Ashley Manning

The following was originally published on ‘The Daily Update’ website on the 14th July 2025. I have copied it here verbatim:

First Contact – written by Samantha Collins

By this point, most of you know my name, although you didn’t before this whole thing started. You know the message that I was told, but you don’t know everything. I was just as shocked as everyone else when the word got to me that I was chosen to speak with them – the visitors from outer space. I’m sure we all remember, but when that ship arrived above London everything changed. It was a scary time, and no one knew what was going to happen next. The world seemed to stop. Wars ended, elections were called off, people stopped going to work. It’s been two months since then and I still don’t think things are back to normal.

When they first contacted us, speaking our own languages, the shock started anew. Then they made their single demand. To speak to me. I’m not even a journalist, just a glorified secretary, who dreams of more. I didn’t know why they chose me and was just as surprised as everyone reading this. They sent their broadcast down, asking for me to come aboard, without ever showing their faces. They knew my name, date of birth, address. They knew everything about me, but I knew nothing about them. All at once my life was turned upside down. I was taken by the army to a base in the middle of nowhere and awaited further instructions. I was briefed, prodded, and questioned by everyone from the lowest ranks to the highest, and everyone in between. There was a sense that I was untrustworthy, that I was in on plot to topple humanity.

Then the day arrived, and I was taken, as instructed by the visitors, to stand alone in the middle of a specific field, just south of London. I stood in the middle, feeling foolish and scared, as people watched from a pre-determined distance. This was it, I thought, this is how I die. But they didn’t want to kill me, they had a message for everyone, that they wanted to be sent from one person. Their ship lowered itself from the skies and hovered above the field. The noise was immense, and I could barely stand with the air bellowing around me. A small ramp was lowered from the ship, and at the top I could see the silhouettes of two of them. There was a bellowing voice, shouting at me to join them.

Beyond the pictures that were leaked online, against the visitors wishes, that showed the ship in the field, me walking up that welcome ramp, there’s no other pictures of what they look like. Absolutely no one else has seen them up close and personal like I have. When I walked up that ramp I had no warning, no ideas at all. They look like us, just perfected versions of humans. Their skin is flawless, their eyes look deep and meaningful, their hair luxurious, their bodies, beautiful. They were like Gods, and we are flawed copies of them. Throughout the ship I saw nothing but pure excellence, everyone looked incredible, and there were no faults to be seen. They told me later that they had found the cure to everything while we were still raging wars with spears and swords.

I was lead through their ship, through the snaking corridors that seems to have no end, until I reached a small office room. At this point none of them had said a word to me, the ones we passed didn’t even seem to care that I was there. I was left to sit in the room, on a single chair that was next to a table with a glass of water on it. I was left in the room by myself for a few moments, until a new one joined us. He walked over to me, stood on the other side of the table, towering above me, his eyes warm and welcoming. They were all wearing a sort of uniform, but his was the first one I got to really study. It was a light blue jumpsuit that covered him from his toes to his neck, and his hands. It didn’t leave much to the imagination. “Hello, Samantha” was the first thing he said to me and it felt like I’d known him all my life. I wasn’t allowed to take a camera, but I was allowed an old-style voice recorder that had a little tape in it to get his words down exactly. Someone else brought in a chair for him and then he sat down to start speaking.

“I want you to be comfortable for your stay here with us while I explain to you what we’re doing here. I won’t take long, I just have a message from my people that we need to share. My name is Marcellus, and I am from this planet in the same way that you are. We share a common ancestor. Thousands and thousands of years ago our people left this planet, in search of more. We were naïve in our ways and left some people behind in hopes that they would look after the planet for our return. At one point in time, before your current histories record, you were more advanced than you are even now. At that point the planet was split into two classes, those above, the Supra and those below, the Infra. The Supra thought they had more intelligent thought, more cultured ways, and thought themselves superior to the Infra. They were wrong about this. The only difference truly was their birthplace and privilege. Those above wanted for nothing, those below toiled for everything and therefore had nothing. My people made plans to explore the far reaches of the universe, and ships were built, smaller than the one you are currently sat within, but still of great design. There was one final meeting between the leaders of the two people, and it was decided that those of below would take the places of the above and retain leadership of the planet.

