They came from outer space, but it was before we knew about it. Before we understood who and what they were and the power they wielded. We were sleeping babies in the realms of intelligentsia. We had no idea that they would terraform our planet to suit themselves, or the fact that our days were numbered. We saw the lights, talked about them briefly, then considered the matter no longer. There were more pressing things such as plagues and natural disasters with which we had to deal.
The temperatures rose subtly at first. Areas near to shore were flooded, our farmland changed into desert. When our air quality was almost unbreathable ‘they’ were revealed. By then, it was too late to do anything to rectify the situation. We couldn’t even if we tried. They held the reins and we were pawns in a terrible game of life and death.
Small groups of outliers had been protesting for years, trying to wake us up, but by the time we really understood the danger, we’d been like frogs sitting in water that had risen to the boil. Several thousand sought shelter, gathered in rebel bands and hid underground with their accumulated stacks of provisions weaponry and survivalist skills. The rest perished.
Terraforming worked until nature rebelled and flipped everything the invaders had accomplished on its head. Piecemeal, the invaders died off. The outliers survived in the toughest of conditions. Being separated by thousands of kilometres meant that tribes and familial groups grew in their own areas, adapting to the climates in which them found themselves. New cultures developed, new languages as different as night from day. They made their own laws and created their own spirituality, enhanced by the occasional alien visitor that liked to toy with their naivety. The last people that recalled the time ‘before’ had long since died off. And so the different groups remained separate until the big light came from the sky and caused the ice that had been a kilometre thick in parts all over the planet, to melt and a new age began.
