It was late at night, Noah had just been kicked out from a restaurant after another failed date. People began to yell out and point to the sky as the ground started to vibrate and the wind began to howl. As he looked up, he noticed that something was falling from the sky almost straight towards him. It was large enough to blot out the city entirely.

Noah was so startled that he fell backward onto the ground. He then began to wonder if he'd drank too much at the bar. As Noah sat on the floor, he took a lazy look around him, noticing that people were running and screaming in all directions. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glowing Amber butterfly land on a metal trash-can down an alleyway before it disappeared. He rubbed his eyes as he looked again, but it was gone.

"Noah..."

Noah thought that he faintly heard his name called out before the sound was overwhelmed by startled cries, accompanied by the screech of car tires braking hard on the asphalt shortly followed the sound of a collision as a car rammed into the back of another vehicle.

Noah turned his head in a drunken stupor to watch a crowd gather around an unfortunate woman. She had been crossing the street in front of a car that had stopped to allow the woman to cross the street before being rear-ended by a distracted driver. When he looked again, the unconscious woman was gone while the onlookers stood around in bewilderment.

"I must be going crazy. I guess today is nobody's lucky day," Noah muttered to himself before inhaling deeply.

While closing his eyes in an attempt to stop the world from spinning unsteadily, he then lay back onto the pavement. Noah decided it was a good idea to fully enjoy his last moments alive before he got crushed into a pulp by whatever that 'thing' in the sky was. A while later, when his expected end never came, Noah decided to peek through one of his eyelids only to discover that the thing in the sky didn't seem to be getting any closer.

He climbed up off the ground then dusted himself off, seeing that he was the only person still on this street. Noah could still hear people yelling and alarms going off in the distance. While Noah stood there wondering how he should react, the alien object began to emit a soothing hum that calmed his panic. Noah looked up to see countless specks of small glowing light, faintly pulsing, raining down from the sky.

When one of the specks landed on his upturned face, it passed through his skin as if it wasn't there, turning into a wave of light. It was still visible as it passed through his body, stopping at the base of his skull. Where it settled, Noah felt a warm, comfortable, itching sensation. The rest of the night and what happened after was a blur.

***

The next morning he awoke with the worst hangover of his life. He rolled out of bed, tangling himself in the sheet before landing on the floor with a thud letting out a groan while grabbing his head. Noah felt something poking into him underneath his arm.

"It must've been a dream. It felt so real…" Noah muttered to himself as he picked up an empty bottle of alcohol to inspect it.

It's the bottle of top-shelf whiskey that I was gifted for my birthday a few years ago that I was saving for a special occasion. It's completely empty. No wonder I'm a mess.

He glanced at his alarm clock beside the bed to see that it was past mid-day. He placed the empty bottle beside the clock before picking himself up off the floor. He then made his way towards the bathroom before turning on the shower and getting in before it had time to heat up.

After he got out of the shower, he stood in front of the mirror as he reflected on what had happened the night before. At dinner, Noah's date had disappeared in the middle of their meal. He assumed with the bartender.

Noah's date had politely told him how she knew the bartender from school and hadn't seen each other in years. They spoke together about old times while waiting for him to arrive, the bartender's shift was about to end. He had finished eating dinner alone before proceeding to get blackout drunk at the bar. The rest of the night didn't make much sense after that. He could only vaguely recall his fall to the ground, but the rest was too far-fetched to be real.

"I'm not that bad looking, am I?" Noah asked himself as he touched his face while looking at his reflection. He was of average height and looks, not particularly ugly or attractive. His appearance was completely unnoteworthy.

What actually happened last night? Nothing makes sense. I mean, I even opened up that bottle of whiskey I'd been saving and well... that's not like me at all.

Noah quickly got dressed before heading for the kitchen.

There was the sound of glass breaking as he dropped the glass of water he had been holding as he stood staring agape out the window to see the strange floating object in the sky. Noah thought he had dreamed up the spaceship, which was floating conspicuously outside his window. Faint prismatic lights would appear then fade away in a random sequence over the object's surface, forming intricate patterns, creating a mesmerizing effect.

***

That had all happened about an hour ago. Noah let out what is probably his one-thousandth sigh in the past hour. He discovered that all TV stations are reporting on the unidentified objects in the sky. They had stirred up a lot of extreme weather around the globe after their arrival and still hadn't attempted contact with humanity. People everywhere were going into a panic, saying that the end of the world had come with some religious communities calling them gods or demons.

"The government suggests that all civilians remain at home or somewhere indoors until they can ascertain the intentions of the alien spacecraft which entered the Earth's stratosphere yesterday at approximately eight o'clock in the evening local time."

"They have maintained an altitude of roughly thirty thousand meters above sea level without any activity after their initial arrival. Analysts have determined that they appeared above all cities with a large concentration of people. We have yet to be able to open communication with our extraterrestrial visitors. All world military forces are on standby…"

Noah turned off the TV that had been playing the news. It was the same on every channel. He stood up then looked out the window to see the towering smooth vertical metallic object that seemed to reflect the sky around it covered in flickering lights. The mysterious object hovered quietly in the sky high above the city, with military aircraft frantically flying below it, looking like small dots in comparison.

"What a bunch of nonsense, they're probably not much different from us. Only a lot more advanced," Noah muttered to himself.

Noah had just moved to the city and met some new people the week before on a night out, who had invited him out to lunch then shown him around the city. He was initially supposed to meet his new friends for lunch today, hoping to get some sympathy about how poorly his date went. But now the government was urging people to stay home. It looked like he had to change his plans. He opened the front door to the street to leave.

I don't want to stay home when this could be the end of the world.

As he pulled the door closed behind him, just as the object in the sky began to emit a deep baritone that caused even the air to shake. Noah looked up at the sky to witness the unidentified object begin to pump out a thick cloud from its base. He covered his ears then quickly ran back inside to switch on the TV, the news reporter was covering her ears yelling, but he couldn't hear what she was trying to say.

The news station showed footage from all around the world where all the alien spacecraft emitted the same noise as the objects were about to disappear from view behind the strange cloud cover. The lights on the mysterious object's surface all lit up at once, illuminating the clouds in hues of red, creating a fiery effect throughout the skyline.

He looked out the window just in time to see a pulse of light pass through the clouds towards the ground before expanding outwards. Noah saw the investigating aircraft outside his window begin to fall in slow motion after the pulse touched them. The pulse wave was still moving towards the city with no sign of slowing its expansion.

"Shit!" Noah let out a curse as he ran towards the table before throwing himself headfirst under it.

A second later, the pulse passed through his house, destroying his windows and doors before passing under the table where he was hiding. The air felt different, thick, and clean. There was also a static tingling sensation along his skin. The Baritone from earlier was still there, but it had become muted into the background. The air felt like being in deep water whenever Noah moved. He swished his hand randomly in front of his face.

"What the…"

As Noah was talking to himself, he felt a rumble come from deep underground as the dust began to descend from the ceiling covering all the furniture, while blanketing the floor beside him. Then suddenly, everything became still as he became paralyzed in place. A voice that didn't use words started to speak inside his mind.

[System user's now online.]

[Training district designation: Earth in effect.]

[Advanced aboriginal technology has now been disabled.]

[Trial phase will now begin.]