The Harvest

• A quiet dream of gathering and ascent.

Newly built family houses on the edge of the village jut into the surrounding landscape like freshly polished growths on a yellowed bone.

It is a warm summer day. I stand in the garden with my back to our house—a simple white rectangle with a black gabled roof and windows framed in orange.

The garden is young; the trees and shrubs have only just begun to take root. There is still no fence, and so it sometimes happens that wild animals wander in from the fields. Roe deer. Hares. And occasionally a wheezing dog from the other end of the village, drawn here by a neighbor’s bitch in heat.

My gaze glides along the horizon—beyond the rolling fields stretches a dense wall of deciduous forest, trembling in the wind like a drunken membrane. The grass beneath my feet is a deep, saturated green, yet the light of the day is flat, and the sky above sinks into a uniform grayish haze. I feel like an ant inside a miniature village sealed beneath a dome, into which a narcotic gas is being released.

Both of our dogs run around the house, alternately burying their snouts in the grass and scanning the horizon. Suddenly a roe deer is standing beside me. A short distance away, a hare hops nervously. And from the fields more animals approach—more deer and hares, but also massive stags, cows, wild cats, even something that resembles a lion and a cheetah.

The deer and hares are not afraid of me. I am not afraid of the big cats. Our dogs remain calm. And it seems that, in the end, no one is afraid of anyone.

Before long, neighbors and other people from the area begin to gather around our house as well. Some sit down in the grass and start to pray. Perhaps they fall into a trance. Everyone—people and animals alike—coexists here and now in a peaceful symbiosis.

The idyll does not last. From behind the house, a sharp white light begins to well up. The dazzling radiance slowly spreads from its epicenter into a heavenly haze and rises upward with ominous intent. It wraps the silhouette of the house in a razor-bright outline, as well as everything not currently lying in its long shadow.

The gentle soundscape of the countryside is overwhelmed by a pulsating mechanical noise emerging from the same source. It resembles the cutting whine of rotors, accompanied by deep vibrations that set the surrounding vegetation trembling.

From the white glare behind the house, a rounded metallic object shoots out—only slightly smaller than our home. It appears massive, yet it glides through the air with surprising ease. Dark-toned, with a subtle olive hue, polished like a spoon, the world smearing across its surface into a dull abstraction. It arcs over the fields, over the garden, then descends above the cluster of animals in a single sharp, graceful maneuver.

The glossy underside of the flying object opens organically, and from it two black tentacles lash out. One coils around the torso of a cow, the other around a roe deer. Both animals vanish into its interior.

I grab both of our dogs and run toward the front door. The aerial harvester streaks over my head, past the house, back into the light. A brief shockwave follows it, sliding along my spine.

I carry the dogs inside, tell my terrified wife to stay indoors with them. I tell her I have to go back out—I am frightened, but my curiosity is stronger than any fear.

I run back into the garden. People and animals are now levitating above the ground, slowly—very slowly—rising upward. Every single one of them is dulled, limbs hanging slack into space like rag dolls. The eyes—of both people and animals—are rolled inward into their skulls, leaving only whites veined with blood visible.

I walk among those bodies like a child weaving through helium balloons. The white glow is gone. The mechanical sound is gone as well. Blades of grass are stretched taut toward the sky, as if longing to follow the levitating community. With every step, the grass organically wraps around my leg. From the pockets of one levitating man, fine white sand pours out—slowly, endlessly.

And then the mechanical sound returns—exploding directly into my ears, flooding the entire landscape like an aggressive sonic wave, knocking me to my knees. The white glare rolls out from behind the house in all directions, burning my eyes.<>

Above my head, the silhouette of the aerial harvester floats in the white haze. The limp bodies continue to rise toward the sky. The house is suddenly very far away. And I cannot move.

From within the harvester, a tentacle bursts forth. Its tip splits into six agile tendrils and clamps onto my head.

It latches on like an octopus, covering my eyes.

I drown in pitch-black darkness and feel myself being pulled upward by my head, nearly snapping my neck.

My feet lift off the ground.

I feel myself drifting away from our house, from our garden. From my wife and our dogs.

The air rushing past me at an impossible speed slowly cools and thins.