THE SON OF ELI

That purple patch that appeared in the sky ended the world, although no one really believed from the beginning that it was going to be that deadly! Many assumed it was the lingering echoes of the moon, and others simply dismissed it as an odd cloud, or maybe the sun which had taken another colour. However, when the sun came up - bright and beautiful - and that purply cloud remained fixed in the middle of the sky, many began to wonder what it was. When night came, the moon shone brightly in its splendour, as usual. It was just another normal occurrence of nature that would have largely gone unnoticed if it had not been for the presence of that purple abnormality in the middle of the sky that seemed to say hello, I am here, still here, and I am not part of the moon as you think, humans! Perhaps, because it became almost neon-like in the night and perfectly circular, it was more beautiful than the moon, and many heads looked up into the sky and beheld it with wonder at first, and then with little apprehension. Some wondered if it was a new kind of astronomical body which had not been seen up till now. Many people did not know that this strange purple circle in the sky was causing a frenzy in many secret labs in the various countries across the world, and had already started a series of investigative protocols as governments rushed to find out what this particular element was. Cosmologists, astronomers, and astrophysicists also began to wonder if the purple patch was a new natural satellite like the moon hitherto undiscovered. This strange phenomenon was soon a viral subject in the world with televisions, radios and the internet buzzing with excitement over its visual presence and what it would mean to the earth. As government agencies across the globe struggled to come out with a name for this phenomenon and explain its rather unnerving presence in the sky, it suddenly changed in appearance. On the third day, the bright neon-like patch in the sky became bigger and showed a black centre that emitted occasional flashes of lightning. It was still beautiful, rather a unique sight to behold, but by now the smiles on the faces of people had become somewhat plastic because, even in its beauty, that thing was beginning to be scary. "That s**t is scary s**t!" said Peter Boogle-Luugle, a renowned internet vlogger who had a huge fan base. The flashes in the centre had just been intermittent and harmless, but by the fourth day, they had become constant blasts of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning in the sky day and night! It was fixed there, a black hole with a perfectly-circular neon purple rim emitting thunder and lightning… and everybody everywhere on earth could see it! Interestingly, the churches began to fill up with new congregations! People who had been religious and fallen back somewhere along the line looked for their lost Bibles and went to church, seeking divine explanations for something the scientists could not comfortably explain. And the doomsayers began to strut their stuff, preaching and warning others that the end of the world had come. Basically, the world at large had become less spiritual with the youth attaining horrifying levels of perversity and debauchery never witnessed before! Drugs, booze and s*x were cheap, and religion was relegated to the fringes way beyond the back. The world had been moving on without recourse to guidelines enshrined in the religious books but, when that thing in the sky had began to display signs that could not be explained, people remembered snippets of doom in the Holy Books. So they trudged to church like hypocrites, seeking a safe berth in case things got worse. But there was nothing to worry about, others told themselves, even when prophets screamed hoarsely that the end of the world was at hand. For one, the Bible had given clear signs to look out for before the Great Rapture, and none of them had so far occurred, so people were not totally perturbed yet. Many theories were propagated to explain the phenomenon and people were urged to remain calm because what was happening was just what it was; a freak in natural processes that would hopefully be over soon. Satellites took pictures as analysts and experts worked in frenzied overtimes to either identify this thing or curb any threat it might have on the earth. By the end of the sixth day, there was another change in the purple hole that made dread turn to fear which soon crystallized into mild terror! The purple circle had grown to twice its size, and its dark centre was now pulsing out a vibrative cadence that could be heard on earth! It was not pleasant, to say the least! It had not been irritable at first and could only be heard when people were out in the open, just a low drone on the ear. Its devastating effects, however, were felt by the electromagnetic circuitry the world ran on. Electronic machines began to glitch and malfunction, aircraft schedules got messed up, internet bands slowed down and glitched, television signals tripped! On the night of the sixth day, the drone became louder and the lightning blazing from the core of that circle became ugly and horrible! And the superpowers, faced with something they could not explain, began the blame game, accusing each other of being responsible for the hole in the sky… and soon, the world was on the very brink of war again! The Secretary-General of the United Nations tried to step in and get the world leaders to dialogue and find a solution to that Purple Threat in the sky. That was the name they eventually gave