The Distance of Stars

The garden gate’s rusty hinges creaked as it swung shut. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark as she switched off her flashlight, and she and Sam carefully made their way into the garden, the dark shapes of plants and furniture taking form in the dim light of the moon. Light shone in distant windows, but their own house’s windows were dark.

Somewhere nearby, an owl was calling out, the sound unsettling in the darkness. A tawny owl. The dogs were barking down at Willow Beck Farm, too.

They came to a stop in the center of the lawn, where the leaf-laden branches of the oaks and ash trees did not obscure their view of the sky. Standing side by side, they tilted their heads back. Darkness stretched out above them, countless flecks of light scattered across it; planets, stars, galaxies so far from their own. Above stretched the Universe; a vast, gaping void that looked ready to swallow her whole. The dark was endless, deep, stretching away into an infinity her mind could not comprehend.

She had finally gotten an answer to a question she had spent her life asking, in on way or another. Over a century ago, Earth had sent an unmanned ship off into space as a shot in the dark, a message in a bottle, a tentative, curious question. And now, finally, there was an answer. An answer that took the form of a sleek alien space ship carrying maps and images and a message in response. Someone had—by luck or fate or skill—caught their message as it flew out into the void.

The recipients had deciphered some of the languages contained in the Voyager spacecraft, and put together a simple but world-altering reply. Greetings, Earth, they said. We receive your message. Welcome.

They had created their own version of the map to Earth created by humans, showing not only their planet, but also the locations of numerous other inhabited planets and moons and systems. Scientists were still deciphering the information, but their estimates suggested that the locations of hundreds of alien civilizations were contained in the complex map; some only a handful of light-years away, others many thousands.

“We’re not alone,” she said quietly into the night. To herself, to Sam, to the world, to the grass rustling at their feet. “We’re not alone.”

In that endless darkness, orbiting around those burning stars that from here were just tiny little specks flickering in a dark sea, there was life. Humanity was not alone, not a solitary being, not an isolated anomaly on a spinning mote of dust. There was life out there. There was life on those distant worlds she had dreamed of ever since she was a child—worlds where it rained diamonds, worlds where it never got dark, or never got light, worlds that looked like hers but where dogs and owls and oak trees and people did not exist. How long had she spent lying in that very field, stargazing, dreaming, wondering?

“You were right to hope,” Sam said, his voice startling her despite its quietness. “To dream.”

“You were wrong to be so pessimistic,” she murmured, though the numbers—the sheer distance between all those pinpricks of light—had been against her.

“Does it change anything?” he asked. “Knowing they’re out there?”

She did not answer for a moment. She knew her answer was yes, but did not know why. Finally, she simply repeated, “We’re not alone.”

Ever since she was child, she had feared that the Universe was a dead thing, something that was lifeless beyond the surface of Earth, an empty stretch of nothing interspersed with barren rock and burning stars. She had always wanted to scream out into space, Is there no one else out there? Is there no one but us to witness this? Though she did not know why the idea of those countless planets and stars existing un-witnessed, unloved, had always bothered her so greatly.

“What now?” His tone was half-joking, half-serious, as he asked, “Will you become an astronaut, and fly off into space?”

Half-joking, half-serious, she replied, “I’m an inch too short to be an astronaut.”

Maybe she would never get to see those distant worlds, and maybe she would never meet the aliens, but maybe that was okay because she was a dreamer, and now she could dream knowing the things she dreamed off did exist; far, far away, but out there, somewhere.

The message Earth had sent out into space had been a risk.

The ‘message in a spaceship’ that Earth had sent out had been a risk. She remembered the first time she learnt about the Voyager spaceship, how other students had quoted the plots of countless sci-fi films and voiced concerns that perhaps an alien species would use that map to travel to Earth and wipe out all of humanity. But the response said, Welcome. A greeting, an extended hand. Earth had asked, and the Universe had answered. What they were being welcomed too, only time would tell.

She almost cried, then, at how lucky she was to be alive to experience the discovery. How many long-since buried people had gazed up at the very same stars she was looking at, and asked questions they would never have answered. How many lonely people had gazed up at those little lights that seemed so fragile from down here, and asked themselves, ‘Are we alone out here?’ and ‘Is there life other than our own?’ and ‘If they are out there, are they like us?’?

The Universe was teeming with life, nurturing incalculable existences that—though brief—formed a network of purpose. Eyes she had never seen and never would see were gazing back at her, seeing Earth only as Earth’s sun, only as a little dot of light they could not name. There was life, there was life, there was life.

Earth was not alone, and never had been. It was still precious, still wonderful, still a haven bursting with life in an empty void, but now she knew that there were others. How many of those lights were home to someone, to something? How many of those stars were beloved?

“We are not alone,” she repeated to the sky.

And she could have sworn the tapestry of stars replied, “Welcome.”