With Whom Alone?

A hundred flat plasma television screens spotlighted a hundred awestruck simple seekers of knowledge in the midst of a black universe containing their home, a blue globe. Another thousand flat plasma screens flashed on, and tuned into the drive of devoted generations to come. A million flat plasmas illuminated our minds and gave quest to our lives. A trillion, and trillion more, one message all our minds took in: They were coming. We were no longer alone.

It all started on the day of the ribbon cutting ceremony for the largest telescope satellite ever put into orbit. The satellite's inauguration was broadcast on international TV. 

When the broadcast cut to the first image from the satellite, there was an unidentified object moving through space. The host of the ceremony, an unassuming astronomer, proclaimed it the first UFO captured in the view of the telescope. The intention of his statement was that it was, as of yet, unidentified. Then, the satellite crew focused the satellite's powerful telescope onto the object and zoomed in.

The image was live on television screens all over the globe. 

The host of the ceremony gasped, and his eyes never returned to the camera. The image on the screen had frozen him. He said only, "We're not alone." And nothing more. The broadcast continued as silent as a photo. 

For over thirty minutes, as viewers tuned their friends and family in, the viewership grew. It would, by far, surpass the viewership of any combined three of the most viewed television broadcasts in history.

It was on screens everywhere, a sleek silver hull curving quickly from a point to form a wide and short disklike front to a massively larger body. The details depicted by the satellite were incredibly precise. The ship's body glossed the light of the trillion stars between us and it. The telescope depicted, as though the ship were within reach, how the material its body was formed from came together in seems, one panel joined to another to form a grid of squares covering its entirety. 

Its length, nose to tail, was lined with row upon row of black ovals. They were horizontal, thousands of them, twice as wide as they were tall. 

People stared at their televisions, not knowing what to think. Then the image on the screen grew as the satellite crew focused the telescope closer. The image moved in the screen, from center to the left. Then the satellite crew zoomed again. The ship filled the screen. The image shifted to the right. Then, the satellite crew made a final calculation. They focused on a spot, and zoomed in until one of the black ovals occupied most of the screen. 

There seemed to be movement in the oval. It only seemed so for a moment. Perhaps it had been the slight shadow of a passing star. 

For the next several seconds, upon further inspection, the oval seemed still.

The satellite crew adjusted the visible wavelength of the telescope, and the hull material which framed the oval was no longer visible as silver. It had become as black as the space it traveled through. 

The black oval, upon one final adjustment of the telescope's visible wavelength, became transparent. 

Within the ship, could be seen a creature. The world, Earth, watched as it moved. It had long matted hair covering its entirety. It was brown in color, but nearing a chromatic grey. It moved over a background as though it were standing atop a pool of shadows. It seemed to have two legs and two arms, but its arms were like long trunks coming from out of hairy shoulders. The arms didn't seem to move on their own. They just dragged through the pool of shadows where the creature's legs walked. Its legs were not incredibly short, but they had two joints each, and when the creature walked, its body remained low to the ground.

The angle of the creature's direction changed. When it did, the people of Earth saw, on its head, a hairless face. 

Like ours, its face had two eyes over a nose which was above a clearly defined mouth. Only, the face was as if it were hewn by a child from chromatic grey playdough. The features were rough and sloppy and lacked close attentiveness to symmetry.

The creature's image forever changed all of society on planet Earth. In one week's time, word had spread. Not one on Earth hadn't heard. We were not alone. Not anymore. The world had seen the face of an alien being for the first time. It wasn't pretend, we really were not alone. 

They calculated the craft's velocity and course, its distance from us, and then they knew. They were certain in fact. The alien seen in the broadcast was headed to Earth.

It was determined that, at its current course and velocity, the craft would reach Earth in thirty years, two months, and roughly six days. The words, "We're not alone," rang through the combined thoughts of Earth's citizens.

