It was early morning in the Tower. Ty's alarm clock buzzed, and he groggily flailed his hand at it, eventually succeeding in turning the alarm off. Barely awake, he managed to drag himself through his usual routine of showering and getting dressed, though his tie ended up a bit crooked and loose around the collar.

He trudged through the door into the boardroom, which if I hadn't mentioned yet was right next door to his bedroom. Considering he got to choose where his bedroom was, I'm not sure if his choice meant he was a workaholic, or he worried that he'd never get out of bed and go to work in the morning if his commute was more than fifty feet. I'm going to guess the second one.

With eyes still barely open, he headed to the counter in the corner where he discovered the empty bag of coffee beside the coffee maker. He gave a displeased groan and marched over to his seat at the far end of the table. After flopping down into his chair, he tapped the mailbox icon on the screen. A message list opened with a prompt which read, “You have 134 new messages”. He put his head down on the table and groaned louder.

“Maybe I should just go back to bed...”

Just then, his comm rang in his ear. He pressed the button on the earpiece, and Deejay's voice attempted to jolt him awake.

“Ty! You there?”

“Mmh...”

“Dude! Are you seeing this?”

“Seeing what?”

“Go look out your window.”

Ty slowly rose and turned to walk toward the picture window behind him, overlooking the town and surrounding desert. He made it about one step and stopped. The sky outside was completely filled with an armada of ominous black spaceships, with their weapons all trained on the Tower.

“...Well crap.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Deejay agreed.

“They haven’t tried to make contact yet, have they?”

“I dunno.”

“Well come up here, and tell Mal to come, too. We should try to make contact before anything else happens.”

“’Kay. See you in a minute.”

Ty sat back in his chair and looked over his message list again. Virtually all of them were about the alien ships, which had apparently appeared within the last hour. One message complained about a malfunctioning water heater. Ty took half a second to silently question that man's priorities before getting back to business. He tapped another icon with a phone symbol on it, and selected “Emergency Broadcast” from the options that appeared. He spoke calmly and clearly into his comm.

“Can I have your attention, please. A total citywide lockdown is now in effect. This is not a drill. Everyone stick to your emergency procedures. As soon as you can, go down into the basement of your building and follow the tunnel to the Tower base. Use the stairs if you can, in case of power outage. Stay away from windows. Do not go outside. If you are already outside, enter the nearest residence and head down to the basement with everyone else. I will sound the all-clear when it's safe to return to your homes. Thank you for your cooperation.”

As he spoke, hundreds of people were already pouring down the staircases of their respective apartment buildings, most in a pretty orderly fashion. Some people were openly panicking. Others had clearly seen this before and were treating it like somebody pulled a fire alarm. In a matter of minutes, most of the town had made their way into the tunnels underground and started gathering in a massive empty room at the base of the Tower. Only a few lagged behind to help a few people with limited mobility, but soon they were on their way to the same shelter.

Ty sighed and began massaging his temples.

“How did I know today was going to suck?”

–

A few minutes later, the improvised intergalactic war council gathered in the boardroom. Ty, who usually favored a funeral director look, was actually dressed in a navy blue suit for this occasion. Mal wore his usual black uniform and tied his long red hair back in a ponytail, a few strands in the front still framing his face. Deejay had on blue jeans and an X-Files t-shirt, which I might as well mention by name since he's guaranteed to reference it at some point anyway.

The three of them gathered at the head of the table, Ty taking the head seat, while Deejay and Mal took the seats to either side.

“Have you tried hailing them yet?” Deejay asked Ty.

“Yeah. No luck yet.”

The word “Scanning” appeared on the tabletop screen in front of them.

“I don't see the point in attempting diplomacy at this stage,” Mal said. “We should strike now and thin their numbers before they can retaliate.”

“Not happening. We need to be delicate with this. There are a lot more of them than last time.”

“All the more reason not to waste any more time. They're trying to intimidate us with a show of force. Let's show them we won't back down so easily.”

“We're not backing down, but I'm not about to give them an excuse to start attacking the town. If they really want to start a fight, then we'll finish it, but we're not firing the first shot.”

“Hmph.” Mal folded his arms and turned to Deejay. “And I suppose you agree?”

He shrugged. “They're holding off the attack for now. I think maybe they want to talk.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“...I want to believe.”

Told you.

The screen issued an affirmative beep. “Aha. There we go.”

Deejay began typing on the virtual keyboard. The words “Frequency Isolated” replaced the previous screen in front of them. Beneath that, his words spelled out one letter at a time: “Outgoing message: Welcome to Utopia. Please state your reason for visiting”. Seconds later, “Incoming Message” popped up in response, and the message in question spelled out slowly, which Deejay read aloud.

