The Proposed Prophecies
Chapter 1: JASON’S DIARY

Dear Diary

It was nearly a month after the Second World War had ended and Mother Nature had been celebrating with heavy storms for weeks. It looked like She was attempting to clean the earth from the spilled blood caused by the war; the fired gun shots, the dropped bombs, the unnecessary fights over territories and lands we fought so hard for, the taking of innocent human life and destruction of something that had never truly belonged to any of us, the Earth.

Today looked like any other regular Thursday since the war had ended: I got up at five, ran a few miles, put my military suit on, made my bed and had hard boiled eggs for breakfast and a cup of coffee. Then I walked to the office. I moved to the military base after the war and the office was within walking distance. Despite the heavy rain, I had walked every day to the office for the past month. It felt strange that the war was over. My days felt suddenly so average and it felt good and strange at the same time, as I struggled to adjust to a daily routine which did not include shooting and bombing.

Soldiers at the office ran around left and right that day passing me by like I wasn’t even there. Perhaps as their mind was somewhere else. I just went straight into the conference room and enjoyed the quietness once I shut the door. Despite the rain that was knocking on the slightly cracked window I could see the sun peeking through the grey clouds, reaching into the conference room and brightening up the document on the long brown conference table. I lit up my cigarette and sat on one of the wooden chairs, putting my feet, which were covered with heavy and high military boots, onto the table. The weight of my boots made a knocking sound on the wood. I inhaled and exhaled on the cigarette, swinging back and forth on the chair against the old dirty and scratched wooden floor. I stared at the document on the table as I left the ashes from the cigarette to fall onto the ground. I felt strangely calm. Perhaps it was because I had nothing to lose anymore. I have seen so much blood, so many dead people during the war that I felt as if nothing could throw me off anymore, not even the upcoming meeting.

The conference room sounded quiet despite the soldiers and Sergeant Hovey, who I could hear running around on the hallway in desperation to prepare for the VIP’s arrival. All I had heard during the past month was their name, the Alters.

Sergeant Hovey still thinks we cannot trust them. “They are aliens, for god’s sakes” he used to say, as if it made them cruel and untrustworthy because they did not live on Earth but on a planet named Lemuria or whatever the heck their planet’s name was. It was somewhere far out in the universe and that was his assumption, that they were not worth of our trust; as if we, the humans, were so trustworthy to begin with. I knew how many lies we had fed people during the war, how many fake hopes we gave and how many lives we took… we were the liars here.

When the Alters threatened that our world would be destroyed due to our incompetency and inability to create a peaceful life on Earth during the war, the government and its leaders from every country were forced to stop the fight and work together to create a plan that would prevent the world from getting into another war they believed would be the end of human kind. They thought Alters were stronger than us and they had weapons that would be able to extinguish all life on Earth. Maybe they were right, maybe not. I think if Alters would want to extinguish the human race they would have done so already. But instead they gave us a second chance. The chance to fix our damaged society and to reestablish our existence; the selfish, jealous and power-hungry way of thinking that led us to the unnecessary blood bath over the past years. I would never have given human kind any chance. Especially not after what I have seen during the war in which no one cared if there were children hurt, old people beaten to death or women raped left and right. There were no rules at all; it was just a sick game.

People put into the high government chairs to lead us into our own destruction, and made us believe we had to fight over our countries, over territory that we pretended we could own. But the truth was, we never did. Sergeant Hovey said the Earth always belonged to them, to the Alters. They were the ones here on Earth before us and we were only the bad tenants that trashed the rented place as we didn’t care. And today, we made the biggest sacrifice in the history of the human kind by giving the Alters the Proposal to a fresh start.

Sergeant Hovey told me about Alters only a month ago but somehow it didn’t feel strange to hear about them. I never thought we could possibly be the only ones in the universe. As a child, I used to stare into the skies and make stories about other civilizations that would come to earth.

Sergeant asked me to be there while he would hand out the document to the Alters. He was the one appointed to do the dirty work: in case they say no to the proposal the first victim would be Hovey and neither of them from the high government chairs. So classy of them, as always.

I was only fifteen but I was the right hand of Sergeant Hovey already. He liked me and trusted me because I was loyal and I didn’t care. I did whatever he asked me to, I killed whomever he asked me to. I had been part of the military since I was twelve and when I lost my parents in the war, I didn’t care any longer. Well, not that I had a choice. I had no one left and I had nothing to lose. The military base and the army itself was my new home, my new family.

