They had found Earth. And they had not invaded it. They had healed it.
The military was the first to officially surrender, though the declaration was less a treaty and more a viral video of a gunnery sergeant weeping tears of joy as a Puffball nuzzled his boot.
We never found their ship. We never found their leaders. Perhaps there were none.
The invasion was complete. And no one wanted it to end. On Day 14, Dr. Elena Vasquez, the last holdout scientist hiding in an underground bunker in the Arctic, finally cracked the Puffball genome. She stared at her screen for a long time, then laughed bitterly. Cute Invaders
You didn’t fight a Puffball. You adopted it.
Love me. And in return, I will teach you how to be happy again.
They weren’t conquerors. They were refugees . They had found Earth
We absolutely did.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.” It’s been three years since the Cute Invasion. Humanity still exists, but it’s different now. We work less. We sleep more. We spend afternoons lying in parks, watching Puffballs bounce like happy, weightless clouds. Cities have been reclaimed by moss and flowers, because no one has the heart to mow a lawn where a Puffball might be napping.
Factories shut down not because of strikes, but because workers kept bringing their Puffballs to the assembly line, and productivity ground to a halt as people stopped to watch the creatures chase laser pointers across conveyor belts. Governments convened emergency sessions, but the representatives couldn’t focus—their own Puffballs were sleeping on the tables, curled into perfect, breathing spheres. The military was the first to officially surrender,
And we did.
Within seventy-two hours of the first landing, 34% of the global population had voluntarily let a Puffball into their homes. They built tiny beds in shoeboxes. They fed them sugar water from eyedroppers. They cooed.
Mrs. Albright blinked back.