text: 2020. The year that wouldn’t end. Or so we thought. It started off in December 2019, as a news story about some city in China where a lot of people were being hospitalized with some mysterious respiratory illness. Headlines spewed fear and the nightly news paraded a horror show of sick and dying people; all while asking how long would it be until it showed up in the United States, Russia and other parts of the globe. It didn’t take long. In March of 2020, the world changed. Italy was in a nationwide lockdown, due to an overwhelming number of Covid infections. In the United States, there were several hot spots for the Virus. New York City was hit particularly hard by it, as were Los Angeles and Seattle. Just as we started to think the worst was behind us, hurricane season hit us with a record number of named storms; nearly all of which hit the gulf coast of the United States. Economically, we were falling apart because no one could work. Socially, we were ripping ourselves apart over old, new, and long lasting hatreds; all while our political leaders fought over the reigns of power in an election year. Yeah, we thought 2020 was a bad year. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, along with fresh news of a second wave of the virus, everyone was looking forward to enjoying the winter holidays and then celebrating the new year. 2021 *had* to be a better year than 2020. It couldn’t get any worse. We were all wrong. The first strain of Covid that spread around the globe was just that, the first wave. It changed people for life, *physically.* Shortness of breath, muscle aches, headaches. It was baffling to our doctors. By the end of November 2020, over two million American citizens had been infected with the first strain. The second strain would move much faster. The second strain hit the northern hemisphere particularly hard. The mortality rate was higher by ten percent than the first and the changes were more obvious. The shortness of breath was still present, but light sensitivity and aural distortions were new. The third strain hit in April 2021. Six months before the visitation. The Third Strain wiped out nearly half of the uninfected population of the planet. Those who didn’t die seemed to recover to better health than before their illness. They were stronger, more energetic and had more efficient cognitive function. Hospitals were overwhelmed as people either died on ventilators or recovered within days of reporting symptoms. Just before the visitation, humanity had just about given up fighting the virus. Nothing we did seemed to work. At one point there was even talk of a vaccination...which proved to be far less effective than it had been touted to be. October 2021. Visitation. They didn’t come down in their ships in the middle of the night or anything overly dramatic. They simply took control of our social media feeds and announced their presence. In a moment we learned many truths. The first was that we were not only, *not alone,* but that there were many sentient life forms in the universe! We also learned some pretty horrible truths as well. The most horrible was that these other species did not consider us to be sentient beings. Instead, we were considered livestock. Easily configurable livestock. Genetically engineered to breed beyond the capacity of our environment to sustain our population. We were made with enough intelligence to become the dominant species on our planet, thus ensuring our ability to overpopulate our planet. The virus, it seemed, had been engineered to alter our physiology in ways that would be beneficial to inhabiting other planets designated as agricultural planets. The plan was to seed these other planets with altered humans as breed stock. Their new homes were pre-selected based upon the mutations caused by the corona virus they had unleashed on our planet. Those who became stronger would be allowed to stay on earth to start rebuilding the population. They urged us to stay calm through the transition, but would use coercion if they had to. No one would be hurt unless necessary. Of course, our military tried to fight the first ships that entered our atmosphere. They didn’t even last a week. Every military installation on the planet was targeted and destroyed systematically. It was efficiently done. Then they set up the broadcasting stations. These monstrous machines were mounted at the tops of two hundred foot long spikes delivered from low earth orbit. Hundreds of them dropped at a time from orbit spread out as they fell towards each of our inhabited continents. Once they embedded deeply into the earth they began emitting specific pheromones into the surrounding countryside. The pheromones induced a zombie like state in the infected population. Powerless to defend themselves, the affected people would follow specific pheromones to specific gathering points where they were collected in large, automated transport vessels. The pheromones didn’t have the same effect on those of staying on Earth. To us, it seemed to all be a dream. We went about our daily lives, watching our friends, neighbors and even our family members simply walk into one of the transports like it was something they had done everyday of their lives. It all seemed normal until one of us snuck onto one of the ships and disabled it in flight. She survived, no one else did. That was the first sign of resistance. Little Izzy, who was only looking for her mom. She was only fifteen and she found a way to break free of the dream and actually see the horror going on around her. Her next act brought them down in person. She managed to climb to the top of a broadcasting station and disable it with a military grade explosive. Suddenly everyone within its influence radius was awake, confused and horrified by what was happening around them. The strongest of us decided to fight back. Using chemical defense gear from a nearby surplus store, we disabled several Broadcasting Stations before the hunters caught up to us. They really tried not to hurt us. They hit us with optical stunners first. These are like flash grenades but they emit the light in a pattern of flashes that induce a trancelike state in anyone caught in its brilliance. At first it was easy for them to round us up. I couldn’t really see them, because of the armor they were wearing. It seemed to shift and blur in a way that resembled a waters pot on a camera lens. I was on the fringe of the Stunner’s effectiveness and closed my eyes as a reflex. I was ready when the first of them got to me. I could feel an unnatural heat growing around me as the figure came closer and closer to me. Just as the heat became unbearable, I heard a voice in my head encouraging me to be calm. That everything was going to be fine and that I was simply frightened because I didn’t understand. I was reminded of a cowboy talking to a wild horse before touching it for the first time. I forced myself to be calm and grabbed the handle of my knife in anticipation of being touched by a creature I could only discern as a blurry entity. The skin on my leg began to crawl as the approaching heat surrounded my ankle and spread to my calf. The heat was replaced by a clammy, cold grasping sensation on my ankle. I felt the grasp become more firm and I recoiled in revulsion and disgust. I lashed out with my knife, not at my leg, but the air above my leg. Fortune was on my side as the grasping sensation vanished, as did the voice in my head. I felt resistance as my blade struck a solid, fleshy mass and bit deep. I lost my knife when the alien pulled away in shock and pain. His comrades immediately forgot about the other humans and rushed to his aid. To me it appeared as if several water droplets coalesced into one. The optical stunner stopped emitting the terrible light and those of us who were capable of it, ran away. We formed the core of the resistance. Ten of us, including little Izzy. We woke up hundreds and started to fight the forced relocation of humanity. We live here in the Rocky Mountains because we know the land, and we can live off of it. It’s hard for them to find us here. It’s here that humanity will make its stand.