Visions of a Dark Horizon

This flash fiction piece made the final round in the 2010 Escape Artists national fiction contest.

European astronomers saw it first; a dim, cobalt-blue star with a color and position that made it immediately clear that it was something new and different.

It was little more than a curiosity at first – not many people took notice until it began to steadily grow brighter, soon visible to amateur star gazers, and within a month it was clearly visible to the naked eye on clear nights, a blazing blue beacon shimmering in the evening sky. That’s when the fears began to spread, slowly and quietly in office gossip and coffee shop discussion. ‘What if’ became the question that everyone – and no one – wanted answered.

A week later the first clear images from Hubble were released, splashed across every news channel and website across the planet. That was the fuel to drive the simmering global fear into world-wide panic. The shape of the thing, its angles and lines made it clear to anyone who saw the image that this was not some asteroid, no ‘planet killer’ rock on a collision course with earth. This was manufactured. This was alien.

The great leaders of the world were unified in their message of hope and peace and understanding, that this visitor from the stars was not a harbinger of death, but an opportunity to expand our knowledge of the universe. The greatest scientific minds repeated their mantras of trajectory and velocity and probability, assuring us all that we had noting to fear. Their words were hollow, though. We could see it in their eyes – the fear, the uncertainty. It was the same fear and uncertainty we all felt as we stared into the night sky and saw that blue orb staring back down at us, growing ever closer.

We watched the sky. For weeks we watched as the ship grew closer and the blue star grew ever brighter in the night sky, until soon we could see it in the daytime, a small speck of dark blue making the rest of the sky look washed out and pale. The panic began to die down as the star became more familiar; we started talking about them, how they would look and what they would want.

After a month it had grown close enough that we could see it in the sky, a shining triangular object moving slowly, almost imperceptibly across the heavens, leaving a glowing gossamer trail behind it. We watched it, and we kept wondering.

The word came from the scientists and world leaders that the ship was passing us by, that it had never slowed or changed direction. They were calling it a near miss, an interstellar close call, and we rejoiced at our good fortune.

We celebrated and cheered, but as the weeks passed and that familiar blue glow grew dimmer, there was also a growing feeling of loss, a longing as we wondered what might have been, what might have happened. We stared at the empty night sky and we were forever changed.