The Supra believed this would allow the Infra to evolve and one day they would belong alongside them amongst the stars. They were wrong. As Marcellus explained, their ancestors left Earth in the hands of people who were less fortunate than themselves. The Supra had mistakenly thought that they were better than the people living in poverty, but all that anger and resentment within the Infra continued, even as they were given power. Weapons beyond even our imagination. While the Supra left the Earth in search for new horizons, they left a satellite that would monitor the Earth as it was left and report it to the mothership. They watched as the Infra demolished themselves with weapons more powerful than our biggest nuclear weapons. They sent the human race into a new dark age and what all that we know as history was born from that time. We quickly forgot about those who had left the planet, and replaced them with religious iconography that in itself caused more wars.

This is a lot to take in and it’s hard to believe that Marcellus is telling the truth, but he showed me with a viewing screen on the wall the history of our planet. The pyramids being built, the crusades, death, hunger, poverty, unspeakable wealth, art, culture, joy, sorrow. He showed me every aspect of life through drones the size and shape of flies that had roamed about on Earth for millennia capturing our every movement and action. The best and worst of us all scrolled past on a screen and I had no choice but to believe that what he was showing me was true. The inner most secret moments of some of the most important people to have lived in our histories were acted out in front of me like reality TV. It was scary to watch, but it was undeniably real.

The Supra left us to continue destroying ourselves, in the hope that we would eventually learn to mature and protect the planet that we were living on. On their travels, through generations of research and discovery, they also learnt that they were no different to the Infra they had left on Earth. As the centuries passed, teachings were passed down about how those left on Earth were lesser, but people started to question that once they met other cultures and civilisations. They realised that the people they had left behind were no different to those who had gone.

So the big question, and I’m sure you’ve already heard this part of the message before, is why did they come back now? Well, that’s pretty simple. The world is dying and they’re here with a warning. The Earth is on the brink of collapse and in the next few years we won’t be able to live what we know as normal lives. They want to help, but they have some targets that we need to achieve, that I have listed at the end of this article. If we achieve these, they will come back in ten years and take us away from Earth to new planets and new possibilities. If we don’t achieve it all then they won’t come back. When Marcellus said this to me, asking me to pass on the message to every living being on the planet, there was no malice in his words. This wasn’t a threat, just advice. After that he offered me some food and water and then I was taken back to Earth, my home for all of my life, and taken into the Government’s security to answer questions and go through what had happened on the ship over and over and over again. I’ve repeated everything that was told to me more times than I can count, and I’m sure that will make up a large part of my near future.

What I have to say to everyone reading this, is to take his words seriously. This is our time to act and to heed the Supra’s warning. The world is changing and we are not acting quick enough to adapt. Their targets for us to achieve are:

· End all wars

· Put a stop to world hunger, as there’s so much food that is wasted

· Lessen the gap between wealth and poverty and show that we can live side-by-side

We have ten years to achieve this. To prove that we are capable of living out there with other species and planets. This is their aim for us. It’s up to us whether we take their hand or fend off the inevitable by ourselves. The choice is ours to make.

***

I wrote the above twenty years today. Where has the time gone? The years have flown by. I’m sure anyone reading this, if there’s anyone still reading, will already know what’s happened. I’m not even sure why I’m writing. I suppose it’s just to get it off my chest and put things in order. I’m a wannabe writer – it’s what I do. Maybe some time in the future, if some of us survive, then this will be a document of how we lived. I doubt it though. I have a feeling there’s not many of us left, and I’m getting closer and closer to running out of everything.

They allowed me to write the story and publish it through the website that I worked for as a secretary in their makeshift London office. For a moment there was a lot of debate about whether the government would let me, after all it spelled out the doom of our planet. There were talks to keep everything top secret and basically write a fluff piece to keep everyone calm and keep the demands as a need to know basis. In the end, with the Supra ship still looming above us, it was decided it was best to keep everything public. Well almost everything. They made the initial warning public from Government sources and then I was allowed to write about it.

