The Aliens Destroyed All Living Beings on Earth and It's Our Fault

When good intentions ignore reason, the gates of hell open wide, allowing unimaginable monsters to enter our homes.

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Journal entry: Space station ISIS, day 792 of no contact from Earth.

Waiting to die in this orbital death trap, I wanted to tell the story of how once-great human civilization met its demise. I want to leave something behind other than corpses. I don’t know who I expect to read this. Take it as a warning never to visit the planet's surface. Death is certain to follow if you do. But also to commemorate humanity and, more intimately, our last days here in orbit.

The International Space Station represents the last sanctuary of humanity. That sounds like an exaggeration, and I dearly hope I’m wrong. Still, I fear we’re the only ones left. Nadia Kournikova and I, John Marlow. Should I mention ranks? They don’t matter anymore.

From what we can tell, there’s no one left on the planet. At least no one willing or able to communicate with us. It’s been 792 days since our last contact. There have also been no radio or television broadcasts. We monitor everything. Nothing. Only silence. It’s lonely out here in the vast darkness, 400 kilometers above the planet's surface. When we orbit the earth, we no longer see any lights on the surface. Fifteen sunsets every day, but all is dark. It feels like a dead planet. It probably is.

At least the view is fantastic. The blue ball thrusts across space and time with such elegance and tranquility. If we didn’t know any better, one could hardly suspect anything was wrong on the surface. It’s so quiet up here. The only sounds we hear are the hum of engines, occasional Zvezda thrusters correcting our path, and the beating of our hearts. The last two human hearts. What a depressing thought. I cling to that sound with everything I’ve got.

God, I hope I’m wrong. God? What God? There is no good, or if there is, he is one pissed of entity hellbent on punishing humanity for its sins. But what sins? Who knows. I’m talking about God - I must be losing my mind. I am losing my mind. Perhaps it's better this way. The pain of realization that you could be the last of humanity lays heavy on our souls. Especially since there is no escape and no hope for the two of us. We’re trapped. Alive, but already dead. It is a certainty with an open ending. We know it’s coming. Just not when.

Nadia and I thought about our duty to humanity. Should we ensure the continuation of our species? Should we have babies on this space station? It seems logical, doesn’t it? Natural, even. But how does one bring life into a flying tin box with no hope in sight? There is no rescue coming. No relief. There is no taxi service to drive us to the surface, and even if there were, what the hell is left down there? Nothing but bodies and devastation lay waiting. And those alien bastards running around, breading, multiplying, and consuming everything. 

By now, they’ve probably killed every living thing on planet Earth. Human and animal alike. It breaks my heart. Especially since it could have all been avoided had humanity not become such cowards. No, not cowards, mindless justice warriors. Everyone has a right to live. If you kill them, it’s genocide, and you’ll be extinguishing a new species, they argued. 

This level of stupidity is hard to describe. Fighting for something whose sole purpose is your annihilation and their multiplication. Where did we go so wrong that our young ones had lost their self-preservation instincts? Even bugs have those. What does that say about us? The worst part of it was watching it happen in real-time and being unable to do anything about it. 

There were a lot of us who recognized the naive madness of their beliefs and actions. We knew that it would bring about their own destruction. Our destruction. But there was no stopping it. They were relentless in their cause. And now they’re all dead as a result—an entirely predictable result for anyone with half a brain.

Where was I? It’s hard to think. We’ve been living on rations for too long. At some point, we stopped working out, and our bodies are now mere shadows of what they once were. I wish I could say that time flies here, but that would be a lie or wishful thinking. These last couple of years felt like an eternity—an eternity of watching all that you hold dear wither away in madness and unimaginable violence. 

Everyone we know is dead. This, we know for sure. They’ve been gone a long time now. The pain hasn’t subsided, though. The pain never relents. It never dissipates. It’s always lingering. One memory. One thought, and it all comes crashing back like a tsunami of sorrow.

We didn’t like each other at first, Nadia and I. She was a stuck-up, cold, unemotional tyrant, and I’m a bit of a cowboy. At heart, if nothing else. Up here, she was my boss. There’s no way in hell we would ever end up embracing each other, but when no one is left, and you share a destiny so utterly desperate and lonely, nothing tends to matter. 

We, humans, were magnificent in our time. The top species on planet Earth. The only one with the intellectual capability to think, write, and create. We had developed technology, designed wonderful art, and brought about a prosperous civilization where we cared for everyone. It was the golden age of men. It was a good time. We even sort of colonized space. Well, at least the orbit of our planet. My last home. A place from which I write this memoir and wait to meet my end.

All good things come to an end, though, as we were no exception. We were a murderous, barbaric civilization for the longest time. Then, we overcorrected. The swing of the pendulum was predictable, but not its consequences. I don’t know that anyone had the eradication of the whole of human civilization on the cards. We killed ourselves with kindness and compassion, of all things. The irony!

How is that possible, you might be asking yourself as you read my words. Whoever you are. Hello! I wish I would have met you. Thank you for reading my last words. I hope you understand what I’m writing. How could you? There’s no one left? I’m getting carried away again. Forgive me. Anyway. I was talking about how we screwed up by being too kind and compassionate.

One day, I can’t remember the date, a fascinating discovery was made. We found traces of biological life in an interstellar meteor that fell on Earth. There was a meteor shower that week, and millions of tinny meteors fell onto the surface. Most burned in the atmosphere, but not all. These meteors were scattered all over the western hemisphere. The governments tried to collect as many as possible for fear of contamination. They nearly succeeded.

