Author : Russell Bert Waters

Their Emperor once conquered vast expanses; like Genghis Khan, who cried when he ran out of lands to conquer.

But the Tar don’t cry. They don’t hear, see, or speak.

Their home planet was a silent and dark place.

No vibrations, no noises, no wind currents, nothing at all.

The minds of its inhabitants were anything but silent, communicating a telepathic tapestry of bold colors, rich language, feelings and emotions, that no outsider could ever bear witness to. There is no greater connection than the ones the Tar have with one another.

Speared through the planet’s core was a reactor, composed of rare and highly sensitive crystals. This reactor, bonded to the very heart and essence of its host planet, stabilized its orbit, and sent beams of power to shipyards and research facilities on neighboring planets.

The planet’s atmosphere is forbidding, disintegrating any masses attempting to enter.

One thing the engineers hadn’t considered was what might happen were a different type of invader to enter. A sound-wave, for instance.

Deep in the vacuum of space there was no concern of sound-waves.

There was no concern until the day a vessel, sent by a small planet light-years away, entered the vicinity, repeating messages such as “we come in peace” and songs such as “The Star Spangled Banner”.

As these sounds, and their vibrations, made their way into the atmosphere, they caused a small ripple, which became a larger and ever-increasing tide throughout the reactor, which ultimately reached the planet’s center.

The reactor itself rattled apart, causing the planet, which was home to the elite minds, the Holy Royal Family, and millions of others, to rip itself apart.

In an instant, the home planet of the Tar was blinked out of existence.

The sky was a brilliant blue, the occasional puffy white cloud littered the expanse, casting shadows on the ground.

There was a young man on a skateboard, lazily kicking his way down the sidewalk.

A man and his wife were playfully bickering outside of a roadside taco stand. The couple’s little boy was a few feet away, exploring the area around the picnic table where the three of them would eventually settle.

A small mutt wandered nearby, looking for scraps.

In the distance you can faintly hear the music from a car at the car wash across the street.

The breeze kicks up a bit, and it seems to do so in an unnatural manner.

The dog scurries, looking over his shoulder every so often, as he vacates the area as though something was biting his behind.

The couple look to their little boy, then look up, wondering if maybe a storm that hadn’t been forecast was about to pop up.

The shadows the clouds had been casting were now but a memory, as larger shadows began to fall and swiftly move across the land.

The woman drops her taco, as she looks up and sees that the sky is now peppered with large, silent, black objects, moving swiftly into formation.

The car that once played music, as its owner had carefully run a cloth over its chrome pieces, burst into flames and flipped through the air.

The Star Spangled Banner began to blare from somewhere within one of the larger ships, as destructive pulses began to land, ceaselessly, engulfing everything they struck into flames.

Within seconds, the entirety of Earth’s surface was scorched, the oceans were boiling, and every living being became but a memory.

The ships left as quickly as they had arrived, now blaring John F Kennedy’s recorded voice: “We come in peace.”