it. Purple Threat. A high-powered meeting was scheduled on the seventh day in Geneva to be attended by world leaders, aimed at bringing a modicum of peace in the face of the escalating terror. As it turned out, the problem resolved itself on the morning of the seventh day, just as some had proclaimed with confidence that it would, even if it was not resolved exactly as expected. Shortly after midnight on that fateful day, the drone from the sky became impossible to bear. It rose to a crashing crescendo that made people from every little corner of the earth clamp hands and objects to their ears and those who could, rushed outside with terror! They saw that the Purple Threat had become much bigger, and its perfect circle was warped now! It was shaking and emitting jet-fire from its core! Satellites broke up in space and came hurtling down to earth! Aeroplanes lost navigational controls and fell from the sky in droves! Ships sank rapidly as the vibrations hit them and stopped gadgets and engines from working! The sky was a frenzy of madness as aircrafts collided or simply switched into uncontrollable nose dives, smashing into the earth with explosions that tore and killed whole communities! There were screams, shouts, a cacophony of terror that turned humans into frenzied and powerless specimens as they fled and moved in confusion! And during that madness, something finally fell from the purple circle! Millions of people saw that thing falling from the hole because, five minutes before it came out, the unbearable droning sound and vibrations stopped! There was total silence except for the debris of destroyed machines falling from the sky in areas they had hovered on. Most people had been crouched in buildings or outside with their hands clamped to their ears in their agonies. But, when the droning sound stopped and the vibrations stilled, they all looked up into that purple circle in the sky with only one expression on their faces: terror! It was probably the only time in the history of man that everybody had the same expression on their faces! Humans had gone through a week of mounting fear since that purple patch appeared in the sky, and they were tuned to each other in a macabre way because, in truth and substance, humans were the same no matter their race. As they saw that thing hurtling down the hole, the process of thoughts that ran through every mind was that earth was not going to be the same again. If that thing had been able to cause such mayhem and fear, such terror and destruction simply by the aura and propulsion preceding it, then its presence here on earth meant only one thing: death! So, all across the earth, all eyes were raised to the sky as that thing fell from the sky. It appeared like a speck to many because of distance and altitude, but they all saw that it had a shimmering purple quality: a blinking aura that alternated between shades of purple. The people in the African kingdom of Eden saw the arrival of the strange alien clearly because that was the geographical destination where it landed. The shepherds on the Sinaki Plateau saw that the alien was shaped like a man except for its limbs. It had four projections that could be legs and four side projections that could be arms. Another difference was that this thing was a giant, spanning about twenty feet from its rather huge, oblong head and a chest span of about five feet! For an object falling that far from the sky, the limbs were not spinning out of control. It seemed to be falling on its back and came straight like that, limbs splayed and stiff, down, down, down, down… Its purple body shimmered with a strange metallic aura. The top of Sinaku Plateau was broad and grassy with sparse trees. The richness of the grass made it a perfect place to raise livestock and so the indigenes who inhabited the base of the plateau were mostly cattle and sheep rearers. Sinaki Plateau was gigantic and very broad with gently-sloping sides that made climbs to its summit relatively easy. Some of the shepherds began to flee down the plateau with screams. Others stood transfixed with horror. The families at the base of the plateau screamed and many began to flee in a confused mass! And the purple thing crashed down on top of the plateau! There was a horrible explosive sound – whooooooosh – and brilliant light of purple spread all around, racing across the plateau and down the sides to the base below! It scorched everything in its path! Vegetation, animals, humans! Everything within a hundred kilometres radii was scorched to purple ash and a shimmering heat that rose slowly upwards! The body of the thing made a great crater on top of the plateau. There it was, a gigantic giant of something alien, something obscene, something that meant death! It settled inside the hole and remained very still for about three minutes, then suddenly seven glows of purple light lit up on a monstrously obscene projection on its face that looked like a forehead, and an opening that looked like a hideous mouth opened in the middle of that terrible face. Living strands sizzled around that head like snakes, and when that alien gave a deep growl, it made the earth tremble! The thing moved weakly and sat up in that huge crater made by its impact. It leaned its back against the plateau and gazed upward. It tried to stand up, but it could not. Its limbs splayed weakly. The expression that moved across its face was so horrible that no human eyes could have beheld it! It roared with such fury that the ground trembled! Evidently, the planet earth was in trouble! Deep, deep, trouble.