The Earth Strikes Back

Inhaling the crisp morning air in the first moments of wakeful consciousness, I realized with glee that I hadn't overslept, especially on such an important day. Arising from my stack of sleeping mats bundled together for makeshift comfort, I walked toward the mouth of the cave I was sleeping in, and peered outside. A vast vista of barely illuminated mountain peaks were starting to make themselves visible, painted a prominent pink-orange by the light of the rising sun. The birds were as of yet silent, and with the wind barely blowing through the hilltop forests, the earth itself seemed to be waiting for an invitation from the sun to burst forth into life.

I tested the light switch even though I knew the photovoltaic panels that I'd installed a month earlier probably needed to be calibrated soon. That would have to wait, I thought, as I prepared myself for a climb to the peak of the summit I was situated just below.

It had been ten years since the mountain village was overrun with some sort of strange people from the West. They appeared fully human, but their behaviors suggested otherwise, and autopsies of their self-terminated "screamers" definitely proved otherwise. Hours before these beings would erupt into shouts, cries, and scarily erratic behaviors, they started to give off a strange yellow light from the crowns of their heads. After they exhausted themselves in fits of rage and other bizarrely unspeakable behavior patterns, the yellow light would get brighter. Surgical investigation of the few specimens we could get our hands on revealed that they had strange implants in their brains; but who would endeavor to engineer people like sci-fi cyborgs is a mystery to this day.

It had been fifty years since worldwide communication shut down. Many local "internet" networks had sprung up, but had been sadly dwindling in size as the Screamers migrated and took over more and more territory. My village used to be one of the most populous, having been nestled deep in a hitherto undeveloped valley in the Altai mountain range into which thousands of refugees used to pour in yearly, from all corners of Eurasia.

I had just begun making the first few steps toward the winding path up the mountain when I noticed a rustling in the forest below. A shiver ran down my spine. If we failed today, there'd be no telling what was in store for our community for the next century or more. It was the longest day of the year, and hence the greatest chance for us to muster all the photovoltaic technology we had, in order to make unmodified humanity's first strike against our seemingly sister-like species. As I began to smell the familiar fumes of incense and herbs being offered to the Earth Goddess and Perfected Ones as part of the morning rituals, I remembered our age-old creation stories: that the world had been going through unimaginable upheavals such as this from time immemorial, and each bottleneck of history seemed to create a curation of seed-cultures from which the next eras of history would grow from. Considering how isolated and unknown our culture was, it seemed like a strange cosmic joke that we'd be among the few to survive.

After a surprisingly easy climb up the stairs carved into the mountainside, I reached the clearing atop the peak where the tent of our village Elders was perched. Tree-Nose was seated in front of his smoldering fire, mumbling prayers and spells as was his morning practice to bless the community. Eagle-Mother noticed me approaching, having been staring down the valley below, and greeted me with a look that seemed to communicate entire lifetimes of meaning. It was astonishing that she was able to carry out her affairs as such a prominent part of the Village administration despite having taken a vow of silence decades ago. The mysteries of the Elders' training fascinated everyone down to the smallest child. Unfortunately, you had to make it to three quarters of a century before the magic became a science to you, and prior to that, a difficult and decades-long training to prepare your nervous system to be able to accommodate such knowledge.

It was ironic, really, that I was spending time with such exalted beings with their seeming opposites having taken over every inch of the valley below. The Screamers did not appear to speak any human language except for the eponymous noises for which they were known. They were extremely quiet, restrained, virtuous, and respectful of one another, appearing to communicate with the technology imbedded in their upper cerebrums. Our fears of them took a turn for the worse with their accumulations of unsustainable numbers, and the unfortunate tendency of non-Screamers to go missing whenever they passed through an area inhabited by them en masse.

The most incredulous thing about them wasn't their behavior or their dangerous mysteries, though, but the fact that they seemed to come from all parts of the earth. Various groups of humans who had been killing each other based on petty differences or ideological disputes had all suddenly become part of the same family. The only problem was that we weren't part of it, and saw through their supposed orderliness because of the increasing incidence of their cyber-neurotic malfunctions. The massacres they did of all the living creatures in their vicinity upon their "expiry" was what spooked most of us into retreating into the wilderness in the first place. The final retreat into the mountains came at a point when malfunctioning was happening on the daily, and we were only a few thousand by then.

"I can only assume that this destined day of human history has been placed before us for a reason," said a voice coming from behind me. It was the third of the Elders, Ocean-Catcher, who also happened to be my own great-grandfather. "What's so special about us," I asked, "if we can barely survive off the mountains that our ancestors lived in for centuries?"

"Oh, I think you know," retorted Ocean-Catcher. "We use the tools of technology rather than have them use us, we respect the diversity of human experience without imposing one way of life, and we have a goal to our embodiment that goes much beyond multiplying and subduing the bounties of this earth."

This sort of talk was often lost on me, for I'd get angry at the fact that such a way of life had to hide high in the mountains instead of being strong enough to impact the world below. I was only 15, though, so I'd expect that the others had more satisfying answers to such ironies.

Just then, a series of screams and shouts erupted from the valley, seemingly from all sides. It's been happening more and more commonly for the last three years, I thought, until a hand on my shoulder broke my train of thought.

"I know exactly what you must be thinking," said Tree-Nose, eyes glaring into mine, "we don't need to risk losing all our solar panels for such a silly experiment if the enemy is going to eventually finish themselves off." Though I respected him greatly, his tendency to mind-read and his glaring madman gaze never failed to give me the creeps.

"It's not that," I responded, "it's just that we have no idea what the experiment will do to them. What if it gives them immunity, or makes the malfunctions even worse?"