The Alters arrived exactly on time. The clock on the wall showed ten in the morning when ten army trucks passed the military checkpoint and parked in front of the main building in our base. It was muddy everywhere and the rain was falling heavier than ever. I saw only the dark umbrellas from the window of the conference room, umbrellas that were headed from the trucks into the suddenly quiet building. It was so quiet that I thought for a second that all the soldiers had left. Sergeant Hovey walked into the conference room and forced me to throw my cigarette away. Usually he didn’t care about me smoking but this day was different. He looked nervous and sweaty, like he was scared that the aliens would attack. This was such a joke! If they wanted to attack they would have done so already.

The Alters looked like us, just a bit taller. Sergeant said that the Alters were able to create their own human appearance when they were born and that they don’t age. They all look like they are around thirty. Apparently the Alters have regenerative bodies and they can live for up to five hundred years. I am not sure if I would want to live in this dump for so long. I am wondering how many more wars I would have to go through in five hundred years. No thanks! One was enough.

He said there was an Alter they captured few years ago and were able to study. My first thought was that if I was an Alter I would want to extinguish human kind if they were capturing my own kind. They must be more forgiving than humans.

The second the door opened, five Alter guards entered the old conference room in our base followed by their commander, Axel. The guards all had shaved heads and dressed in dark uniforms which looked similar to our military suits, only the color was different. I would never have known they were not humans if Sargent Hovey hadn’t told me previously. They all looked like they were in their thirties but who the hell knows how old they really were. They could have been five hundred, just as Sergeant Hovey said. I saw they were highly armed but somehow it still didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. I was used to guns, to their sounds and the way they felt in my hands.

Axel was also tall, but he had some hair, unlike most of the guards. Not a lot but it was dark. He wore a long black coat and his eyes were darker than the night. He looked ok, I guess. He didn’t look scary or mean. On the contrary, he looked peaceful and his handshake was strong but friendly.

A blond haired female walked in right after. She introduced herself as Eve and they appeared to me to have a relationship akin to brother and sister. But I wasn’t really sure if there was such a relationship in their society, or even if there were gender roles such as man and woman, though she looked like a woman for sure. I could tell… there haven’t been many times when we’ve seen a woman on our military base. We are mostly guys in here and not much to look at.

She looked cold. Possibly because her light blue eyes had a spark of the ice in them. But the sound of her voice was warm and polite as she introduced herself. As if nothing could bother her. She wore a white dress and long white coat. She was the whitest thing walking on our muddy base. Everything was always dark around me and her dress brightened up everywhere she stepped in the base. I felt kind of bad when she even sat on that dirty chair of ours or when her high heels smudged the ashes laying all over the floor as neither of us ever used an ashtray. I don’t think we even have one on our base. I noticed her hair was put into a bun which somehow made her look as if she was high class. Even the way she sat, so straight up and with her hands holding her white purse on her lap added to this image. Suddenly I felt bad again, we could have cleaned up that place a little but then it was literally thrown onto Sergeant Hovey only the day before that he needed to run the meeting and deliver the Proposal. There was no time to even panic.

Sergeant Hovey cleared his throat, offered them a coffee and grabbed the Proposal. Axel and Eve sat right across from us and the guards remained standing in firm position just as our soldiers would. Sergeant Hovey placed the Proposal in front of Axel and begun to explain the project but his voice kept cracking as if he had something in his throat. It was sort of comical and I tried really hard not to laugh while he explained the only thing that could possibly save the human kind according to his words. The document had been created in the hope that the Alters would agree to the plan and we would be able to save our asses and that of everyone on the planet.

Axel raised his eyebrow; Sergeant Hovey was hard to understand. Frankly, I have never seen Sergeant Hovey like that. I felt an urge to step in as somehow it stopped being funny. He could not get one straight sentence out of him. And just like that, I took a turn in talking and Sergeant Hovey didn’t seem to mind at all. He took out a cloth napkin and wiped his forehead and looked like was breathing the poison out of his system. Not that I was such a speaker but compared to Hovey’s performance I would say I killed the show. It wasn’t hard. I already knew the contents of the Proposal from the beginning to the end, it was all that I had been listening about since yesterday.

The Proposal was a document made out of six sections but the main idea was simple: depopulation of the human kind. Per the document, the leaders of each country proposed to extinguish a certain percentage of their own nations and save a certain percentage, to recreate the world and our society. The new society would be ruled under a new, united nation. I sort of liked the idea. It was hard to imagine people adjusting to one global command but at least there would be no more fights about who would rule the world. The proposal clearly established that there would be an artificial intelligence in the future that would be used as a communication arbitrator to communicate between the human elected to run the new world and the Alter appointed to be the commander on Earth. The Alter would have the right to watch the progress made on earth and evaluate how well we adjusted to the reestablishment. The existence of the Alters will never be uncovered to the public.

