Protocol Eight

John Leatham looked up at the night sky, and heard the approaching thunder storm. He had hoped the stars would be out tonight, they would have been a welcome respite to the tension filled days he had come to know.

He allowed himself a moment of reflection.

The world was certainly a different place after the war ended between the American Union and United Asia, The Rulers had decreed that all technology be abolished: order and development had been deemed the enemy. The internet had been dismantled, and phones could only be used in emergencies; it was even forbidden to own a computer.

There were some good things about their subsistence society: children played outside, people talked to each other more, and had good health and longevity. But for Leatham, it was never enough, and he became a leader of the Resistance. They believed freedom could never be wrong, and they would rather die, than be denied choice. They were a small, but cohesive group, and held onto much forgotten technology. They had developed a device to encrypt cell phone communications, and were working towards restoring the internet.

His cell phone rung, interrupting his thoughts, and he had a sudden, uneasy feeling. It was Chris Hollis, the co-leader of the Resistance. "John. It's happened. Those lights we were keeping an eye on, they weren't a comet or meteor; it's a spaceship of some kind. I'm looking right at it, it's unbelievable."

"Where are you, Chris?" If Hollis was correct, an attack was imminent. "I'm alongside the Hudson River," Hollis replied, in a hushed voice. "I'm safe where I am but I'll put the phone on video feed, you'll want to see this! "

Amazingly, the spaceship looked exactly like the UFO's in the science fiction magazines he had read as a child. It hovered above the river before moving off, heading towards Manhattan. What technology they had developed he couldn't imagine, to travel the light years through space to reach Earth.

Leatham recalled an earlier conversation with Hollis, when they discovered the strange lights, emanating from Jupiter:

"Chris, I believe we have a much greater threat in front of us than fighting the Rulers. The radio signals we've been monitoring are getting stronger by the day." Leatham's apparent paranoia belied a huge intellect, and he would have been the last person to talk about alien invasion. "I believe we've been watched for years by these aliens, and now they're coming. Why now, you ask? Look at our planet, and all the resources we're not using. We have no technology, no weapons to defend ourselves, and they know that."


Leatham's recollections were interrupted by a blinding flash on the video feed, the spaceship was directly over Manhattan. The flash came from the spaceship and went directly to the ground in a matter of milliseconds. The flash was replaced by a loud explosion, like the sound of distant thunder, but much stronger, and lasted longer. It was some kind of nuclear blast, that was certain, and Leatham thought it had probably taken out most of Manhattan.

"John, Manhattan's gone!" Hollis screamed down phone. "The aliens have taken out the whole island, and I'm getting messages from our networks in Europe and Asia, they're all under attack! You know what that means." Deserted for years, Manhattan held an underground bunker that their group had been using to develop technology and restore some nuclear capabilities.

"How could they have known?" Leatham knew the answer as he spoke. The aliens had been monitoring their communications, and would know their every move. The aliens knew everything; the location of all the bunkers, where their technology was housed; even the identities and locations of their members.

"We only have one nuclear bunker left," continued Hollis. "Thank goodness they have no way of locating it. That was a brainwave to keep the location secret from all but the unit leaders."

Hollis spoke his next words very slowly. "John, we need to invoke Protocol Eight."

Leatham knew it was the only way. With a heavy heart he said: "Chris, I know you're right. We have enough nuclear weapons to make the planet uninhabitable, and our underground networks are all in place. These aliens are here to exterminate us anyway, at least this way we have a chance of rising again."

The two freedom fighters said their goodbyes, and Leatham transmitted the enablement code to the remaining bunker. It would be their last transmission before Protocol Eight was enacted.
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Epilogue

John Leatham looked up at the night sky. The stars were out, and he could just make out the Orion Nebula. Is that where they came from, he wondered, and then, with a shrug, realised he would never find out.

Protocol Eight had worked as intended, it had even enabled peace talks to begin between the Rulers and the Resistance. The Rulers were beginning to accept that not all technology was evil, and an advanced society could be a benevolent one as well.

He smiled at a young boy beside him, his son, who was asking, again, how it was that the aliens simply ceased their destruction and moved on.

"Well, Johnny," Leatham explained. "Protocol Eight was our last option, and a total fiction."

"Our only chance was that the aliens would have believed us capable of destroying ourselves, rather than surrender. Just look at all the senseless wars we have fought, and we've been destroying our environment for years anyway."

"You see, their strength was their technology; they knew our every move. So, we took our biggest weakness, our determination to destroy ourselves, and turned it into our best, and only, defence."