Starlight: The Dawn of Silver

Chapter 1 The Secret Council

Forty Years later     Atlantic City

The atmosphere of the city was quite tense today, with many Kalalusian soldiers and vehicles standing guard in the streets. All public buildings were shut down after noon and everyone was expected to be in their houses by nightfall. This is very good news for the workers and students, who were very excited by this rare break. But for businesses and companies, half a day off could mean disaster.

The city had changed since forty years ago, when the Kalalusian Army invaded Earth without warning. They just seem to drop out of the sky all of a sudden and took over the entire planet in a matter of days, or as the Kalalusians themselves claimed. Now, after millions of years, the Earth finally had a new dominator, the Kalalusians. Atlantic City was one of the main battlefields in the short war. After humans surrendered, Kalalusians placed their main headquarters in the center of the city, as a mockery to the human civilization. During these years, most of the fancy malls and restaurants were forced to shut down, mainly because there were no costumers. They then turned the city into a mass factory and a construction pit, digging huge holes into the earth’s crust outside the city. The once “brilliant” city was now a working field. Almost every other city throughout the globe faced the same fate.

Kalalusians were strange about their reign. They neither massacred nor exiled the human civilization, which they often did to other planets and galaxies. Instead, they chose to enslave or more accurately, observe humans with great interest. However, the old human way of life was limited and Kalalusian culture was introduced. One of the biggest changes was probably that all forms of money were abandoned, for the Kalalusians only used food, clothing and shelter to pay the humans for their work. Kalalusians also arranged everyone’s jobs. Those with higher intelligence get better jobs indoors; those who were strong were sent to laboratories to become a test product of some sort of research; the rest, from age fifteen and up to do all the harsh and dangerous outdoor jobs that only the strongest were able to survive. This meant that a large amount of people, especially the old and sick were worked to death every day.  And for the first time in the entire history of mankind, the rich and the powerful were working side-by-side with the other slave workers, doing dirty jobs they consider will foul their “noble” hands.

Kalalusians forbade humans to learn history, practice any religion or celebrate any traditional holiday. The Kalalusians also tried to ban the human culture from their daily lives. However, they found out that it was unnecessary, for humans themselves had already destroyed most of their tradition and culture before the Kalalusians took over. Even important holidays such as Christmas and New Year were just an excuse for holidays and an opportunity for business profits. Therefore, this made it easy for the Kalalusians to rule over mankind;  they didn't have to reverse the concept of the humans which they had to do when conquering other civilizations.

Kalalusians didn’t introduce many of their traditions, mostly because they didn't really have a strong culture, either. History though, wasn’t tolerated. All history before the Kalalusian reign was erased and rewritten. This made many Earthians believe that they have lived under the Kalalusian rule from the beginning of time, especially the new generation. Humans were allowed to study their language, but the Kalalusian language was permitted at school and became the official language. Many humans still preferred the old language, though they also learned to speak Kalalusian. It wasn’t actually very hard and surprisingly, the Kalalusian language shared many similarities with the language on Earth.

 Kalalusians split the human population into three levels, similar to their own hierarchy. The top level was the Intours. The middle level was the Paonor. The last level was the Sularver. This caused a lot of rivalry and hatred in the enslaved humanpopulation. By doing this, Kalalusians cleverly turned humans against each other, making it impossible for any signs of rebellion. Many humans, mostly from the top level of society, worked with the Kalalusians, acting either as spies or helped the Kalalusians in their mysterious research.  They feared their own kind more than they fear the Kalalusians, knowing what their fate would be when humans one day regained freedom and sentenced them to treason. So, they relied greatly on the Kalalusians, even if it meant killing and torturing their own kind.