As exciting as finding unknown biological traces in meteors was, especially since we speculated they came from outside our solar system, scientists expressed concerns regarding the dangers of contamination with our biosphere. It was impossible to predict what would happen should contamination cause a reaction. This was entirely new for us. We did not know what we were dealing with.

A small sample was brought to our space station for examination. We figured it was safer to experiment up here, where we could contain a possible outbreak. We were right. A few weeks into our experiments, something unexpected happened. We were introducing the alien biological sample to mice when things got out of control. Mistakes were made. This was just one of them.

The whole world watched the experiment grow, and Alien Species Protection groups were formed almost instantly. Everybody was so concerned with the preservation of this new life form that they even stormed the streets in fear of the government destroying it. They threw around accusations in the name of extinct species, calling us oppressors and abusers. They demanded rights for alien invaders and sanctuaries. 

No one knew what the hell we were dealing with, and already, these groups have taken over the story, flooding the media with accusations of inhumane torture, failed first contact, and aliens kept in cages. If you’re reading this, you’d think there were no signs of danger. That the species being created by symbiosis were cute, innocent-looking things, right?

Wrong! Everything that came out of our experiments looked like it was designed to kill. Every exposure to a new species ended in the alien biosamples killing the hosts and then reproducing by eating their host from within, culminating in an exploding bloodbath at birth. 

Birth of a new species. All of them mindlessly violent, seeking to destroy and multiply. There was no pretending here, not from researchers, the government, or the alien invaders themselves. The message was clear. If you set us free, we’ll consume and take over everything until nothing is left. 

None of that mattered to the young justice warriors. They didn’t care. They didn’t listen. Not even after we lost containment on this space station and had to eject the research module, where they were held. We lost four people that day. Good people. They saw the devastation in this contained environment, but somehow, we were at fault for what happened. 

The aliens felt threatened. They were imprisoned. They were hungry and desperate. We kept hearing justifications for the aliens viciously murdering half our crew, mutilating their bodies, and creating abominations of their own. They claimed that if it weren’t a military experiment, they wouldn’t turn so violent. That we have somehow turned them from peaceful life forms into a murderous plague.

All nonsense, of course. I doubt the aliens give anything much thought. They’re just like a virus. Their purpose is to spread, find new hosts, reproduce, and spread some more until no one is left to infect. This sort of natural behavior is not unprecedented. Every once in a while, we feel the impact of an infection that got out of hand, yet no one seemed to care. Alien lives matter, we kept hearing until there was no one left to voice anything on our beautiful blue planet.

The protestors stormed government facilities and laboratories, freeing the alien specimen. There was no reasoning with them. There was no stopping them. It was all coordinated. After that, it was too late anyway. 

The alien life forms consumed everything and infected humans and animals at an unprecedented rate. It was estimated that in just 48 hours, a few million souls were lost to this invasive new species. In thirty days, most of the major cities were infected. We nuked some, but it didn’t help. We were too late. It merely shortened the suffering of the surviving few civilians, waiting to be the next in line for alien reproduction.

In six months, governments fell apart, and the earth's surface was plastered with bodies and decay. There were billions of starving aliens everywhere. At first, we thought that islands were safe, and many people took to boats in search of safety from invading aliens. It was all in vain. Once the alien life forms merged with amphibious animals, it was only a matter of time before they would spread through our seas. Eventually, they did, and that’s when we lost all contact with Earth. In just over fifteen months, human civilization ceased to exist.

Even if there are pockets of survivors hiding away somewhere, it’s only a matter of time before the infection reaches them. All plant life is now infected. What are they going to eat once their supplies run out? It’s hopeless. It doesn’t matter if you’re hiding in a desert, underground in some bunker, or up here in orbit. We will all meet the same ending—death by either starvation, madness, or exposure. And the last option has been taken away from us. 

The third surviving crew member, Lee, couldn’t handle the wait. He ended his life on his terms. I’m not brave enough to end my own life. I shall wait out my fate. Not because of hope but because I don’t really have a choice. Nadia seems to disagree. She forces me to remain hopeful. She is convinced we can create a genuinely self-sustaining food source at this station. I don’t know why she bothers. 

Why fight to survive when there is nothing to fight for? What possible future could we have? Even if we can somehow survive until old age and make babies, what kind of life would that be? I can’t leave her. She might be the last beacon of humanity left. If we are ever saved or not, it doesn’t matter now. We could very well be the last humans. I will dedicate my life to our memory, documenting all I can about our lost civilization for whatever comes next. Whoever comes next. 

Extinction-level events have wiped out life on planet Earth multiple times. It was bound to have happened sooner or later. Perhaps a new human civilization, or an alien one, will find these files, and they will know that we once proudly roamed the Earth. This is my purpose now. It is a worthy one. Something to live for, I suppose. Anyway, I’m tired now. I need to rest for a while. I hope I never wake up, but if I do, my work shall continue. 

Whoever you are, the person reading this journal, don’t forget us and the lessons of social overcorrection. Learn from our mistakes and do better yourselves. Life is precious unless it’s hellbent on destroying other life forms. Then it’s just a virus that needs to be contained and exterminated. I pray you are stronger and willing to do the hard thing when the time comes. Before it’s too late for you as well. I hope you don’t fail your people by softening your heart into self-destruction, as we have. Sometimes, hard decisions have to be made. The sooner, the better. We have failed, and Earth is now infested with an alien species that will consume everything until it consumes itself. 

I repeat my warning - do not go down to the surface! It means certain death to all you hold dear. You’ve been warned.

John Marlow, human.

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