![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
JUDGE, JURY, AND EXECUTIONER
They were silent for two weeks after arriving; enormous ships stationed on all the largest hubs of mankind across the globe. The united nations sent emissaries, scientists, soldiers, but they couldn't get a word out of them until day 14 when a broadcast was made over every radio station, every beacon, every bandwidth. They adopted our language, they chose the name most fitting for themselves and called themselves the Judge. They had looked upon humanity, weighed its value and determined it unworthy for the gift it had been given.
It took approximately four months for the invaders to completely overthrow humanity. The initial war was brutal, with nearly every country uniting and throwing every scrap of fire power at our disposal. We made a dent, but ultimately the war was in vain. We couldn't compete with their technology. There were heavy casualties, entire cities were leveled, millions died.
The Judge come in two primary classes; the thick and sturdy soldier breed or the slender, more regal ruling class. They now take residence on Earth in several main hubs around the globe, primarily on top of major cities that they've almost completely scrapped down to the bedrock. After the initial culling to get humanity in line, the world was thus informed that they are a righteous race that doesn't kill indiscriminately.
Submit and you will be taken to a labor camp to work until you die.
Resist and you will be executed.
The third option, which they consider to be the most humane, is to voluntarily board a suicide bus.
One caveat - anyone with imperfections or physical defects (glasses, diseases, handicaps) will be euthanized. It's considered a mercy killing. Resources can't be wasted on the weak.
Their soldiers man the suicide buses, the work camps, and the scouting parties sent to gather up any wayward humans they happen to find. They also accompany massive warehouse-sized ships that act like magnets, seeking out metal in any form but especially in buildings and large equipment. These scrapper ships are known to rip entire houses and stores out of the ground by the foundation, crushing them into dense matter and killing everyone inside.
Typically the soldiers will sweep buildings for life before allowing it to be scrapped, some people consider death by crushing a better alternative than a life of slow starvation and grueling manual labor in an encampment.
THE SHIPS / FIRST LANDING
As of 2009, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest structure in the world. It stands at 2,722 feet tall - just under half a mile - and weighs a whopping 500,000 tons. In terms of sheer footprint, the largest surface-area hogging structure is the AutoVaz main assembly building in Tolyatti, Russia — roughly 6,332 feet long and 1510 feet wide.
Both of these buildings are barely a fraction of the size of what touches down on top of Berkeley, California. Which is to say, Berkeley is not unique — around the world hundreds of these identical structures descend in perfect unison, irreverent of the comparably miniscule structures beneath them still housing hundreds of thousands of people. Although the descent and subsequent massacre is brutal and traumatizing to behold, to many it's actually an afterthought.
More significant, more difficult to reconcile, is still just the size. It's different than looking up at a mountain in the distance, it's different than the gradual slope that carries it away from the human eye, softening the experience with a spacious and sympathetic incline. If you happened to have been standing anywhere near the Starbucks on Center and Oxford just outside the UC Berkeley college of engineering, what you would have seen can only be described (utterly understated, unbelievably challenging to appropriately communicate) as a corner. One perfect, straight, smooth line stretching up so implausibly high it disappears beyond the clouds. On either side, perfectly smooth walls that go on and on and on in a way that's frankly offensive to look at.
Some things just feel inherently wrong to see. Some things just don't make sense to look at - optical illusions, or maybe the concept of whatever Lovecraft tried his best to convey. The immensity of something so inorganic and so large feels a little like a blight on the brain, and no matter how long you look it never really starts to make any more sense. It just continues to be repeatedly, oppressively affronting to rationalize.
Most people — the remaining population, the living, particularly the ones not consolidated into the densely populated rings of the labor encampments — will never actually learn how large it is. No organization, save perhaps any lingering pockets of covert military operations that might exist beneath the public radar, ever have the opportunity. Getting close enough to one means getting caught and dragged into that hub of hell well before any successful measurements can be completed. Even if, by some miracle somebody did manage it, communicating the information was simply impossible. It would be disseminated to virtually no one, rendering the effort largely pointless. For all most people know, the top of the cube might very well be making friendly with the ozone layer. The notion is both laughably absurd and disturbingly possible.
Adding to its inherent wrongness is both the color and the visual texture. One can look at the corner or any particular wall and just know all the way down to some base level that it's perfect. Flawless. Not so much as a single foot on any part of its massive surface juts out in any incorrect direction. It can best be described as black, but it is neither shining nor matte. It looks like it should be liquid, like sticky ink, like it ought to be dripping — or perhaps like satin, though how one can look at it and see satin without even the slightest rippling indicator is hard for anyone to articulate.
As they touch down, they display not even the slightest hint of resistance from the tons of reinforced steel and concrete beneath them. It all crumples like thin, brittle ice with a sound that is at once too loud and not nearly loud enough — a groaning, low and resonating, a metallic singing-bowl tone so loud it makes the ears ache, but still somehow doesn't seem fitting enough to match the sheer size of what lands. Just beneath it, the slightly more subtle sound of breaking glass. Destruction. Screaming. Devastation.
And then they simply settle, motionless, still, silent, inanimate.
If you're not generally a fan of purple prose, to make things simple: it's a massive fuck-off cube that hurts to look at, like the eldritch abomination version of a spooky box. Ooooo.
