Challenge #00997-B266: Time to Clean the Tank

http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/130327638454/alien-invasion

Thought you might like this one. Don't think it would fit in Amalgam-verse, though. -- RecklessPrudence

[AN: Yeah nah, it wouldn't.]

They called it the Green War. The collective nations of the Earth were fighting over, and in, the world's last forest. So of course, frequent use of napalm was de rigueur.

Elsewhere, pro-lifers were bombing fertility clinics in the mistaken belief that they also performed abortions. There were also roaming gangs of pro-lifers who were murdering pregnant people if they posted about an unwanted or unwelcome pregnancy on Facebook.

Infinity-level vegans were sterilising farm soil so that no tardigrades would be harmed.

A host of anti-vaccination proponents were cheerfully announcing their first Smallpox Party in centuries. In a crowded mall in the middle of one of the most crowded cities in the world.

And the government-funded experiment to encourage honeybees to become resistant to farm chemicals was showing negative signs of progress. Of course the answer was to spray the hives harder, and with stronger chemicals.

When the aliens came, humanity barely looked up to point. The ships looked like giant snowflakes in the sky. All identical. All spaced regularly around the globe and remaining a precise distance above sea level in exactly the way that snowflakes don't. And it didn't help that they all glowed an eye-splitting purple.

They trended on Twitter for all of two minutes before some celebrity had a nip slip and all was back to what passed for normal.

They started beaming things up at the same time, so that could not trend on Twitter.

Humanity initially found itself in a volume of space roughly equivalent to Texas. Without their weapons. Without their technology. Without their clothes. Without control. The floor was soft. The temperature comfortable. And, once like-minded groups were separated from attempts at combat with un-like-minded groups, the general atmosphere was almost pleasant. The food was bland, but nutritious, and delivered in strict doses to each individual simultaneously. Those prone to taking food from others found themselves isolated until the others had finished eating. Human waste merely vanished into its depository surface.

It took humanity two weeks to get used to the abductions.

People would vanish without warning, and be absent for a few days before re-appearing none the worse for wear. Often in better health than when they left. Trans people got the bodies they dreamed of without pain. Chronically ill people got miraculous cures. More than a few individuals got new organs. Or teeth.

The extremely violent people gradually learned that violence literally got them nowhere. Any escalation of rage quickly resulted in the angry individual being sent to a smaller, blank room until they stopped being angry.

Most of the things that separated humanity ceased to matter, in the Big Room.

And just as suddenly as it began, humanity was back on Earth. Buildings and infrastructure remained. Technology remained. Yet... most things were... homogenised. Every home had power, now. And a functional sewerage system that turned waste into energy, with the byproduct being a truly efficient fertiliser.

Extinct and endangered animals were flourishing, once more.

The population was strangely homogenised, too. People were scattered liberally all over population centres. Except for a group of radical haters who wanted the people they hated to be put on islands. They all wound up on one, very isolated island with everything they needed to survive. And a message that read good luck in all known languages.

The rest of the planet got the Stelae. No matter who looked at it, they could read it. Small children and the illiterate saw pictograms. But everyone understood. They were rules of behaviour.

Be good to this planet.

Look after the plants and animals.

Look after each other.

Help those who need it.

Give to those who don't have.

Let those who choose to breed do so, but have no more than four children.

You are being monitored. You are naughty pets.

There was a purple snowflake on the moon. In retrospect, Earth's problems were just beginning.

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