Probably the biggest question I’ve been asked over the years is: why me? My routine answer was that it was because I worked for news company, and they chose me at random. Anything beyond and anyone’s guess was as good as mine. But that isn’t true. Marcellus had chosen me specifically because we were distantly related. When he told me that we shared a common ancestor – yes, he was talking about the whole human race and the Infra people, but he was also talking about me and him. We were both related to the same people, from the same bloodline. It was just as strange to think about then as it is now. I don’t quite know why I wasn’t allowed to share that part of the story. Maybe they thought it was unbelievable, maybe they saw it as proof, or maybe they thought it would mean that I got special treatment. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s related to one of them directly, but Marcellus was in charge of that ship and he chose me.

Going up there was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life and I had nightmares and panic attacks about it for years afterwards. I didn’t mention in the article how scared I was, or that I couldn’t hold a glass of water for the rest of the day once I was back. Or the uncontrollable crying fits that I had, but it’s all true and genuinely scary.

But anyway. That’s not what I wanted to write about, at least not completely. I wanted to write about what happened after. I’m going to think like I’m writing for someone who has found this in the future. Someone who doesn’t understand what happened. I know that no one is reading this blog anymore the numbers have dwindled and not one of my posts has had a single hit in weeks. I think we’re dying out, but I still have the compulsion to write.

So, I’ll begin by saying that everything was quite normal up until the Supra arrived. People were scared about climate change, wars, and everything else you’d expect. But not that much was done about it. There were loud people, but just as many loud people saying it didn’t matter. None of that mattered anyway when the people in control just didn’t want to make actual change. Then they arrived and everything changed. It was outsiders telling us that our days were numbered, and they gave us those ten years to react and change.

How did we spend that decade? Not well, that’s for sure. People dismissed the whole thing as a hoax, while others saw it as validation for their beliefs. People were scared, to the point that it was unsafe to go outside. Shops were ransacked, with nothing left on the shelf. When shops tried to put limits on what people could buy, they just looted anyway. Every night was filled with protests and riots and a lot of people died. Then it started to level out a bit. We realised that whether their warning was true or not, we still had to live our lives to some degree. Countries made alliances, food was distributed, so was medicine. It seemed like there was some good being done.

But for every good thing that happened, there were tons of bad things. Small self-governed communities popping up in the UK, and pretty much everywhere else in the world, not wanting to go along with the so called ‘New World Order’. Conspiracy theorists were online at every opportunity spouting out pure nonsense until it spiralled into such a mess that you had to be genuinely mental to believe it, and yet people did. People genuinely believed it was a hoax by the world governments to keep people in their place and it was all a big de-population scheme by getting people to line up to be taken by the Supra. Where in actuality they were just lining up to be slaughtered. For some reason, with these nutjobs online, it never occurred to them that the people who believed the narrative would be the ones the Government would want to keep alive because why would they want the conspiracy theorists to survive?

Anyway, those people caused a lot of damage, but they weren’t the weirdest thing to happen. There were religions all over the world that were facing proof that what they believed wasn’t real. If what the Supra said was true, then they pre-dated all known religious text and that meant that the religions couldn’t be real. There was debate about this on every level for months, but on the anniversary of first contact, there was a mass suicide at a church in America, and then other mass suicides across the world followed shortly afterwards. Their lives shattered, people just decided to end it instead even though that would be a sin. Those pictures that spread around online of bodies just lined up in the pews were horrible and it was happening every day. Then other people were forming groups to say that this was a test of faith and everything would make sense in the end.

The Supra ship stayed above London for about a week after they made contact and they didn’t say another word to us after I left. At least, as far as I’m aware they didn’t say a word. They left and a new normality started. Over the next two years progress was slow on the grand scale. As much progress as there seemed in the news, everyone knew that there were tensions on a grand scale. There were some countries who outright refused to believe it was real. No one wanted to believe that were facing certain death, but some people just wouldn’t budge. As tensions started to rise in certain parts of the world, their armies grew larger and then over something as stupid as a political leader dying in a plane crash, war broke out in Europe. Nuclear war broke out. As the first bombs hit, wiping out so much life, the rest of the world was left stunned. It didn’t last long, but it was done. That was the last large-scale war, but other countries started to fight each other on smaller scales.

