Ben stared out of his bedroom window and into the backyard.
“Where are you?” he pleaded.
It was quite dark now, but he could still tell that the yard, much like his parents, had returned to its normal yard-like self.
He hadn’t really expected the aliens to answer his question. He didn’t think they would suddenly pop up and say, “Hello, here we are,” and in fact, if they were going to take over the human race and make buildings vanish, quite a big part of him didn’t want to see them again. Another part of him, though, did want them to reappear, to prove that he had been right.
Looking out into the gloom, he tried all sorts of ways to make them come back. He asked them very politely, he shouted at them, he asked them in his head. He asked them backwards, he even tried to copy their language and ask them that way, but nothing worked. Ben found himself starting to think that maybe everyone else had been right. He knew something had happened last night, and with the shul, and his parents that morning, but maybe there was another explanation for it all. He’d heard someone once say that the mind can play tricks on us, in which case, his mind was a pretty good magician.
He kept coming back to the same thought: it had all seemed so real. Then he found himself thinking, if it wasn’t real, how do we know if anything is real? And, if nothing is real, what does that mean? And …
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
With those thoughts looping round and round in his mind, he slowly lolled forward and fell asleep, his head resting gently on the window.
That was also the position he found himself in when he woke up six hours later. His neck was sore and he was very groggy, which is probably why it took him a few seconds to work out what it was that had woken him up.
It was the humming sound again!
“It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real,” said Ben, shaking his head and sticking his fingers in his ears.
He stopped. The sound was still there. He stared out into the backyard. At the far end he could definitely see a very faint red glow.
They were back!
Forgetting all thoughts of the aliens not being real, or how dangerous it could be, Ben grabbed his phone. This time he was going to get proof.
As quickly and quietly as he could, he slipped downstairs and out the back door. He made his way to the fence at the end of the yard. The flowerpot was still there. He put one foot on it and, as carefully as he could, he raised himself up so he could just see over.
Sure enough, the two aliens were there again. He’d been right. Ben felt himself begin to panic. Who knew what the aliens might do to him if they found out he was watching them?
Ben took a deep breath, very quietly, and calmed himself down as much as he could, which wasn’t easy. Then he watched.
One of the aliens held out a tentacle and a perfect image of the shul appeared, floating just above it. A moment later an image of the sun rose above the shul then disappeared before rising again twice more.
“That’s three times the sun has risen and set,” thought Ben. “Which must mean three days. They’re planning something at the shul in three days, which is … the day of my bar mitzvah!”
Panic and fear started to whirl around inside of Ben, but he took another deep breath and managed to calm down.
He continued watching as the image of the shul and the sun disappeared and was replaced by three planets, all floating in the air just above the alien’s outstretched tentacle.
Ben recognized one of them as Earth again, but he didn’t recognize the other two. Then, Ben saw alien spaceships leaving from the planet furthest above the ground.
“Could that be their home planet?” wondered Ben.
The spaceships were heading to the other planet, which was above Earth to the right. The alien with the outstretched tentacle was making lots of noises, he was clearly getting quite excited, but amid all the sounds Ben heard the words, “Kepler 452b” and saw the image of the planet glow.
“That must be the name of that planet,” he thought.
Suddenly, the alien used another tentacle to push Kepler 452b away. It disappeared and all the spaceships started heading towards Earth.
Then, in a flash, the image of Earth, the spaceships and the aliens’ home planet all shot up into the sky. The aliens looked up and watched. It seemed to Ben as if they had just sent a signal, and the signal was that the invasion of Earth could start in three days’ time.
Ben stepped down from the flowerpot. Seeing the aliens conjure up those images seemingly out of nothing was another example of their power. It was just a small thing, but, thought Ben, they were obviously very technologically advanced. He also knew that planets didn’t last forever. Earth would one day be absorbed by the sun, though as that was in about seven and a half billion years he wasn’t too worried about it. Perhaps the aliens’ planet was much nearer to the sun and was about to be destroyed and that was why they had to leave. Whatever the truth, he was now certain it wasn’t just Mom and Dad the aliens wanted to take over. They wanted to take over the bodies of every single person on the planet, and that would mean … the end of the human race!