There was no warning. One day, the sky was empty, the next brimful with hulking oblong shapes.

They made no announcement. There was no effort whatsoever at communication. For several months, they simply floated there, fixed in space, as though frozen in time.

Efforts were made, of course, to contact them. Invisible signals in every frequency, at the highest possible strength, were fired continuously into low orbit, where the strange flotilla waited patiently. There was no response.

Physical efforts were also made to reach out. Satellites were diverted from their orbit and turned, to and fro, to signal with reflected sunlight upon glistening solar panels. Rockets fired into the skies, first with drones aboard, then with people – but the silent visitors did not so much as flinch.

Their vessels were perfectly smooth upon close inspection. It did not, after all, offend them to have us land upon their surface. Men walked up and down the gleaming hulls, looking for points of entry, tapping and knocking – and eventually applying jackhammers, plasma cutters, high powered lasers – anything to illicit a response.

Eventually, patience frayed, and the tone of our messaging hardened. Inquiries turned to threats, threats to attacks. Rockets were replaced with missiles – at first conventional, then nuclear. High above cities, crammed with frightened citizens, the skies at night glowed iridescent with radioactive sheen as we hurled our feckless bombs.

But it was all to no avail. Our most powerful weapons merely singed them – like eyebrows burned off leaning too close to a campfire. No meaningful damage was caused, and still, they floated there, silent, implacable.

It is amazing what can be got used to. Even this, it turned out. Things, slowly, unbelievably, returned to a kind of normal. Life continued, now with a sky littered with fixed attendees, watching, perhaps? Waiting. For what, I can only now guess.

When guards were well and truly down, the collections began.

Enormous vessels, crawling along the ground, taller than skyscrapers. We caught only photographs of them. No one ever saw one in person, because in their wake, as if on cue, whole populations would fall asleep. Imagine, cities of people, millions upon millions, asleep, of a sudden, inexplicably. The same for those sent to save them – brigades, flotillas, air force wings, all, upon entering a certain radius of these strange machines, sent to the soundest of sleeps. Fighter jets falling through the air, battleships careening into port, tanks rolling forward, unstoppably, through silent homes.

Then, at night always, the machines, presumably, went to work – and work they did, quite efficiently, so that, in the morning, not a body remained, nor a single sign of any activity beyond our own nocturnal stumblings.

So it played out, that way, for several weeks. Once a night, somewhere in the world, a city would sleep and its occupants would disappear – presumably, taken. Those of us watching, waited in a kind of fugue state of anxious horror. Conversations between friends would defy belief even as its participants took place in them. They took Rio, yesterday. St. Petersburg was taken last night. Lots of free real estate in New York City, I guess.

And always, no matter what, silence from our abductors. Total, unremitting silence.

Until, just as suddenly as they had arrived, one day, they left. Again, not a word, not a signal, nothing. They came, took, by some estimates, 10% of us, and left. The only thing equal to its tragedy was its strangeness.

Now we’re left to pick up pieces and try to explain, which many have set out to do. There are countless theories, many of them ballooning into full on religious cults.

Personally, I think there are only a few plausible ones and, though perhaps this is only a measure of my cynicism, I only really believe one, which has best been summarized as follows:

When a soldier reloads his rifle, he does not waste breath speaking to his ammunition.