Kisses from a Geddon*
Aliens want a few amendments on Earth before they visit
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BLANCHE DARE ABHORRED THE word 'black'. She hated its composite letters, the colour itself, the monosyllabic tone. She despised b’s bravado, l’s levity, a’s arrogance, c’s cunning, and the absolute karma of ‘s’. She disliked the flavour it left on her tongue and had only its synonyms blurring endlessly across her screen. From her desk, she could see people in every direction, seated. Some cursed, some slept, some murmured a personal mantra.
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Black is replaceable.
There is no black.
Black is silver.
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She’d heard Cy weeping quietly when he said his. All she wept for was sleep. The Walalapo building was comfortable enough, with showers, exercise rooms, and of course, adjustment therapists. She had a recliner chair and a blanket. But she hadn’t rested in days. She wanted to run into the sweet, clean air of Sossusvlei and lie beneath the dunes. To escape the rancid odours of sweat, food, and stale perfume. But last night’s storms had spurred people on. No one was leaving their screens today.
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Someone began banging their desk, shouting, “Shadows! The Eclipse! Oh, dammit!”
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Blanche empathised. The world’s clocks were ticking away an unknown deadline on this global, immeasurable task. It was simple in request, mammoth in action. To remove all reference to the word ‘black’ from the planet’s thesaurus and replace it with another term. Nothing else mattered. The Geddon might have been light-years away, but their super-speed communications systems made them seem hideously close. Meanwhile, 3D representations of their structure united humanity in a singular objective. To prevent the Geddon species from ever sliming its gargantuan mass anywhere near Earth’s Solar System.
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Her stomach rumbled. Yesterday’s meal of chicken, spinach and mealie pap lay nearby, looking like a cardboard cut-out. She opted for a stimulant, several gulps of water, and a very liberal dash of eye-drops. Hydration meant concentration meant survival. Because the truth of the matter was, the Geddon’s horrific features appeared to be the loveliest thing about them.
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Once she’d asked Cy, “I wonder if they’re aware of our worries?”
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He’d laughed. “Isn’t that why they sent all those Valentine kisses? To allay such worries? Nothing Trojan about those whatsoever.”
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The ‘kisses’ to which he was referring were the tiny heart-shaped markers scattered across each Geddon transcript. The linguists had missed their relevance at first, until Cy stepped in. “Eighteen months of faster-than-light communication and all you’ve worked out is ‘We take the black?’
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Their spokesperson had insisted. “We’ve extrapolated everything they’ve transmitted. They continuously reference three things: those damn hearts, their palate—and black.”
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Cy deferred to his astrophysicist wife. “What do you think, habibi?”
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Blanche shuddered. “That they’d love to eat all the Blacks.”
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Cy had laughed till he cried, barely recovering sufficiently to kiss her fears away. Well, she was jet. She had every right to be worried. Her mad, maverick parents loved the names Blanche and Sable equally, but when she was born, Blanche had won the toss up. Cy called her his beautiful midnight black. She prayed the aliens weren’t calling her their beautiful midnight snack.
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Cy couldn’t forgive the linguists. “Geddon colour spectrum seems identical to ours. They could be expressing colour as kinetic energy, possibly for fuel. In other words, they take the black—but not for their palate. For their palette.”
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They still protested. “But why take ours when they’ve already got theirs? And how can we give up black? It’s vital!”
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Blanche stepped in. “So is our magnetosphere. The real danger is those microscopic heart markers we’ve extrapolated. They match the formula for the weight and density of a neutron star. A single spark from their mass would squash us flat. They may look like sweet markings from a lover, but it’s not kissy Valentines that they’re sending us, folks. It’s Armageddon.”
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We take the black.
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In truth, no one understood the context. Requests for clarification were met with ominous silence until Earth dared not press further. Did the Geddon want black in terms of language, culture, tangible items, or the abstract? Were they seeking dark energy for the regeneration of a dying star? Did they want everything black? The word was embedded in Earth’s consciousness. Editing it out in all forms would be tricky.
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Yet, surprisingly, when the news went public, no faction protested or lobbied. Humanity’s goal was one and the same. Keep the Geddon happy and far, far away. Everyone signed up to eradicate black from the planet.
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Speakers of the world group languages pored over the arts, sciences, nature, and theology. Writers, sculptors, painters, historians, anthropologists, poets, etymologists, and signers worked to rewrite, redesign, or when desperate, burn. hings were dyed or renamed. Fingers flew over keyboards as hackers created binary programmes to overwrite centuries’ worth of a toxic vocabulary. Green heart, blue as the devil, silver bastard.
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Earth’s task of eradicating a colour ended without warning. Screens stopped scrolling. Clocks stopped ticking. Someone screamed the words of salvation. “They’ve given us the OK! Black accepted!”
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Blanche went straight her sleep chair.
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Six hours later Cy woke her with a lopsided smile and a bottle of brandy. He didn’t drink, but narrow escapes from extinction definitely called for celebration and the glass he poured for her was large and full. “Helloo, habibi . . . ”
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She took a sip. Smiled. “No champagne?”
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“Not just yet, my darling.” Even his laugh was slurred. “Remember right at the beginning when the Geddon relayed that large chunk of data to us?”
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Blanche nodded. The Afro-Asiatic experts had killed off everyone’s excitement by revealing it to be Kesarbai Kerkar’s recording. It had been the one of Jaat Kahan Ho, from Voyager 2’s Golden Record. “I remember. The Greens were laughing, claiming the Geddon were returning all our space trash to us.”
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He waggled a finger at her. “Nnn-not trash. Our catalogue. Apparently, our new besties are out shopping. Remember that ‘identical’ palette I’d mentioned?” Now he waggled a finger at himself. “Shilly m-me.”
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His artist’s eyes were wet when he hiccupped. “They’re going through all our colours they like. Thashh all. There’s no politics involved. No domination. No global takeover of resources. They like our pretty, pretty colours. And they’ve just selected the next one.”
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With unsteady hands, he held up a crumpled scrap of paper. It was blank. “Have a guess.”
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Blanche looked away. The great red dunes of Sossusvlei called her to sleep, but Cy’s tears were pulling her back. She glanced again at his scrap of paper and saw the next colour she’d soon come to hate: a blank nothingness that shouted its message clearly.
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We take the white.
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*Curated by Medium
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