Sergeant Hovey said yesterday that there were billions of people on Earth and the Alters thought it would be impossible to reestablish our way of life with so many people. Therefore, the government proposed to get rid of roughly ninety percent of the population and to start over with the remaining ten percent.

As I started to explain each section of the proposal one by one I could not help to notice that Eve stared at me in a strange way, it almost looked like she was trying to read my mind. Her eyes fixed on mine and she nearly looked as she was not breathing. Hovey previously said the Alters were in fact capable of reading human minds, which I thought was sort of creepy. Her stare made me uncomfortable but somehow excited. Not that I thought about bad things in general, but I still didn’t want her to know that I found her sort of attractive despite her mean look and the fact she was an alien trying to read my thoughts. I tried to not to think at all. Well, at least not to think about anything other than the document laying in front of me. But it was hard and she made it somehow worse as she continued to stare at me with her big, cold, blue eyes.

As I described section one of the Proposal, Axel appeared more than interested. He sat back and placed his hands together, his eyes fixed on me, and occasionally smiled. I described part one, about the search for the right families - those that would be able to join “The New World” as the government called it.

Families included into the ten percent of the survivors were supposed to meet certain criteria, such as having a perfect health record, having a certain type of education or ability that would be helpful in the new world, and families without any criminal record in their family tree. The criteria went so on and so forth. I wondered if it was even possible to replace such perfect families.

I have mentioned the designated teams which would include me too. These teams would be researching and selecting these families, and placing them into the file called ‘the chosen ones’. The selection process was supposed to end by the year 2020, which took us to section two of the Proposal, which focused on outlining the living situation designed for the chosen ones where They were to be placed in bunkers during the depopulation process.

Eve interrupted me before I even got to the next section. She said it was stupid… well, she actually said “complete nonsense” to put so much time into the search for the families. She was sure it wouldn’t work and the new world would fail because human kind is incapable of adjusting and there will always be some that would be causing trouble, despite a thorough background check.

Axel asked her what she would change in the first part of the Proposal. Even without a hesitation said she would completely destroy human kind and create a new species instead; a more manageable and less problematic human kind. She said it with such a calm voice, like she was talking about puppies and not about a complete destruction of human kind.

I saw Hovey gulp, I think I could even hear it. His hands were shaking and he kept wiping his forehead. I can’t say I hated her idea but that would mean the Proposal would be a waste of time and there would inevitable be a war between people and Alters, since no one wants to just die so the planet could be saved… especially not the government. But Axel said a creation of a new kind was not an option and he urged me to continue talking. It made me feel slightly uncomfortable as I could hear Eve’s blood boil. Her pale white skin turned slightly red and her hands grabbed onto her purse, as if she was trying to choke it. She didn’t look like the type of woman that liked to be told what to do or to be crossed over. She stood quietly and looked at me again. Suddenly I felt the urge to light up a cigarette but I didn’t. I wanted this meeting to be over and the Alters gone. Especially Eve, who was back to staring so strangely at me.

But I managed to continue to part two, to reveal the hundreds of bunkers that were planned to be built around the world over the next seventy five years, deep underneath the ground and, most importantly, in secret. The government had mostly chosen places for the bunkers underneath abandoned cities, islands or under country clubs owned by the rich, and places where no one would guess. No one would know of the whereabouts of these bunkers apart from the government and military of each country. People working on these bunkers would be lied to, of course, about the true purpose of the bunkers, or just simply killed after they are built. No regular people were allowed to know about the Proposal nor the existence of the Alters. It felt strange to talk about a time that is so far into the future. I have realized that it would be unlikely I would still be alive when the depopulation starts. Not that I want to be. I am content to only be here during the preparation. Besides, I can’t see myself ever having a proper girlfriend and I have no plans to start a family – a family that might then die in the depopulation. My life has only ever been about the military, and as of today, the Proposal.

Section three of the proposal focused on how to make people, including the chosen ones, believe the world was coming to its end. The plan was to slowly sink all the economic stabilities in each country. I never thought the government had the power to even decide what kind of an economy we would have. But apparently the economy of each country was always just a game that could be manipulated, and never just a coincidence. I am not surprised but this plan just made me think about how screwed up our society really is. I liked the idea of money disappearing and that we would be all equal. That there would be no more decadence and no more poverty, that we would all be walking in the same shoes, just as we always should have.

