Starmageddon 3012

The sun harvesters, beings of incredible power, were done harvesting the energy of the Alpha Centauri group of stars and were now heading towards our solar system. Our sun was next in line in their insatiable quest for energy to fuel their almost galaxy-wide civilization. Earth would be deprived of the radiant life-giving rays of its star and would die a cold, miserable death; all life on the land, in the water, and in the air would meet the same fate: extinction. There was no way to halt the aliens’ next expansive move into our solar system. Perhaps, they would be merciful and would spare the life forms they found here; perhaps not. Preparations had been under way for decades now upon the first detection of the trail of blotted-out star systems. The light traveling from these suns took years to reach us and the pattern of their blinking out one by one in a straight line from furthest back to closest in was evidence enough for the governments of Earth to unite in the Ark endeavour to save a fragment of humanity from annihilation. If that hadn’t been enough the snapshot by the Hubble Space Telescope of seven 10 000 kilometre-long spaceships blotting out the stars behind them ensured the highest levels of fear among the ruling elite of Earth. And needless to say, the common man was kept in the dark as always. What little facts did leak out from time to time were easily quelled: in fact, the truth was often the best method to do it, and people dismissed Independence-Day-themed accounts easily enough.

The big bad aliens were on their way to drain our sun of all its energy as a kind of intergalactic snack – yeah, right! Few believed it and I was amongst those few. My name is, well, you can call me anything you like – it won’t really matter in the 16 or so years Earth has left. Just call me Tom. Tom Oblong.

[This is a work in progress. Title inspired by Philip Francis Nowlan who in 1928 published a short story called "Armageddon 2419 A.D." in Amazing Stories. In 1929, he came out with a sequel, "The Airlords of Han". For those of you who don't know it: this was the beginning of Buck Rogers!! ] 

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.