By M Collie

Aliens and humans were at war.  

The landscape was littered with ruins. Acrid smoke hung like a damp dish cloth over everything. The ground was torn over. Sharp pieces of metal bomb casings protruded from the ground. Broken machinery lay discarded willy-nilly. 

The aliens hid behind a wall, and human snipers took random shots at them every time they tried to move forward.

Today the air hung hot and humid. It would rain. The sun’s rays reflected on all the particles in the air and cast rainbows down the street.

A commotion broke out at the other end of that street. There was yelling and shouting, orders given, and insults exchanged. Into the affray a little old lady came, pushing her walker, and waving her walking stick.

‘Stop all this childish behaviour this minute. I am sick and tired of all this wanton destruction!’ 

She swore as the wheel of her walker jammed against some relic of war. She rattled and rammed the walker and slowly made her way into the middle of what was once the town square — where once had been a jacaranda tree, and every spring the square had turned purple, soft and velvety underfoot. 

‘Now listen here to me you stupid people. What is the point of all this?’ she waved her arm about her.

The general yelled at her, ‘Get out of the way else you will get shot.’

She turned toward the direction from which the general had yelled. ‘You just don’t get it do you? You’re an ignorant selfish pompous puffed-up puppet. Bedecked there in your fancy uniform. You don’t go without meals. You don’t have to sleep on the ground. You don’t go without anything. You can have a lovely cup of tea whenever you wish.’

She turned back towards the aliens and moved towards their hiding place.  

‘And if you people understood English, I’d swear at you too.’ 

She moved closer to the wall, cussing and swearing each time the wheels caught on something. Finally, she came to where the old pavement had been. 

She grunted out loud, picked up a small stone and tossed it over the wall. She grunted again. 

An eye peeped at her through a crack. A shot rang out, and she turned toward the humans. 

‘Stop it, I tell you, just bloody stop it. You just don’t get it, do you? Enough! Enough! I’m going to talk to these people and if any of you do anything untoward, I shall come over there and whack you with my walking stick. Do I make myself clear?!’ 

She turned back towards the wall and grunted again at the eyes that were still peeping at her.  

She held out her hand in a gesture of friendship. She waggled it hoping to encourage one of them to come forward. 

She grunted some more.

Turning back towards the general, she called out. ‘If any of you had been at all smart, you would have analysed the language of these people, and the AI would have told you that it’s a version of ours. But you really don’t get it, do you? Stupid people!’ 

The eye was still regarding her through the crack. Bending over, she levelled her eye to it and smiled. It blinked. It threw the stone back at her. She laughed, picked it up and tossed it back. From her handbag she took out a packet of chocolates and tossed them over the wall. 

She could hear them chatting. An alien tossed one of the chocolates back. It fell near her feet. The eye watched her eat it. Then the distinctive noise of cellophane being unwrapped followed by the oooos and ahhhhh of delight.  

She turned back towards the general.  ‘Don’t you dare, any of you, don’t you dare interfere with what I’m going to do. I’m going to end this stupidity once and for all. Do you hear me, general? I should have done this a long time ago.’ 

She turned towards the wall and outstretched her hand again. An alien tentatively moved towards her. It touched the end of her fingers. She beckoned for it to come closer, and it did. She reached out and took hold of its arm. This was the first time that she had been this close to one of them, and to be honest, she was very excited. Of course, she had seen pictures of them, on the computer, lying dead or dismembered, like detritus, in the streets. 

It was about as tall as her grandson, slender, and it moved with grace, and elegance. It seemed to float. It was hard to discern any physical characteristics because of its heavy armament. More aliens came out to join it. She turned back towards the general and waved her stick in a menacing manner to reinforce her threat, and began walking, with the aliens, towards the Museum of Natural Science, the building at the end of the street.  

They all entered. She moved them along until they were in the Egyptian section. She pointed out some hieroglyphics. She showed them stone bowls, smooth and shiny. She picked one up, to the gasps of the museum staff, and handed it to an alien. It ran its hands around and inside of the amazing artefact. They wandered along looking at the ancient petroglyphs of South America, and photographs of megastructures of the world. Suddenly the alien halted. It made a funny sound like a gasp. It pointed to the hieroglyphics. It chatted anxiously with the others.  It lifted its visor. It was crying!   

The old lady gave it a big hug. 

‘It’s okay. You’ve made a mistake, that’s all. It’s quite the human thing to do.’

From all over the city, came the sounds of craft lifting into the sky, and disappearing into the aether. 

The general came into the building. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘They made a mistake, that’s all,’ she told him.

‘Mistake?’

‘You really don’t get it, do you? They’re people from the future. They come here after every apocalypse to teach the survivors. Time’s a funny thing… They’ll understand one day.

‘And now — you have to clean up all this mess.’

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