Now
“Hello. Are you alone? Don’t worry. We are here to help.” The message was still repeated every hour, on every screen and device the signal could reach.
What was left of us, we knew, we couldn’t trust them anymore, the phones, the computers. They would be listening. They would find us. “Hello. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. We are here. We are here to help.”
Somehow, we could hear the message in our heads, in our dreams. When we thought about giving up, when there wasn’t much food left. It wouldn’t be long now. We would join them. The signal. It wasn’t just theirs now. We didn’t talk about it, but we knew.
It was getting stronger.
There would not be a fight. It wouldn’t be necessary. A waste. One day, we would all look up, hear what they hear. Join the voice. Ride the wave. Work together.
Many. Will be. One.
But not yet. There was still time. Time to fight. Some of us knew of weapons, hidden, powerful. We would make them pay. Pay for what they took from us. Pay for the world that died. For our voices, our thoughts. The words we shared.