The next few weeks after the attack saw a huge clean-up effort across the globe, with a lot of Anhurian bodies being burned in piles, and some I am sure being kept for scientific research. Others, no doubt, were being taken by people who may have inappropriately decided to take parts from those Anhurians that laid in their streets, fields, and gardens as trophies. Five days after the attacks, the unidentified space crafts all seemed to retreat from the planet earth to leave. There was no further contact and no further perceived imminent attack.
Three weeks after the eventful night when the Anhurian's descended from their ships, I found myself in a black suit, a long black coat and boots attending a dear friends funeral. The service at the church had gone as planned, with readings from loved ones and the gifting of tissues to those along the pews who were teary eyed.
All in attendance had then made their way outside, to the graveyard, slowly following those carrying the coffin.
As we all gathered around the grave, watching the coffin being lowered into its 6-foot-deep resting place Lava stood to my left in a body length black long-sleeved dress and Dr Henry Derwent stood to my right in a Black suit and black corduroy coat. Over the other side of the grave, we were all gathered around, stood Jen and Officer Beckett linking arms, they both looked over at us and gave a small nod. As I looked at the others who stood around Jen and Beckett, I noticed Adelaide and Paley just visible behind two others. I was shocked to see them there, but also happy that they had made it. They must have stood in the back of the church where I could not see them during the service.
As family members each placed a hand full of dirt into the new grave one by one, I could not keep the tears from falling. Just then a hand from behind me offered me a tissue as I was trying to wipe the tears away with the back of my hand. I turned around and it was Kai. I thanked him and wiped my wet face as best as I could.
I was thankful that my friends had come with me to Mayola's funeral, despite many of them never having the privilege of meeting her. Cancer had won the war, and Mayola had died in a hospice, surrounded by her immediate family a week and a half earlier.
Once the funeral had finished, people were heading to Mayola's home, invited by her grieving husband. However, having never met him prior to the funeral I had asked Lava, Jen, Henry, and the others to join me in a local pub instead. We offered our condolences once more to Mr Guilder and then headed to the pub.
Despite it being a very sad event that we had all come back together for, for the first time since the Anhurian attack, it felt good to see everyone's faces again.
It turned out that Immanuel and Adelaide had been in touch frequently since the attack and Adelaide admitted she now had her Immanuel back, since the killing of the Anhurian's. The Immanuel who had fallen in love with Adelaide, and loved her immensely, before that fateful night in the summer of 1962 when Anhur had arrived had returned. A comment which Immanuel agreed with, despite still being saddened by the fact that Anhur's kin had been killed.
To my surprise Beckett and Jen had also spent a considerable amount of time together since we had all gone our separate ways weeks before and they had in fact started up a new romance. We were all very happy for them.
Dr Derwent and Lava had been helping their local community with the clean-up efforts in Scotland and were as passionate as every about their line of work. Kai had recovered well from his wounds, as had Beckett. It was great to see them, but I was sure that their deep scars were acting as a continuous reminder of what they had experienced, both mentally and physically.
Once we had all eaten and had had time to have a few catch-up conversations as a group, I had a chat with Paley, reminiscing about our times spent with Mayola. Talking about our times together and the time we both spent with Mayola led us to talk about Anhur and all that had happened.
Paley explained, "It was so strange, once the craft carrying the Anhurians had left earth the connection I had felt with Anhur, the piercing memories that he had shared with me no longer had a hold over me, the shared intellectual link was gone. The fog appeared to lift on my own memories. I still remember, but without the pain, the hurt, the emotional turmoil. The connection with him, with his species, it has evidentially been frayed. I do not know if that was intentional on their part or just happened due to them leaving our atmosphere."
Paley seemed to be slightly downtrodden about making this admission out loud. Despite the disappointment, I took my chance to ask Paley about that night, when he had shouted for the soldiers to stop shooting. The night of the Anhurian attack.
"When we were out there, that night, faced by the Anhurians, you wanted the soldiers to stop shooting, why?" I asked, as tentatively as I could.
"Well, I probably could not have explained it properly there and then, but since the alien crafts have gone, and I seem more in control of my explanations you have caught me at the right time." Immanuel continued, "In the connection made that fateful summers evening I could see Anhur did not mean me any harm. And I knew that was the nature of his species. That's why I had hidden his body, to protect him, from whatever it was that forced him to feel a desperate need to descend to earth. And that is why years later I had asked Adi to look after his body for me. The Anhurian were simply scared, they did not want to be here, they wanted to return home. They were simply acting out of self-preservation and fear A.J. They did not want to take the human lives that they did that night."
