We tried. We tried so hard.
In the end, it wasn’t enough. We lost. Our military is broken, the few remaining people – the few remaining humans – reduced to hiding in caves near the shore or squatting in bombed-out houses in the tombs that once were cities. There is much we don’t know – who are these invaders? What happened to turn their eyes on Earth? When did they decide to come for us? Where did they come from originally? Why did this happen to us?
The only thing we can know for sure is that there is no hope left to offer. We are all going to die here, and we can not stop it.
At best, we can warn others. The Monitor has expended the last of its resources to take all of our accumulated knowledge of the invaders and put it down in a format that will survive space travel, and hopefully be intelligible by whatever civilization may find them. We took those documents – documents only in the loosest sense of the word, as we didn’t trust this to anything as fragile as paper – and launched copies of them into space in as many different directions as we could manage, hoping at least one would escape their notice. Hoping that it would be found. Hoping that at least one world out there will be prepared for the hell that is coming, and survive where we failed.
If you’re reading this, then the rockets have already launched. The devices that launched them, as well as all documents and information detailing where and when the launches took place, and what directions the ‘documents’ were launched in, along with the few surviving people who worked on this project and therefore have knowledge of it that could be – and I shudder to use this word here, but no other suits – extracted, are here in the offices of the Monitor. After this message is sent into what remains of our information networks, I will implement the final stage of this plan, and detonate an explosive device that will erase every trace of the project, along with those in this room.
If you’re reading this, I, and by extension The Schenectady Monitor, am dead.
To my reporters, I am sorry it came to this. I know you all did your best to spit in the eye of the Devil at the very moment he split your soul in two – especially you, Gordon. If there are Pulitzers in the afterlife, you’ll be swimming in them.
To my readers, I am sorry this is all I can do for you. I’m sorry that all I can do is tell the story of your deaths to people none of us will ever meet. I am sorry that the last issue of the Monitor is humanity’s obituary.
To the brave men and women who helped me get this information (hopefully) out of the grasp of our predators, words can not express my gratitude. You went into this knowing that you were going to forfeit your lives for an effort that we will never know the result of.
To my family, I’m coming home…!