I'm sitting here at my dining room table. To my left is a bottle of Scotch whisky that I was saving for a special occasion. To my right is a brand-new box of strike anywhere matches.

I'm getting drunk. And I'm waiting to see what comes next. Just like the majority of the people on the planet. The ones who aren't too busy dying to enjoy themselves.

They told us we had lucked out. Somebody apparently was, like Kevin McCarthy said to, watching the skies at the right moment. We actually caught sight of them when they passed by Jupiter, headed in our direction. When attempts to hail the fleet either didn't work or were ignored, one half of the world's population consoled themselves with the idea that our message either never made it there or wasn't understood. The other half, myself included, knew that as a bullshit notion and prepared for the worst: our friends from the stars were coming and they were not friendly.

So preparations began. Surely, it was reasoned, they weren't terribly advanced, otherwise they could have arrived from Jupiter in less time than the year it took them. They would have just appeared in our skies like in some shitty Hollywood summer blockbuster.

Just like one of those movies, though, the expected happened: humanity decided they'd like to teach the world to fight in perfect harmony. Differences were forgotten, and all the nations came together to deal with this new threat.

When our new friends did arrive, just outside geosynchronous orbit, we sent the message again: are you here to fight or what? Whole armies stood at the ready to repel landing forces, jets stood ready to take to the skies and fight valiantly to the death, and lastly, nuclear missiles all over the world locked onto targets in space and were ready to do what they were built to do.

I wonder if the aliens have faces. I wonder if they have a way of expressing a gutbusting belly laugh. I wonder if that's what they were doing when they hit the button and launched their weapon at us.

Their one weapon.

As countermeasures lurched into place, the thing detonated high above the planet, just inside our atmosphere. And within five minutes, we had lost.

My brother works in the State Department. He lives on the other side of town and when the horse and buggy brought him by, I knew all the rumors were true. He confirmed all of them.

That this really was permanent. That people were evacuating the North as quickly as they could before they died shivering in their homes. That the aliens had let us stew in our juices for a week before giving us terms for unconditional surrender. And tomorrow, we are going to accept.

We have no choice. The bastards were approaching slowly on purpose. They were, in fact, sauntering. The northern hemisphere is experiencing a record cold winter and last anyone heard the South American summer was being a total bitch. I'm sure people are dropping dead down there as much as they are up here.

My brother told me these things and then got back and had the driver take him home. He has a wife and child, after all. And, assuming our new masters keep us alive, he can tell his son someday about the time before the aliens. When we were free people. And when matches could be struck to create something we used to call fire.