted with us anyway. 

Suddenly a bright light filled the sky. It seemed to appear out of nowhere, starting as a point of blinking light that grew bigger and brighter. It then started to descend toward us. The captors moved us all into position and a beam of even more light came down. I felt gravity leave the space as we lifted up off of the ground. Our speed seemed to accelerate the further up we went. If it hadn’t been so horrifying, the feeling of floating may have been fun. But looking up at the light getting ever brighter, I couldn’t bring myself to think one happy thought.

When we arrived inside the light there was no one to greet us. I struggled to stand, looking in awe around us. It was as if we were actually standing inside the light. A loud popping sound startled me and then we were suddenly enveloped in a space now made of metal. The voice once again rushed into my head. This realization may have been bigger than the last. 

Those who were taken before me, my sister and the others, would be used as breeding stock in an intergalactic breeding program. Those who were with me were to be part of a science experiment concerning earthly life’s consciousness. I didn’t know how this would unfold. Our science was barely beginning to understand consciousness, and they seemed to know just what they were going to do with us and what would happen. 

They led us all in a line to a vast room that contained what looked like test tubes lining every space from floor to ceiling. They began pushing each of us toward one of the massive tubes. I was near the end of the line so I was able to see each person before me enter. A glass door would slide open from the bottom of the tube, a visible gas would seep out, the person would be shoved inside, the door would slide back down, and a gelatinous-looking substance would fill the tube. Each person had the same look of terror on their face as they stiffened. It looked as if the bodies left within the tubes were husks. Shells of the people who were forced in. 

The line shrank and my fear grew. My palms started to sweat and I swallowed hard past a lump that had formed in my throat. I felt an arm push against my back and I was forced into a tube. As I breathed in the gas I felt a burning sensation grow from deep inside me and I began to cry, but my tears burned just as much. I tried to let out a scream, but at that moment the gelatinous substance filled up my entire body. Everything went black.

I don’t know how long I was out. It seemed an eternity and only a moment all at the same time. I felt the need to blink my eyes, but I couldn’t. As far as I could tell, I had no eyes. No body at all for that matter. I couldn’t tell where I was. I still don’t know where I am. I may be everywhere, or nowhere. All I can do is think. I can feel what used to be my body, but I’m no longer with it, or in it. None of it makes sense. I hope that all my useless thoughts are able to reach someone somewhere. Preferably Earth if there’s anyone left. I don’t know how long consciousness lasts on its own, but I’d rather die than have to be like this forever.