It’s been a year since the first explosive missile hit the surface of the Earth, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. No one realized the magnitude of what had happened until two months later when another one was dropped, this time in Central Africa. Chad was devastated, and its bordering countries settled into a state of mass chaos. Of course, nobody really cared about the second missile either, but it was more of an inconvenience than the first, especially for ExxonMobil stakeholders who had suffered financial losses from the temporary disruption of crude oil exports. Fortunately, as many oil reserves were protected from impact debris, the employees in Chad were soon able to reboot the mining process.

It wasn’t until one of the missiles landed about five hundred kilometres off of the coast of San Francisco that the case finally garnered international media attention. At once, the United Nations Security Council gathered in New York City to convene and debate about the fate of the world. Not 20 hours later, the alien attacks were declared an international emergency, and the entire world began to shut down. Seafaring was first to go, followed by air travel, and then finally all cross-border mobility. The governments of the six great powers had deemed all forms of recreational travel unnecessary and unsafe, and the world had successfully entered a state of quasi-siege. 

To investigate the origin of the attacks, the American government sent a research team to Chad. Unfortunately, the missile was still active at the time and went off again, taking the lives of the twelve esteemed scientists. This saddening news was broadcast all throughout the world; the brave individuals were immortalized as martyrs of the human race. The programme was especially popular in China, a country that had not yet received one of these missile attacks, but would come to do so in the months ahead. 

Undeterred, the United States continued to investigate the nature of the invading forces. Not to be one-upped, the United Kingdom would soon launch its own task force, scattering deployments over the next six months. Initially, the governments were quick to point fingers at none other than infamous North Korea. After all, the nation already held both the technology to make nukes and a long-standing vendetta against every other nation of the world. What’s to say that they hadn’t spent the past decade developing a more targeted and less environmentally destructive version of the atomic bomb? The world was up in arms. North Korea, as always, remained nonchalant. 

The cold war continued to brew until about a month ago when the aliens decided to really go all offensive on us. 

No one saw it coming, or, at least none of the powers. South Africa had mentioned during one of the conferences that the missile attacks seemed to hint at a looming crisis, but the others just laughed. Our alien neighbours seized this opportunity to get a head start. During the eighth deliberation session, they climbed out of the Pacific Ocean and began to abduct college students from the campuses of the American West Coast. The President of the United States immediately assumed martial law.

To his surprise, this tactic was unsuccessful. The aliens spread out and started to abduct people from all over the country. Initially, it was discovered that the aliens were targeting people who were living or travelling alone. Upon further inspection, it appeared that diverse communities were the least likely to be affected by the alien abductions. As this news broke out, Americans, out of fear for their own safety, warmed up to other races and ethnicities. Black Americans, White Americans, Latin Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans formed communes where they would live together under the protection of mutual acceptance and peace.

Racism was now gone. Gone were the days of discrimination, of racial slurs, of hate crimes. Everyone depended on one another, and there was no sense in hating someone who could keep you alive. Even the most outspoken racial supremacists had either learned to bite their tongue or had already been abducted. All in all, not a bad day for racism. 

That brings us to today, one month into communal living. The government is still trying to figure out what happened to the people who have been abducted, but their efforts are futile. The only way to protect ourselves is to continue accepting and tolerating others. Everyone has the same opinion now, the same correct stance on the politics of skin colour. If anyone tries to revert back to our archaic racist ways, they will be immediately kicked out of their commune and not allowed to return. Nobody knows where these people go after they are forcibly removed. The only thing that everyone else knows is that once someone is kicked out of the shelter, they are never seen again. 

In certain areas of the United States such as in the Midwest, Black, Asian, and Native Americans are very scarce. People have been forced to take over schools, churches, and shopping malls, creating giant communities with only 2 or 3 people of colour each. Minority families are separated and placed in different communities to balance out the ratios as much as possible. No one has complained or protested against this, and why should they? Obviously keeping people alive is more important than keeping families together. Everyone agrees. Everyone agrees on everything nowadays. Since much of the Midwest is wildly rural, these communities are often miles apart, but human lives are more important than individual desires. People of colour should be concerned about the well-being of white Americans too. How could they live with themselves if they took a risk to go and visit their family, only to return to the commune to find 2000 of their friends gone, abducted by the enemy? Colour should be meaningless, but the aliens clearly do not agree. Therefore, it is an unfortunate but necessary reality that every community needs people of colour. With great power comes great responsibility. 

In more conventionally diverse areas such as metropolitan New York, people of colour have a little more flexibility in who they choose to reside with. Large cities generally contain a majority liberal population, and people of all races had already lived in harmony for decades leading up to the invasion (other than the shootings, but we don’t talk about that). Nothing is supposed to change, right? We all agree that people who discriminate pose a great danger to society, and therefore should be promptly removed from the vicinity of people who are actually trying to survive. On the other hand, human lives are more important than individual comfort, and in areas of the city such as Washington Heights and the Bronx, white Americans are now being actively sought after to ensure the safety of the majority POC population. By now, options are pretty slim, and it’s too often that citizens of poor areas with a smaller white population must settle for roommates who may be most accurately described as rather undesirably tempered. Fortunately, compatibility isn’t the end all be all anymore. Some things must be sacrificed so that we can all live to enjoy life. Isn’t life swell? Now if the aliens would just stop attacking us. 

People have always said that the only way to achieve world peace is for aliens to invade Earth, and I think that we’ve finally proven them right. Everyone is so happy now! We are all equal. Politics are redundant. There is no more need for violence and crime. Everybody lives every day in codependent harmony. Racism is gone, people get along much nicer, and best of all, everyone agrees on everything.