By this point in the conversation, it was not just me that was listening to Paley, but it seemed everyone was. Something I had not noticed until Dr Henry Derwent asked, "Why did the Anhurian's come here, if they did not truly want to be here?"
Paley replied, "They were here, not of their own accord, but that of others. I named Anhur as it is the name given to the Egyptian God of fighting. Anhurians can fight, but they only fight when they need to. They are a species with honour and pride and patience and a deep sense of justice. The tracker on Anhur, along with the trackers on many of the Anhurians were not manufactured by them, no, neither were the UFO's that they were transported here in. They were also not accustomed to the light we experience here, or the heat, or the atmospheric pressure. That is why many seemed dozy and disorientated, they would never have survived here. They were sent to do one job, to kill humanity quickly, before they themselves would perish. They were but mere pawns on a chessboard, the muscle to clear the way so to speak. Do you see, they were not and are not the enemy. They were the sacrificial lambs. The victims of mass genocide. Victims of a senseless decision by some other highly intelligent and calculated being. I see now Anhur was trying to warn me that night, to try and save his species, to look for humanity to not be afraid of the Anhurians but to understand them. He was so valiant in his mission to try and stop humans from shooting first and asking questions after." Paley finished his final sentence shaking his head and taking a sip of his drink, "I am disappointed in myself and my lack of being able to sound the alarm with the right people in time. I had all those years. What was I doing, what was I thinking? I should have done something."
"You did do something, you protected Anhur and his memory and tried to find someone you could trust to help," Kai replied.
We were all thankful for Kai speaking in that moment as, for the rest of us, no one really knew what to say. These were all shocking revelation that Paley was sharing with the team. We had thought that this war of species was all over and that we had won against some great evil. However, from what Paley had revealed that day, it seemed far from the end. We had simply slaughtered an enslaved species. And the real threat was still out there somewhere.
Paley added, "We have all been so fixated on Proxima B and the Anhurians that we neglected to look at the bigger picture, to understand the true nature of what is unravelling. We have missed the important link with Lalande's star, even you Dr Derwent," he nodded to Dr Henry Derwent who looked a little puzzled but intrigued, nonetheless. We were all intrigued. We had so many questions, and we wanted answers.
Jen couldn't resist allowing several questions to come flooding out at that point, "How do we find out what or who these other beings are? How do we know when they are coming if they are still planning on invading?"
Paley replied, "I am afraid I do not have those answers. Not right now anyway."
"It makes sense thought, that there are some other beings behind the monitoring collars that we found on the bodies of the Anhurians. And it also appears to make sense that the vessels used to transport them here were crafted by another species knowing what we know now about Anhur after Kai and I assisted Dr Dawkins and the team at the laboratory with the post-mortem," Dr Derwent said, seemingly stating his thoughts out loud as he had them, not expectant of a specific reply of any sorts from the rest of us.
"Yes, and the Anhurians were sent across a colossal space, and arrived here alive, which leads me to assume that whatever sent Anhur's kind to this planet has a skill set that far outranks our skills as humans, it appears our human knowledge pales in comparison," Lava added.
"That is concerning," Beckett interjected.
"But, Anhur must have managed to take one of their smaller ships, one of the ships from this other species, to try and save his kin?" I added.
"That means that they have been planning to invade earth for over thirty years," Adelaide said.
"Well, thirty years for us, in the way we measure and experience time as humans here on earth. That could be completely different for other species on other planets or in other galaxies," added Kai.
"Is there any way that other Anhurians like Anhur could have tried to send humans a message? To try and save their kind. Surely, they must have realised that when Anhur did not come back or contact them that he had failed?" Jen asked.
Beckett offered up his thoughts, "Perhaps he had left in a hurry and wasn't able to explain to others? Or maybe he was privy to some top-secret information that most of the others of his kind were not aware of?"
"To act alone? Without any help? I don't think he could have done it all on his own, as these other beings sound as if they are extremely smart. Surely, he could not have tricked them and evaded capture solo," Jen replied.
"Yeh, you have a point there," Beckett admitted.