“On behalf of our Lord Gorefury, we do hereby reclaim this land in the name of the Empire of the Shadow. You are now ordered to give your unconditional surrender or face annihilation. Will you comply?”

The group paused a moment, and Ty turned to Deejay.

“Do you have some kind of translator that generated this?”

“Nope. Even if I had one, I'm not sure how it would translate an alien language. We would need some kind of universal translator, which would just be ridiculous. With all the complexities and subtleties of human language, let alone non-human language, I'm pretty sure any kind of truly universal translator would be practically impossible to program. Or it would just be deeply flawed to the point of being useless for its intended purpose. I guess they just know English.”

“Huh. That's strangely convenient.”

“Yeah. Actually, now that I think of it, we've been having a lot of luck with that. It seems like practically every other world we visit, the people there speak English. And modern English, no less. You'd think a bunch of different earths with alternate histories wouldn't develop language in the exact same way every time-”

“Gentlemen,” Mal interrupted, “as fascinating as this conversation is, do you really think this is the time to be having it?”

“Yup.” Deejay nodded emphatically. “If we don't address it now, it's just going to wind up bothering me more later when someone else points it out.”

Mal gave him a puzzled look.

“Alright,” Ty said, “I guess we can't keep them waiting. What's our response?”

“I sincerely hope you're not considering surrender,” Mal replied.

“Not a chance.”

“And from the sound of their message, negotiation is not an option. So, that leaves one choice...”

Ty shrugged. “I guess days like this are the reason we keep the armory well-stocked. Deejay, do you think the Tower defenses will hold up?”

“Well, we survived a piece of a dying star exploding on the roof a couple of weeks ago.” Deejay winced. “Sorry again about that, by the way. But unless they have a gun that shoots anti-matter now, I think the Tower can take whatever they can dish out.”

I think I actually skipped over that part before. That whole dying star thing was another story that happened earlier, maybe a few days or a week before the princess thing. We can get into it another time if you want.

Outside, one of the ships fired a warning shot. A laser blast hit the wall of the Tower, which glowed as the laser's energy was harmlessly dispersed and absorbed. Deejay looked down at message that appeared onscreen:

“Energy shield disruption detected and neutralized. Approximate energy input: 1.07e-24% of maximum threshold. Approximate energy rerouted to grid: 22%”

I'm not much for math, but I think 1.07e-24 is a really small number.

“That's it?” Deejay furrowed his brow. “Gosh, I hope they can do better than that, or the defensive grid won't even get a decent charge out of this.”

Mal leaned forward. “There's no point in stalling any longer, Ty. Let's just get on with it.”

Ty read the ultimatum from the invaders, which spelled itself out again. 

You are ordered to give your unconditional surrender or face annihilation. This is your final warning. Will you comply?

Ty sighed. “Oh, screw it. This is happening.”

He tapped the message and typed out his own in response: “On behalf of myself, I hereby order you clowns to get the hell out of my airspace. Will you comply?”

The word “Transmitting” appeared, and there was a long pause. Then the sky lit up, as the bulk of the ships opened fire, laser beams bombarding the Tower all over. Its hi-tech shields shimmered in response, and held strong. Another readout appeared onscreen.

“Energy shield disruption detected and neutralized. Approximate energy input: 1.02e-19% of maximum threshold. Approximate energy rerouted to grid: 31%”

Ty turned in his chair to face out the window, watching the laser blasts flash harmlessly in front of them.

“Oh darn, I think I insulted them.”

Outside, the stream of laser fire died down a bit, and some of the larger ships approached in unison, unleashing dozens of missiles that took flight and moved in formation toward the Tower. The barrage of missiles got about 100 yards from the Tower walls and suddenly exploded, filling the area with smoke and flame. None of them actually hit their target, and the shrapnel they hurled forward bounced uselessly off of the shields.

“Looks like the anti-ordnance field is working nicely,” Deejay remarked. “I'm not sure explosives that size could crack the wall anyway, but it's definitely nice to have.”

“Maybe you should disable it and give them a fighting chance,” Mal joked.

“Alright guys, enough mocking the ineffectual alien drones. I think we need to put a stop to this now.”

“Finally.” Mal stood up and headed for the elevator. “To the armory!”

Ty followed him. “Looks like all that time you spent playing videogames is finally going to pay off.”

“Hey, wait up guys, I want to watch!”

Deejay jumped out of his seat and chased after the others. Once they were all in the elevator, Ty tapped his PIN into the keypad on the top right. A new floor label appeared near the top of the map bearing the word “ARMS”. Ty tapped on it, and the elevator started moving.