After that I don’t think there was any hope that we would achieve the goals within the target timeframe. Around the world governments started preparing for the worst and in secret bunkers were designed that could withstand nuclear weapons as well as anything that affected the climate above ground. People were chosen to live in them and as temperatures started to rise beyond liveable conditions in the years that followed, letters were sent out to tell people where to go. It was a mass culling; except this time, it was planned. Not surprisingly the conspiracy theorists weren’t chosen to survive.

On a personal level, my life was never the same after going onto the ship. I was interviewed by every major publication, went on a tour of the world being on every news TV show imaginable. I appeared on so many podcasts I lost count. Web shows, UN meetings, climate control summits, even UFO conventions. I was everywhere because I was told I had to be. Under no uncertain terms was I allowed to say no to any of these things and it pretty much killed me. I was running on fumes and autopilot within weeks and that period of my life lasted a lot longer than I would have wanted it to. What it did mean, was that I was able to survive. I was chosen to have my own personal bunker, built just outside the village my parents lived in before they died. I was taken there by military personnel and locked inside, an impenetrable bunker, with enough supplies to last thirty years. There was a belief that the Earth would realign itself and we would be able to return to the surface within that timeframe. That’s if the Supra didn’t return for us before then. I was also given daily briefings with people from other bunkers, calls that allowed me to speak to people and continue to answer the same questions over and over and over about the Supra. This blog was also set up, so people could follow me and I could spread more propaganda about how everything was going to be okay. I was seen as a knowledgeable source, mainly because people still believed I was in contact with the Supra, but I wasn’t. I’ve not heard from them since that day on the ship, and I don’t think they’ve ever returned to Earth. On a side-note, those calls stopped about six months ago and beyond this blog I’ve had no contact with the outside world since. I don’t know how many people are still alive, and I don’t know if anyone would even be able to access this.

While inside the bunker, I’ve had access to the news. I’ve watched as the temperatures rose, freak weather events became the norm, more people were dying. Illnesses were getting spread around more and more often and were becoming deadlier. That’s without mentioning things like the crime rate going up, home invasions becoming a common occurrence, the police numbers dwindling and even the army wasn’t enough to keep control on the streets. Assassinations were almost daily at one point. Now the news isn’t updated very often, and everything seems to be quiet. I don’t even remember the last time I heard from the outside world. Maybe I’m the only one left.

One of the stranger things I’ve seen happen is people starting to worship the Supra. That happened quite quickly, but it’s become more prevalent as the years have gone on. No one but me saw them in person, but they all have this idea of what they looked like, how tall they were, or how they spoke. No matter how many times I’ve told the story they make up their own anyway. People started to make signs to show to them, praising them and wishing they would come back. People put flies up on a pedestal, treated them as holy animals. They prayed to the Supra, made statues of them, and turned abandoned holy buildings into shrines. It’s strange to see, but I do understand it. None of it has had any good in the long term. I’ve been in the bunker now for fourteen years and they’ve not shown any signs of coming back. We failed the task, became more divided and more selfish. We’ve just got to make best with what time we have left.

A few years ago now, it must have been at least six years ago I can’t find the exact post, I wrote about my daily routine. Which is largely the same. I get up, shower, exercise, eat, read, write, wait for communications and then eat some more, exercise before bed and then repeat. It’s boring, routine, and keeps me sane. If I didn’t have tasks to complete, even something simple as reading a hundred pages a day, then I would go insane. Thank God, of maybe I should be thanking the Supra, that I have a tablet with more books than I could read in a lifetime downloaded onto it. I don’t know how the power is kept on down here, so if you’re reading this in the future then you’ll have to figure that out. I’m not an electrician or a scientist.

I do think things are getting worse though. I don’t have a way to get out of the bunker as the codes have never been given to me. I was told I would receive them in a transmission when it was safe to leave, but that transmission hasn’t arrived. It’s been months since I started writing this post, writing a little bit here and there, and in that time I’ve had no contact with the outside world. All communication channels are empty. Sometimes I think that I was selfish to take the opportunity to stay in here. Maybe the Supra did come back and take everyone else away. Or maybe everyone is dead, and I’ll be dead soon. I’m definitely getting tired.

Anyway. That’s me signing off, probably for the last time.

Samantha