Adelaide offered up an option to the group, "Perhaps we need to put the word out, to try and see if there were others like Anhur who have tried to make it to earth since the summer of 1962, but before 1992."
"That wouldn't be a bad place to start Adelaide," Beckett replied, "I will set us up a meeting with Agent Riley and Agent Vox as soon as possible."
"Hold on Paley, lets back it up a minute, what did you mean about that comment before? The comment about Lalande's star?" Kai asked.
"Ah, good question young man," Paley said as he placed his wine glass back down on the table.
"Yes, I would quite like to hear more," Dr Derwent stated, in agreement with Kai's line of inquiry.
"Well, from what I manage to make out now, in hindsight, from Anhur sharing information with me, Lalande's star is of great importance. Proxima Centuria b, what we have been referring to as Proxima B, is 4.37 lightyears away from earth. Now there has been a fascination with Proxima B for several years as it is one of the first exoplanets that we, as scientists, have been able to study. There is a working hypothesis amongst scientists here that the conditions on Proxima B are perhaps not as far away from what we experience here on earth. Proxima B is in the habitable zone of its star. From what Anhur shared with me, there is water on Proxima B, and the Anhurian's do grow plants, even in the darkest of places. Now the star Lanlande 21185 is 8.31 lightyears away from earth, but only 3.94 lightyears away from Proxima B, Anhur's home. Anhur shared with me that these other beings appeared to piggyback on Lalande 21185 to reach them from two supermassive blackholes. These are supermassive blackholes that we humans refer to as Sagittarius A* and M87. Here is where we get to the slightly more adventurous numbers. Sagittarius A* is 26,600 lightyears away from earth and M87 is 54.8 million lightyears away from earth." Paley took that moment to take a pause.
Dr Derwent then released a deep breath. He looked at me, and saw I was having a hard time number crunching and added, "To give you context, our sun is only one astronomical unit away, that's 149,600,000 kilometres away from the earth."
"But matter cannot come out of blackholes, it can only enter. There exists no empirical evidence to the contrary," Jen added in puzzlement.
"Well, perhaps, and perhaps not, we must consider Dr Hawking and his theorising on Hawking radiation Jen. Maybe the blackhole can spit out anything?" Dr Derwent added.
"We still do not have any photographic evidence of a blackhole yet thought Henry, therefore Jen is making a valid point, no?" Lava said, trying to find a middle ground between the two opinions.
Jen continued, "What I am saying Henry is that blackholes provide us nothing but an information paradox. How can something exist, yet defy the laws of physics?"
"We should perhaps not jump to conclusions about that which we do not fully understand," Adelaide replied.
"All I can do is share the information that I can piece together from Anhur," Paley admitted.
I offered some reassurance to Paley that we were not criticising him personally but simply trying to piece things together, and then I added, "Please continue, I would like to hear more."
Paley continued, "Well, perhaps these beings, that enslaved Anhurian's, know about black holes and know how to navigate through them or around them. Perhaps they live inside these two supermassive blackholes? It was hard for Anhur to try and translate this to me. I think there was a barrier there, that made it too challenging for my human brain to comprehend what he was conveying to me. But I know that Lalande, Sagittarius A* and M87 are important in all of this."
Paley fell silent and it seemed everyone was taking a moment to process what he had said.
Dr Derwent broke the silence, "Lava and I will organise a meeting with Dr Stephen Hawking and some of his associates as soon as we are able to. He will most certainly be interested in what you have to say Dr Paley."
"I cannot miss that opportunity Henry, please say we can all go?" Jen asked almost jumping off her seat.
"Yes, from my experiences of meeting Dr Hawking he is very accommodating. I am sure he will welcome us all," Dr Derwent replied.
"There was something I wanted to ask too Paley," Kai added, "I was wanting to ask you about why Anhur seemed to be a lot smaller than the other Anhurians that descended to earth. Did he mention anything about his species? Could it be that like some species on earth, like some of the insects I have studied, they fulfil differing roles and certain genes are tapped into and others are not?"
"That is a very intriguing observation Kai," Paley admitted.
"I had the same thought," I said, "When we saw the Anhurian in the lab, B533, I assumed that Anhur must have been a youngster and that he was not yet fully grown."
"That is also another possibility," Paley added, "These are all very good lines of inquiry, that we need to be following up. We need to be as prepared as possible."