Step four outlined the release of a virus that was proposed to kill most of human kind. For the chosen ones the government would look like the saviors as they would take them into the bunkers and make them believe it was an opportunity for a fresh start. They would believe them because we have always followed the lead of the government, we have always been sheep who follow the shepherd. These people would somehow become more vulnerable. I would say people were already vulnerable enough. We have always followed the government and their lies as sheep follow their shepherd but I was just explaining the document that no one asked my opinion about. The virus was the aspect of the Proposal that Eve seemed to show interest in. She raised her eyebrow slightly and smiled a little. She even released the chocking grab to her purse. Death and suffering was the only thing that could make her happy.

There were three stages to the viral infection. Stage one was the sickness that the chosen ones would be immune to through a vaccination given before the release of it. After the vaccination, the military would start taking those immune into safety. The government wants these chosen ones to see the sickness around them and to be grateful for their immunity once they are taken into safety. Stage two will be a mutation of the virus that will make people aggressive and kill each other and stage three will kill the infected hosts within a year. This plan is supposed to cause most of the depopulation. The developing deadly virus is planned to be released in 2020 all over the world.

A year after the release of the virus, step five will take effect; a cleanup which will send thousands of soldiers to kill anyone left who was still alive. After the last step, the chosen ones will be released from the bunkers and society will be reestablished. A new world will mean new rules, and the Alters would be able to choose a commander of the new world and be able to monitor our progress.

As I finished this explanation, I looked at Sergeant Hovey who blinked with his eyes. It was a way of thanking me for taking over. Axel stood up from the chair and grabbed the Proposal. He looked at it and then glanced at the cracked window. All I could think about was lighting up a cigarette.

“Good job, son” Axel said after he’d finished browsing the document. He looked at me and asked me what my name was again. I said my name was Jason. “Well, Jason. We have a deal.” He reached his hand over to me and I shook it. It was something about Axel that reminded me of my own father. It was strange but I didn’t feel weird around him. I didn’t look at him as if he was an alien but as if he was one of us. Axel agreed to the Proposal on the Alters behalf. Eve still didn’t look thrilled but she shook my hand too once she stood up from the chair. Her handshake was light and fast and her hand felt so soft. They left shortly after. Axel said he would send some Alters to our base on Monday and the plans contained within Proposal can start. Once they left, soldiers screamed and celebrated. Sergeant Hovey hugged me because he felt that I had saved his life. I still didn’t really care about saving human kind but at least we had something to work on and the Proposal seemed to outline strong ideas about how the human race can be reestablished. But I still wasn’t completely sure about Eve. Maybe Sergeant Hovey was right and we should not trust them, or at least her. Axel seemed fine. But Eve… Eve wasn’t a regular woman, she was an Alter who had appeared more than annoyed about not having the stronger voice over Axel. She caused a strange, bad feeling in my guts.

Everybody was celebrating that night. Sergeant Hovey called other military bases and governments to announce our success. The good news seemed to spread fast. Everyone on our base was drunk that night, including me. The rain had stopped and night sky was clear as I walked back to my room. As I inhaled and exhaled the poison of my cigarette and walked through the muddy base, I thought about Eve. She stuck in my mind like a weed, with those cold eyes of hers. The base was getting quieter but I could still see some drunk soldiers singing and tripping left and right as the influence of the alcohol made them struggle to hold themselves upright. I felt a little tipsy too. But at least I managed to clear my mind as I walked.

I opened the old wooden door to my room, which was in the middle row of a motel allocated for soldiers, and entered the small tight hallway. I felt a strong source of energy. I knew I wasn’t alone and someone was watching, breathing, nearby. I took my gun out and walked to the kitchen. Once I turned on the lamp in between the kitchen units and my bed, she walked out of the darkest spot. Eve. Her white coat was hung over my dilapidated chair. She was wearing that pure white dress of hers and her heels were knocking on the blue rug that was dirty with my stubbed-out cigarette ash. She looked far too clean for my dirty and small military space. I put my gun down and watched her walking towards me.

I thought I was dreaming, perhaps I was drunk, but no; Eve was right in front of me, staring at me again with those cold, blue eyes. Her hands held something and as she handled it to me without a word I realized it was the Proposal. Her eyes spoke without her releasing a word. She was not there because of me, she wasn’t even there to make peace, she was there to change the rules of the proposed plan.