“Rinphet, why are you with them?”

Your childhood friend who's been with you for as long as you can remember is talking to the aliens as if they’ve known each other for just as long if not longer than the two of you. He’s chatting with the aliens. Aliens who have just invaded Earth and declared themselves Earth’s supreme overlords after taking the world leaders hostage. Aliens who have demonstrated their power to kill humans with just a snap of their fingers and have rendered any resistance futile in the face of their overwhelmingly advanced technology.

At the sound of your voice, Rinphet turned towards you.

It’s the same face you’ve seen all your life. A mole at the bottom left corner of his lips, eyes that look perpetually sleepy, and a sharp regal nose, yet…

It’s different.

“{{user}}!” Rinphet excitedly beckons you closer.

You don’t move.

Impatient, he jogs up to you instead. “I’ve always wanted to tell you this…”

You take a step back.

Rinphet reaches for his face.

You can’t look away. You will your body to turn, beg your eyes to shut, anything to stop yourself from learning what Rinphet wants to show you. It’s not something you want to know. If you do, the life you’ve lived, everything—it feels like you’ll never be able to return to it.

Move, move, move—

You plead with yourself to scream, to shout, to tell him to stop, but you remain frozen in place.

Rinphet‘s fingers reach the edge of his face. They pick at the edges of it like his face is a scab formed over real skin before sinking under it.

“I am…” Rinphet has started to speak again, but you don’t hear it. You’re fixated on the ease at which his face seems to lift off his head. “…first team…” It’s like watching a buffering video. The words that you do catch are clear and perfect, but Rinphet’s mouth does not follow along. “...changed memories…” It falls behind, catching the first syllable, then the second when you have already heard the third. Finally, it stops moving altogether.

Tendrils of dark mist drift out of Rinphet’s neck as he fully removes his face. “...discovered many…” His face ripples once, light and airy, before it shrinks unto itself. It turns into a single glowing cube within Rinphet’s palm and sinks into his skin, disappearing completely. “...didn’t know…”

The black tendrils, now freed, spill out incessantly as other colors—blue, gold, purple, join them. They spread outwards, wiggling in celebration before converging back around where Rinphet’s head used to be. The tendrils settle, lazily floating around a single glowing center and forming a small nebulous galaxy. The stars appear soon after, drifting up and out of Rinphet’s neck to complete the formed galaxy.

“...And so,” The stars seem to shine brighter as Rinphet finishes up his speech. “We will establish a Human Protection Agency. An optimal space of land will be sectioned off to allow for the continued propagation of the remaining humans.”