Staggeringly Incompetent: The Destruction of Australia

Preternatural. Based on swarms. Primordial in feel. Alight in the forests. The Secret Language of Trees. Here in the midst of a swarm, the ground prepared. Yes, conquered territory. They stayed in the compound. There was peace and protection. For a time. We came from elsewhere. Everybody knew that. Everybody sensed it. And yet here, as he watched the comings and goings in a local tavern, he could hear the echo chamber of everything in the surrounding valleys, and tried to concentrate on the drizzle of conversations from the surrounding tourists. 

All was familiar yet profoundly altered. A disturbance in the field. Covid was on the lips of everyone, all this time later, after a year of blizzards of government bullshit, of lies, deceptions, of enrichment, engorgement at the expense of the working poor, this mob truly were the hogs at the trough. All were disgusted, all who could see. Even the apparatchiks, concerned for their jobs and the welfare of their families, forced to comply with the ever strangulating absurdities of bureaucratic edifices, knew in their hearts it was wrong; that their masters were wrong, that they were leading this country down a dire trail. 

The first wave of assassins had failed. 

There was much to overcome, as they sought to understand the complexities of this place from a very far distance. 

It was all a set up. It had all been set up millenia ago; for this moment, for these times, for pivotal points in history. 

They came to us. With wisdom. With love. With knowledge beyond our ken. 

That did not make them any less dangerous; when crossed, when ignored, when the old fashioned messages of decency and commonsense, the things that had been good about the species, that should be restored, were abandoned in craven greed or a desperate plea for self preservation. 

The ignoble aspects of the species had been allowed to flourish. 

Mostly it didn't matter. But now it did. When the fate of millions were being profoundly altered. When the destinies of nations were in play. When the compassion we had showed your kind was spat in our faces. When no one could hear the music of the spheres, the ringing bells of the forests, the deep mysteries with which we were surrounded, the beauty of it. If anything, above all, perhaps it was that which drew us so much to this infernal place, the church like atmosphere, the ringing bells that sounded clarion at noon and settled in the soft light of evenings. 

The days when flesh was weak and that squirmy little thing the humans called love was of no account. When the deluded believers in Abrahamic gods tried to impart their wisdom.  

Once again he passed Mustaffa on the path; and in those morning lights, across this once beautiful, most sacred of lakes, paradise as it had been for so many tribes over so many centuries, when the profound love these creatures could feel for each other transcended anything they could, or would ever feel, when the visual drenching of it all rang through a cosmos charged or discharged with beauty, then it was that we came to you. 

"God," Mustaffa, fresh from his morning prayers, said, waving a hand at the beauty of the scene, the lake in the early morning light. And gave him a friendly slap, and laughed, because he knew Old Alex was not a believer. Not in his god. Not in a singular god. It showed a profound misunderstanding. 

And he was entitled to think so; before the mind reading machines began to eliminate all dissent from their demented views. 

"Allah Akbar," God is great, Old Alex said as they continued on their opposing paths. Although he did not mean it. 

For there, of course, lay the problem. 

Even in the spiritual, or transcendental realms, power corrupted, and absolute power corrupted absolutely. 

Confined to their heavens; it was nothing but a grimace of unreality in the grand scheme of things, the millions held sway by demons and the glories of one god amongst many gods. 

As if they really had any idea. 

Here on Earth, the temple had been besmirched. 

The hypocrites had won the day. 

The iron fist of government now infested the lives of everyone around him. 

He was beyond outraged. Disgusted. Angry. 

He had been summoned. He would take action. There were deserts to behold and civilisations to enjoy; but in the cryptic flow of words and images, in the deepest secrets we transmitted to you now, in the course of everything we hold dear, in the evolution of intelligence across millions of years, yes, we came to you. 

We came to help you take the next step. 

We came to urge you, treat the natives with kindness. We, too, left our origins on a planet surface far, far away. Left them to their blood lettings and intimacies, to their below average intelligence lives, to a swamping disregard for the infinite that surrounded them, the joy, sheer joy of transcendence, the wisdom and awe of all that we could deliver. 

How dare they destroy this sacred place. 

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