Earth 2072
Water was not a life-saver to all living things after the invasion.
Humans and animals still spent their lives seeking water to survive, but the aliens feared and hated water. It could kill them on contact. Water was the only reason the invasion was never complete and the only reason why the human race still even existed.
It didn’t matter if it was salt water, or fresh water; both were deadly to the Sarks who took that chance to plunder earth’s bountiful resources. They didn’t come to stay forever. The Colony, as they called themselves, were a lot like the ancient Vikings in man’s history; they came to loot until there wasn’t anything to plunder anymore.
Thousands of ships from The Colony surrounded the earth, sending out smaller vessels that landed on the planet with their warriors and miners. The Sarks lived to loot and take their prizes back home to Zalon, in the Andromeda galaxy.
The Sark military leaders knew they were taking a chance when they attacked earth because water covered about 70 percent of the planet. But the rewards in resources justified the invasion in their minds.
Gold, silver, and copper, were highly valued, but so were gemstones like rubies, diamonds, jade, chalcedony, topaz, and more. Minerals like aeschynite, britholite, cerite, fluocerite, monazite, synchysite and titanite were all considered bountiful booty.
The Sarks set up mining operations throughout earth. They were heavily protected by veteran warriors willing to give up their lives for The Colony. Mankind, in turn, did everything possible to make life miserable for the invaders.
When the Sarks first struck earth, conventional weapons were used against them with no effect. It took months before one man, Chang Apana a Hawaiian scientist, discovered how deadly water was to the invaders. Since that time, water guns and water cannons became the choice of weapons.
Since the worldwide drought began in 2060, no rain had fallen on the dying polluted planet. Water became more precious than gold to people. The irony of having to use it as a weapon against the invaders wasn’t lost on anyone.
The Sarks had monitored Earth since 2060, and after a decade of no rain they felt comfortable enough to launch the invasion.
There were no organized governments to resist the Sarks. They had long since destroyed each other across the earth after the Global Wars period between 2045 and 2057. Afterwards only pockets of people were left scattered throughout the ruins of once proud civilizations around the planet.
During this dark time for humanity Chang never gave up trying to drive the Sarks off the planet.
Because the Sarks destroyed what fragile internet there was, along with the exhausted telecommunication systems and satellites, it was difficult for Chang to contact other scientists. He’d been trying for months when he got a break and met a German scientist, Hans Ritter, who was searching for him.
Ritter’s expertise was rockets. Chang was once a renowned chemist and mathematician. It was a third scientist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, a physicist and engineer, that helped them work as a team with a common goal.
That goal was to launch a rocket containing rain-making materials, that would circle the planet and seed the atmosphere with rain clouds. It was a lofty goal, but possible.
They worked for months refining their calculations and gathering the needed materials. Santiago, with help from a crew of welders and steel-workers, worked around the clock creating the unique rocket and it’s delivery system.
Chang used silver iodide aerosols, combined with some ingredients of his own, to create clouds which would create rain in the earth’s atmosphere. The rocket would only have to circle the earth once. The fuel situation was solved when a rocket-fuel depot was discovered in a nearby bunker complex.
The project took a year of scavenging for parts and building a launch platform far from any Sark mining operations. The day finally came when the unmanned rocket was ready for launch.
“A thought just came to me,” Santiago said before Chang engaged the launch code count- down.
“How long do you think it’ll rain for?”
Chang looked over at his fellow scientist and said, “I have no idea,” and started the sequence.
A Month Later on Zalon
Spouses of the dead earth raiders held a solemn ceremony in honor of their untimely deaths. Scribes recorded the event as the worst incident in The Colony’s history. It lasted, the chronicles reported, for 40-days, and 40-nights.
As It Stands, this tale, with it’s Biblical underpinings, examines another way to look at how valueable water can be to mankind.
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The Creative Chronicles of Dave Stancliff 