Wind whipped a paper flyer into the traffic flooding a big city street, and a mother dragged the little figure in the fur coat beside her by its tiny hand, ushered the wavy-haired ear muff clad girl off the windy sidewalk, into the entrance of a department store full of sterile air and clothing racks set on floors that glossed with ceiling light. Outside, the little girl had run to keep up with her mother's pull. Once inside, though, she outdistanced her mother in her excitement to get to the girl's section, where she simply needed to feel the soft cozy knit of each sweater in her hands. 

"We're not alone." She said, in a near trot, as she passed by each store clerk. "We're not alone," again and again, as she bobbed her head with the earnest intention that had been instilled in her.

The world knew, and would never forget. We were not alone.

On dark winter nights, small children would curl up in bed with their mommies and daddies, kiss each of them good night, then before any could close their eyes to welcome sleep, say, "We're not alone."

Employees rushed down corridors, through halls, around bollards, and over gravel pits as they raced to the time clock. Two minutes, one, "click," the simple machine would sound with each employee's punch. Then, like an infectious program, a modest "We're not alone," would spread through their numbers. Two's, ten's, hundred's, thousand's, million's, trillion's of people would exchange the phrase, "We're not alone." Again and again, meeting one another's brevity of the implication.

The news was most impactful at school. Each day, students would stand behind their desks and pledge themselves, loudly and in unison, to mathematics and sciences, and study long hours in classrooms. Then, again, in their homes. Throughout the day, from morning to night, they would study and repeat to one another the phrase: "We're not alone," again and again.

Throughout the years.

The decades.

The globe rang with one common thought: "We're not alone."

The phrase never, however, became normal to us.

 As the ship's journey through space progressed, and especially so in the later years, the fervency and the frequency with which the phrase was used increased with each passing moment. Each passing minute, hour, day, month, year, and decade brought the ship closer, and the phrase never for an instant grew less important. Just the opposite, in fact.

As the arrival drew near, planet Earth became ready. 

There was no indication from the ship that it had intentions of any particular kind. So the people of Earth prepared for anything and everything, all at once.

The eight largest nations on Earth experienced a galactic revolution. Each one's peoples had come together to contribute their lives and their nations' resources, in order to build massive ships that matched the size of the one that was on a course to meet them. Their behemoth vessels sat perched on Earth's solar system's ancient outer rings. There, their ships and their crews waited.

A thousand smaller nations had, just as ambitiously, built a thousand smaller ships. Those too waited, floating in the silent stillness of space.

The years became months, and the months became weeks, and the weeks became days. The alien ship drew near.

The thousand-eight ships of Earth sat, prepared for battle and prepared for peace. They, however, seemed to have sat unnoticed as the alien ship passed them by.

That too they had prepared for. In the year that the alien ship passed them by, the thousand-eight ships of Earth, in orchestrated unison, gave pursuit. 

Their formation was impressive. It was uniform and symmetric. It was so, down to the very millimeter. It was a maneuver of perfection.

To the untrained eye, it was flawless. To those who knew better, those who would lure and capture, it was flawed.

From a large building on the planet Earth, a thousand-eight galactic commanders, in joint-cooperation, commanded their space vessels. 

What better command center? A place where the commanders of all nations could coordinate their ships as one fleet, a truly central command.

It was so, until the ships had traveled for a mere five years. Communication became slow from such a distance. Visual images took weeks to traverse so far, audio took days. Such was distance.

Communication from one ship to another hadn't been considered. It had been a terrible and unfortunate detriment to their design.

It was through the command center on Earth that the few remaining vessels of Earth's great fleet received the audio message: "We're not alone! We're not alone!", which had originated from their neighboring ships. 

A week later, images came to Earth, images of ships being destroyed by lightning quick fighter ships which had emerged from the alien ship. It was evident from the video, that the fighter ships had been commanded from a central location onboard the alien mother ship. It was also perceived in the video, that had Earth's vessels been able to communicate one to another, their defeat would have been preventable.

In the final image received by Earth's people, a captain was apprehended at his own ship's helm. As the alien foot soldiers subdued him, he fell backward onto his ship's deck and screamed up into a camera, "WE'RE NOT ALONE!"

The End