So we left Earth. Or maybe Earth left us. The timeline is fuzzy, like an old photograph smudged by too many fingers.
There was water once, and grass. Birds, probably. A sky you could breathe. Then we made some really cool stuff like Netflix and nerve gas and a planet that smelled like melting plastic. So we said, "Hey, let's go colonize something."
Enter the Oasis: a nice, unspoiled little orb floating out in the cosmic suburbs. Lush. Blue. Full of potential. Full of aliens, too, but that wasn't really the problem. The problem was we were dying, and they weren't, and they had nice things, and we didn't, and then our governments asked politely for help in the way abused dogs smile when they're trying not to get kicked again.
The aliens said, "Sure. Let's help you. We've got medicine. We've got machines that eat pollution like it's frosted cereal. We've got renewable everything."
And then we said, "Great! Here are our spleens."
Because that's what it turned into. A deal. Our organs for their ozone converters. Our children for their clean tech. A little tit for tat, except the tit was conscripted human bodies and the tat was chlorine-resistant scrubbing bots.
We got real good at selling people. We called it "interstellar cooperation." We called it "diplomacy." We called it "the necessary price of survival." And we meant it. We mean everything when we're desperate.
The aristocrats, of course, stayed behind. Still do. They've got bubble cities now. Bio-domes with Wi-Fi and cocktail bars. Their kids went to school. Our kids went into shipping crates. You know how it goes.
So yeah, we left. We boarded ships that smelled like bleach and promises and we trained for six years straight, which is a really long time to be told you're not allowed to cry. We studied neuroplasticity, drilled until our minds clicked together like puzzle pieces, and evolved into creatures that could memorize floor plans just by blinking. No more notebooks. No more phones. Just hyperlinked thoughts and shared rage.
We didn't call it revenge. We called it reclamation. We called it "equity." We called it "taking back what was ours," which is funny, because Oasis was never ours. But neither was Earth, technically. It was just the first place we looted until it died.
Anyway, today's the day. The battle plan's on every shared thoughtstream. Everybody's got a station. Everybody's got a gun that used to be an alien vacuum cleaner and now melts people. We're marching into Oasis like missionaries of vengeance wearing smart armor and trauma.
And we're not the bad guys. Promise.
Because here's the thing. We didn't fall. We were pushed. We didn't enslave them first. They offered. They said they could fix us. They said we were salvageable. They lied.
We are not monsters.
(Okay, maybe a little.)
But if you saw what we've seen—if you smelled a baby that had been cooked alive by UV rays because we couldn't afford shelter domes—then maybe you'd understand. Or maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you'd sit on your nice little rock with its breathable air and tweet something judgmental. #PlanetPrivilege.
The aliens thought they were better. They said they had peace and philosophy and sustainable farming. They had aqueducts. They had literature. They had the audacity to think we were fixable.
What they didn't have was fear. And we've been bottling that for generations.
We're the ones in their orbit now. We're the ones knocking on their doors.
We're the new Visitors.
They thought we wanted to trade.
But all we want now is everything.
Everything they took.
Everything they didn't.
Everything they might have someday.
And we're going to take it back—interest included.
They'll say we're genocidal. Predatory. Colonizers. They'll say we're monsters. They'll make documentaries about us in sixty years with sad piano music and long shots of burning trees. There will be op-eds about "the moral crisis of the Earthborn assault." There will be Instagram reels made from drone footage of the first Oasis school to get leveled.
They'll count the bodies. We'll keep score another way.
Because this isn't a story about war. This is a story about hunger. About scarcity. About how you'll eat your own children if you're hungry enough, and then you'll go next door and eat theirs too.
And then—and then—you'll ask to be understood.
Because if you still feel bad about it afterward, you get to think you're a good person.
We still feel bad about it. Every one of us. Our minds are synced and full of guilt and still we march. Still we sharpen the blades. Still we whisper to ourselves that we are still human.
We remember what it was like to bleed. That's what makes us better.
Better than robots. Better than aliens. Better than the people who left us behind.
So now we go to war.
And maybe the last planet burned and maybe this one will too.
But this time, we're the ones lighting the match.
And we won't stop until the lights go out—click, click, click.