It was only after they invaded that they realized humans had superior technology in all things, except inter-planetary spaceflight…

Here’s a writing prompt I saw on Reddit a few days ago – loved the concept so I decided to give it a go:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2jie0h/wp_it_was_only_after_they_invaded_that_the_aliens/clcagu0

[WP] It was only after they invaded that the aliens realized, to their horror, that humans had superior technology in all things, except inter-planetary spaceflight.

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The buzzing swarm moved into attack position – 200,000 miles from our earthly planet.

A booming fleet of over 6 billion hovering creatures.

We call these guys WaveRats on earth, although the official species name is officially unknown.

WaveRats are the first and only form of life that’s ever contacted earth, and they’re very interesting creatures indeed.

WaveRats (WR) don’t biologically deteriorate, meaning they don’t die from old age.

Based on previous calculations, each WaveRate is estimated to be around 10 million years old.

They’re called WaveRats mostly because they’re annoying, but not a real threat.

Also, the most important thing we know about them is their main function is to seek out radio-waves.

Like a shark to blood – they ‘sniff’ out radio waves and move like drones to reach that location.

They found earth about 500 years ago, and a new fleet comes every 10 years – like clockwork.

On Earth, we’ve come to celebrate their arrival, even though they’re essentially here to wipe us out.

We’ve learned that WaveRats are mostly harmless with proper protection.

They emit a specific wave-frequency that typically disrupts atoms and would kill other biological animals, but basic material sciences have solved this problem for us.

Because of their relative harmlessness — their arrival could be analogous to the the ancients game called ‘olympics’.

A year before their arrival you’ll find all types of pre-arrival coverage, shows, interviews, conspiracy theories, the lot.

With this years wave, we have cameras positioned throughout the solar system.

Most used the live-stream as a form of entertainment, but some scientist pushed to study the animals behavior before we wiped them out.

After analyzing previous waves, it was determined that each new fleet was unaware of the outcome from their earlier arrivers.

They kept coming at us with the same tricks.

It was only after they invaded that they realized, to their horror, that humans had superior technology in all things, except inter-planetary spaceflight.

We learned very quickly in the first panic that a simple Z1 nuke could wipe out the entire fleet in one fell swoop.

With this knowledge, people became very comfortable with their arrival.

Instead of wiping them out immediately, we now prolong the process. The amount of economic activity surrounding this event is staggering.

This has pushed the council to prolong the detonation until the last possible second.

There’s even a countdown to explosion, which is quite a site in-itself.

It’s quite chilling to know that these animals have been traveling for millions of years, only to see their end at our planet.

What a legacy.

The thing is, it turns out our smartest scientists, biologists, and physicists might be wrong.

In hindsight, it was nieve to think a species would travel 10 million years to arrive at our planet just to get wiped out in one go.

Our critical mistake was not focusing on the long game.

We thought we were almighty. We considered them rats. We exterminated billions.

Boy, were we wrong…