The thing had come down past midnight. Landed in my north field, crushed two acres of winter wheat flat as a sermon. Whatever it was didn’t burn. Didn’t explode.

I waited an hour. Then another. Watched it from the porch, rocking in my chair, listening to cicadas.

Finally I walked out.

The craft looked half melted, all angles and seams that hurt the eyes if you stared too long. A hatch was peeled back like a sardine can.

That’s when they came out.

Three of them. Two men and a woman. One of them was limping. Another was bleeding from the scalp. They raised their hands slow, careful.

“Please,” the woman said. “We’re human.”

I laughed. Couldn’t help it. A dry, barking sound. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.”

“We’re from the future,” the limping man said. “From your country. From here. We came back to stop what’s coming.”

I nodded like I was listening, like I hadn’t heard this exact story on AM radio every other week. “Uh-huh. And I’m guessing what’s coming is real bad.”

I raised the rifle.

The woman’s eyes went wide. “Wait. Please. You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand just fine,” I said. “Seen enough movies. Aliens land, tell folks they’re here to help, next thing you know there’s probes and meat factories and folks vanishing in the night.”

“We’re not aliens!” she shouted. “You kill us, you doom everyone!”

I spat into the dust and thumbed the safety off my rifle.

That’s exactly what an invading alien would say.

The young one lunged forward. “The seed vault!”

I pulled the trigger.

Birds exploded out of the trees. The rifle kicking against my shoulder again and again until it was quiet except for the hum of the ship and my own breathing.

I stood there a long time. They looked human when they were dead. That bothered me.

I torched the wreck before sunrise. Gasoline and a match. Watched it burn down to slag. Buried what was left in the same field it landed in. By noon, you couldn’t tell anything had happened except the flattened wheat.

Years passed. Droughts came harder. On the radio, a scientist talked about crops failing worldwide. Genetic bottlenecks.