They were silent for two weeks after arriving; enormous ships stationed on all the largest hubs of mankind across the globe. The united nations sent emissaries, scientists, soldiers, but they couldn't get a word out of them until day 14 when a broadcast was made over every radio station, every beacon, every bandwidth. They adopted our language, they chose the name most fitting for themselves and called themselves the Judge. They had looked upon humanity, weighed its value and determined it unworthy for the gift it had been given.
It took approximately four months for the invaders to completely overthrow humanity. The initial war was brutal, with nearly every country uniting and throwing every scrap of fire power at our disposal. We made a dent, but ultimately the war was in vain. We couldn't compete with their technology. There were heavy casualties, entire cities were leveled, millions died.
The Judge come in two primary classes; the thick and sturdy soldier breed or the slender, more regal ruling class. They now take residence on Earth in several main hubs around the globe, primarily on top of major cities that they've almost completely scrapped down to the bedrock. After the initial culling to get humanity in line, the world was thus informed that they are a righteous race that doesn't kill indiscriminately.
Submit and you will be taken to a labor camp to work until you die.
Resist and you will be executed.
The third option, which they consider to be the most humane, is to voluntarily board a suicide bus.
One caveat - anyone with imperfections or physical defects (glasses, diseases, handicaps) will be euthanized. It's considered a mercy killing. Resources can't be wasted on the weak.
Their soldiers man the suicide buses, the work camps, and the scouting parties sent to gather up any wayward humans they happen to find. They also accompany massive warehouse-sized ships that act like magnets, seeking out metal in any form but especially in buildings and large equipment. These scrapper ships are known to rip entire houses and stores out of the ground by the foundation, crushing them into dense matter and killing everyone inside.
Typically the soldiers will sweep buildings for life before allowing it to be scrapped, some people consider death by crushing a better alternative than a life of slow starvation and grueling manual labor in an encampment.
THE SHIPS / FIRST LANDING
As of 2009, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest structure in the world. It stands at 2,722 feet tall - just under half a mile - and weighs a whopping 500,000 tons. In terms of sheer footprint, the largest surface-area hogging structure is the AutoVaz main assembly building in Tolyatti, Russia — roughly 6,332 feet long and 1510 feet wide.
Both of these buildings are barely a fraction of the size of what touches down on top of Berkeley, California. Which is to say, Berkeley is not unique — around the world hundreds of these identical structures descend in perfect unison, irreverent of the comparably miniscule structures beneath them still housing hundreds of thousands of people. Although the descent and subsequent massacre is brutal and traumatizing to behold, to many it's actually an afterthought.
More significant, more difficult to reconcile, is still just the size. It's different than looking up at a mountain in the distance, it's different than the gradual slope that carries it away from the human eye, softening the experience with a spacious and sympathetic incline. If you happened to have been standing anywhere near the Starbucks on Center and Oxford just outside the UC Berkeley college of engineering, what you would have seen can only be described (utterly understated, unbelievably challenging to appropriately communicate) as a corner. One perfect, straight, smooth line stretching up so implausibly high it disappears beyond the clouds. On either side, perfectly smooth walls that go on and on and on in a way that's frankly offensive to look at.
Some things just feel inherently wrong to see. Some things just don't make sense to look at - optical illusions, or maybe the concept of whatever Lovecraft tried his best to convey. The immensity of something so inorganic and so large feels a little like a blight on the brain, and no matter how long you look it never really starts to make any more sense. It just continues to be repeatedly, oppressively affronting to rationalize.
Most people — the remaining population, the living, particularly the ones not consolidated into the densely populated rings of the labor encampments — will never actually learn how large it is. No organization, save perhaps any lingering pockets of covert military operations that might exist beneath the public radar, ever have the opportunity. Getting close enough to one means getting caught and dragged into that hub of hell well before any successful measurements can be completed. Even if, by some miracle somebody did manage it, communicating the information was simply impossible. It would be disseminated to virtually no one, rendering the effort largely pointless. For all most people know, the top of the cube might very well be making friendly with the ozone layer. The notion is both laughably absurd and disturbingly possible.
Adding to its inherent wrongness is both the color and the visual texture. One can look at the corner or any particular wall and just know all the way down to some base level that it's perfect. Flawless. Not so much as a single foot on any part of its massive surface juts out in any incorrect direction. It can best be described as black, but it is neither shining nor matte. It looks like it should be liquid, like sticky ink, like it ought to be dripping — or perhaps like satin, though how one can look at it and see satin without even the slightest rippling indicator is hard for anyone to articulate.
As they touch down, they display not even the slightest hint of resistance from the tons of reinforced steel and concrete beneath them. It all crumples like thin, brittle ice with a sound that is at once too loud and not nearly loud enough — a groaning, low and resonating, a metallic singing-bowl tone so loud it makes the ears ache, but still somehow doesn't seem fitting enough to match the sheer size of what lands. Just beneath it, the slightly more subtle sound of breaking glass. Destruction. Screaming. Devastation.
And then they simply settle, motionless, still, silent, inanimate.
If you're not generally a fan of purple prose, to make things simple: it's a massive fuck-off cube that hurts to look at, like the eldritch abomination version of a spooky box. Ooooo.
art commissioned by
Leave a comment