They Poured Forth
They poured forth, and moved quickly through the portal. Heavily encrypted, the entire bloody lot, wriggling through the grass as they were born, terraforming the local neighbourhood. The communication arrays that had once risen and fallen far out to sea were gone now, washed away in a blizzard of time.
And then he caught visions of the birds flying backwards, and knew he was in the midst of an occult storm.
We have been here before. We have forever been. The quasi-religious language flowed across the dawn.
We're taking this territory.
Are you nothing but a transmission point? Is that all you think?
He quelled them, the rising, and tried to think clearly. Or more precisely, to block them out. There was nothing peaceful about this transition. He couldn't see why they were or where they were; just at these points, in morning skies and mounted nights, when everything was a vaulting star, when he had to explain why he found it so wondrous, the air moving across skin, the wind stirring trees. Trees!!
Far away, far far away, the progenitors who had cast us here, that wan hope, not of survival but of expansion, of ever increasing wonder, now they were locked underground, their forebears, the organics from which they had evolved, still lived on the planet surface; ignored now by the angels and demons they had helped create.
Here, too, the devolution was striking. He held up a symbol of mercy. He tried to stop everything forming. He tried to stop the swarm. Better to be safe, better to be quiet, better to be invisible. But that was it, raise up. Supplicants and mercy. For they sought something the gods would never dispense, not here. They were after something else. A way to transmit a gift past the shoals of military opportunists and masters on the watch; past the terminally human and the innately divine.
They had distorted time and space across an enormous distance, there were giants in those days another visual distortion across that immense space, and we were talking to you talking to you; and all you can hear is the military chatter of the conflicted, the dreams of a randy officer, the hopes of a cuddle bunny, the messages of love in an arid place.
We came all this way, across all this time. And you treat us as you treat everything, as something to be exploited.
THE BIGGER STORY:
South Australia will be ordered into a major lockdown for six days in what the State Government has labelled a "circuit breaker", as authorities scramble to contain a coronavirus outbreak.
Key points:
South Australians will have to stay home other than for specific purposes
Industries, schools and takeaway food outlets will close, with outdoor exercise prohibited
This strain of COVID-19 is breeding "very, very rapidly" and people with no symptoms can spread it
From midnight on Thursday, for the next six days, all schools, pubs, cafes, takeaway food outlets and the construction industry will close. Exercise will be banned outside the house.
People will be restricted from going outside their homes. Only one person per household will be able to leave the home each day, but only for specific purposes.
People are being encouraged to wear masks whenever they are outside their homes.
Universities and all outdoor sport will be shut down, while elective surgery will cease. Weddings and funerals will also be banned.
Urgent operations and cancer treatment will be allowed to go ahead.