"Rubbish!" said Tree-Nose, "you just don't want to get blood on your hands or take any risks for fear of being blamed afterwards. Just do the job we've assigned you and everything will go fine. I've seen it in my visions."

"Now now," said Ocean-Catcher, "let the young man go and start his work with a clear mind," as he pushed me towards the staircase at the opposite side of the peak leading down to the outcrop below.

I walked down, ignoring the fact that I was supposed to have gotten blessings and emotional support for such an important task on such an important day. Tree-Nose was right. I had no clue whether the transmitter we engineered using extracted brain-devices would have a painful effect on those who heard its frequency, or cause instant malfunctioning, or be harmless, or ironically cure their propensity to Scream.

At the outcrop, a circle of stones had been piled in a circle along the borders of the small plateau, which was covered with solar panels. Only the peak was above us, and below we could see the campfires of hundreds of cave-settlements on the sides of the mountains beside us. Eifa was already there, and despite having been a childhood friend, she seemed every time to be some sort of alien, lost genius from another world when she was at work. It was all thanks to her that this was happening in the first place.

"Nice of you to show up," she said, not lifting her eyes from the wires she was adjusting, "I need you to go down to the transmitter and guard it for the next eight hours if you don't mind." This was what terrified me about today: half the Village was actively against the risk we were taking, and the other half too terrified of the potential disapproval of the Elders to say a word about it. I didn't know if I would be defending against our own people, or renegade, malfunctioning Screamers, and I didn't know which would be worse.

"Eifa, you know that our project is toast if I'm attacked. You should have gathered some more people for this," I said.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'll be right down there to save your sorry ass with this if anything goes wrong," said Eifa, holding up a spear with dangerous looking wires wound along it. I didn't even want to know what it was capable of; she almost caused the extinction of the local mountain goat population the last time her inventions found themselves in the wrong hands.

I left, sensing that something was as off with her as it was with me, and made my way even further down to the edge of where the mountain began to give way to forest. The valley below was a mere kilometer from that point, and any noise on my part would reveal the location we'd worked so hard to discreetly develop.

I reached the indent in the side of the mountain where we had set up the transmitter underground, and took a seat. If anything, I'd be the first one to get roasted if something went wrong.

Hours passed as the brilliant red sun rose in the far east and reached its ascent at the crown of the sky, blazing its protection against the cold winds of the mountains. Over the hours I heard singing and chanting, yelling and chattering, shouts and rally cries from the mountain settlements, yet no one dared to approach the rocky crag that I had settled on.

By the time evening began to fall, I had realized that I slept through most of the day. I slapped myself alert, turning around to see if anyone was watching. Thankfully, the plan was to activate the transmitter by the time the rays of the sun no longer shone atop the plateau, which was mere minutes away.

I waited until I heard the signal.

"Get out of there if you want to live!" screamed Eifa.

I hurried along the indents in the mountain that we had carved, carefully placing each foot for fear of landslide. I made it to the plateau, where I saw Eifa looking forlorn, and the mute Eagle-Mother, the youngest of the Elders, with her hand on Eifa's shoulder, smiling to the valley below.

"I think she wants us to go down and see if anything happened," said Eifa, with a bewildered look in her eyes. Her inventions were the type to go out with a bang, and not the type to work in silence.

We made our way down, being as quiet as we could, sidestepping so much as each twig in the forest, and wading through the creek at a snail's pace, until we could see settlements in the form of strange rectangular wooden buildings. I was only five when I'd left, so I didn't remember much about what life on the plains was like, or how the Screamers lived.

Eifa walked ahead, spear in hand, and stealthily entered the first wooden building, and ran out practically ten times as fast.

"They're alive," she said, with such a heavy dread that made it hard to even make out her words.

We soon found ourselves surrounded by a crowd of all sorts of people, all of whom had a strangely warm look on their faces. Were they fantasizing about how to best cook us?

One of them stepped forward, an old lady. We're so happy for your efforts, she said, although without opening her mouth. What was going on?

"They're communicating to us through their implants," said Eifa, with tears streaming down her cheeks. I looked back at the old lady.

We came from a continent where we were forced to receive neurological implants in order to be more efficient in the economy. When it collapsed due to being built on a series of ponzi schemes and asset bubbles, there weren't enough skilled employees or ethically trained policymakers to continue regulating the technology, and so hackers naturally took advantage to create a totalitarian-like system. Our "screaming" was not a malfunction, but our very organic biology rebelling against the control unnaturally placed upon it. It's ironic that the implants were being controlled by foreign forces until we bred to the point of overtaking them on every continent. This was when the malfunctioning began to get more frequent, because no one could do a thing about it.

I began to sweat. It was as though my entire worldview was being obliterated in seconds through thought transfer. I felt my palms getting sweaty and feared my shaking legs might give out at the intensity of the psychic transfer.

Thanks to your efforts, the programming that was written into the collective database has been shattered for all time. It's as though the rays of the sun itself re-wrote the energy signatures our brains are now processing, and we can live in harmony, without directives from what had been imposed earlier, and without the risk of spiraling out of control. We hope that we can once again live in peace and harmony, and that your people will come to trust us when they are ready to.

I knew this wouldn't sit well with the half of the village that had spent their lives running away from these very people. The others who'd made this place their home for practically millennia might be even less open to the idea. Yet I felt that something gigantic had been accomplished, and as the fading rays of the sun gave rise to the calm shelter of moonlight, I calmed and steadied myself that the work to be done was accomplished, and that the incredible possibilities that the future held were worth all the struggles that it took to get to this point in the first place.