301 Dei Verbum: Part 2

At first, the societal upheavals were tumultuous. evoking the many theories. Why had the aliens landed so ostentatiously in a place synonymous with Christianity? Was it a scout ship for a planned invasion? Was it a calling card, an introduction for more to come? Was it sent by God? Were the unseen visitors dimensionally aphasic and we simply missed each other due to some myopic existential blindness?

Why no doors or windows—not even a seam in the unknown metal. We knew the craft was not solid; we all heard the noises for a few years before they abruptly stopped.

Why the hell hadn't they come out? Why the hell wouldn't they? They came all this way (a long way, indeed), only to hide themselves from us. Was it some test that only made sense according to some alien cognitive sensibility?

We waited.

Could they have been waiting on us? For some societal milestone? For some evolutionary rite of passage that finally would deem us worthy?

We wanted to meet them. Learn from them. We wanted a cure for death, solutions to climate change, perpetual motion machines, and free, limitless energy. Certainly they knew! We needed them.

Yet, they chose to remain unavailable.

Some mysteries were not worth the effort, so the people of Earth moved on.

While at first there were promises of a new age of understanding and brotherhood among Earth's peoples and nations, after a decade and realizing once again we were on our own, the old grudges, feuds, and holy wars re-surfaced.

But also, total human knowledge continued to double faster than an in-winding Fibonacci curve.

It, one day, came to be: we were finally able to open the craft.

With much holographic media coverage fanfare, seams were rendered where there were none before. That's when we discovered that the door header wasn't level: the jamb's slope could be freed from the outside, but from the inside would have been impossible.

The smell was awful.

What was left of them were smudged, gelatinized stains on the craft's floors. Many alien contraptions lay about evidencing the occupants' efforts to clear the doorjamb, open their portal, and exit their craft to meet their new friends.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Sunday, October 27, Day 301 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

COMPANION PIECE TO YESTERDAY: https://shopping-feedback.today/fiction/300-dei-verbum-part-1%3C/em%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cem class="css-ak7tmt-Italic">

366 WORDS (without A/N)

65 DAYS TO GO! THIS CHALLENGE CONTINUES, 366 WORDS A DAY.

There are currently three Vocal writers in this 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge, biding their time:

• L.C. Schäfer (Imprimatur pending)

• Rachel Deeming (Nihil Obstat)

• Gerard DiLeo (Near occasion of sin)