The Withering

We first started receiving the signals a few years ago. We were going to finally witness the return to our planet of the Ancient Astronauts everyone was talking about.

I used to laugh every time I saw the show about Ancient Aliens on the History Channel of all places. I thought it was a huge hoax or conspiracy theory, but now we can get live video from the approaching armada of space ships, populated by human-like people.

There were all kinds of reports in the media about the human volunteers who left long ago, and are now returning after countless generations of progeny born in the vast darkness of space.

The first ship was coming down on a plateau outside of Lima, Peru. I won the lottery to stand in the front row when they opened the door and the first of them walked out to touch their home soil again for the first time in eons.

A large vessel slowly lowered through the clouds above, barely displacing them. No sound of rockets or any engines, the massive thing touched down. Barely audible was the sound of it's weight settling into the sand. Something deep under the soil made a loud cracking sound in a deep tone like an iceberg calving away from a glacier.

At first everyone panicked. Standing up from their folding chairs, and listening for another sign of danger, but none came.

Through my binoculars I could see where the doors are. Luckily I brought a tripod with me so my hands wouldn't get tired. I suddenly had the urge to snack. Staring through my tripod-mounted binoculars, I was able to tear open and eat a bag of Funyuns.

The doors slid open and the cameras began flashing and clicking uncontrollably. Through my temporary blindness from the camera flashes, I could see some figures emerge from the ship. They were human. They were definitely bipedal.

As they approached I started hearing groans and screams from the journalists. I started to feel dizzy myself and my nose started bleeding. We were being exposed to something that these aliens who were once human didn't realize would be harmful to planet dwellers protected under the Van Allen Belt.

They had evolved in the harshness of space. The generations that survived were immune to cosmic rays at every wavelength. But we were not. I came to this realization as I lay on the ground, staring at the sky, while my brain cooked from being exposed to these people.