Wake Up With the Kimellians

Part One

Comas—despite the negative reputations they’ve rightfully earned over the years—are in fact excellent ways to waste time. No matter what degree of brain activity one might generate under the effects of a coma, it is never enough to allow for luxuries like checking a clock for the time, or glancing out a window to see what the weather is like.

This lack of activity might be seen by some as a drawback, but for the most part, comas can be helpful for passing an unpleasant stretch of time in relative peace.

The main drawback to comas, aside from the debilitating physical effects, is the shock one receives upon waking up to discover that years have passed. Loved ones might have moved on, or perhaps passed on, and old familiar haunts are flattened and paved over for new buildings. Life goes on without people who fall into comas, and though it is a fact everyone knows, it is always upsetting to the person who is just waking up.

It isn’t hard then to understand why Roger Maple was stunned when he woke up from a five-year coma.

He stared at the stranger in front of him, a thin frightened looking nurse in a flimsy blue cotton dress who had just told him her name, and yet he couldn’t remember it already.

Perhaps it was because after introducing herself, the nurse said, “You should have died.”

She explained very briefly how Roger had been in a coma for five years before she proceeded to describe an alien invasion which surely could only have been crafted by Hollywood, with one minor difference: humans lost.

The rest of the details were similar to a blockbuster movie in the nurse’s story. UFOs showed up, and an ugly green gelatinous blob gargled its demands into a translating device that broadcast to every satellite.

The message made to Earth: Work for us, or become food.

Government officials declared they would fight to the bitter end. Speeches were made about how the human race had already overcome slavery. Brave soldiers marched, flew, and shipped off to fight, and every weapon mankind had was brought into play.

As a movie, the budget for pyrotechnics would have been in the billions. The victory scene in the film would have been glorious and illogical, and might have starred Will Smith.

But the invasion wasn’t a movie, and though Earth weapons worked well enough on the aliens, there were just too many invaders.

It was also demoralizing to see the mucus-like aliens cover a soldier, and then consume them within seconds. Many soldiers dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, driven insane by the horrid sight. Many still lay in hospital beds, their faces slack while they spent every day staring at a world they no longer participated in or understood.

Roger almost felt like joining them, and his pale face gave the impression he was attempting to audition for a part in the sanitarium. But while his slack expression was close, his bright blue eyes weren’t glazed or vacant. Instead they were filled with a troubled light that only became more intense while the nurse went on with the history of the humans’ defeat.

Attempts were made to fight by the rapidly weakening military forces until the leaders of the major world governments were weeded out of their fortified locations. They were consumed in a series of nightly broadcasts as a warning to everyone else.

Some police joined forces with civilian groups, but it didn’t matter by then who tried to mount a revolt. The revolution was dissolved, pun intended, and the rest of the human race gave up.

Once unanimous agreements were made to live under the rule of the aliens, the killing stopped. Each person was made to sign a document they couldn’t read, a formal process they were told expressed their consent to work for the aliens.