(Author's Note: written for the SciFriday - Mandela Effect challenge - May 2024)

Everyone remembers the day the aliens came, right? The parades, the fireworks, that image of the President greeting them from the steps of the White House, hand outstretched with a welcoming smile on his face. The King, waving from the balcony at Buckingham Palace.

And why not? They came promising an end to the climate crisis. They had the technology to solve our problems. No need to close the coal mines, no need to stop pumping gas. Big business loved them. Even the environmentalists were happy as soon as they saw the air clear and the plastic disappear from the oceans.

No one thought it strange that they looked like us. Once the rumour got round that we were a lost colony, separated from the home world thousands of years ago, there was no stopping their ascendancy. The arguments raised by some of the world's indigenous peoples were brushed aside.

Everyone remembers that day, right?

Well... not everyone. Some of us have a different memory. A vision of slender grey beings descending from the skies in waves, carrying machines which sprayed a blinding beam of light over every person they encountered. A vision of those few who resisted being vaporised in a puff of pink smoke.

Some of us can see the thick grey smog still hanging over our cities, the plastic fragments washing up on the shores, at least...I hope so.  There must be more of us.

I can't be the only one, can I?