Celestial Phenomenon Over Nuremberg, 1561

Nuremberg: April, 1561. Hans inhaled the fresh dawn air as he made his way through the narrow, empty streets from his modest dwelling to his printing workshop. The city was still sleeping, but Hans liked to wake before dawn when his body would allow - there was always much work to be done. The sky was clear, its purity untainted by clouds, and though the sun was still yet to rise, one could be assured that a glorious day was in order. 

Hans crossed the Pegnitz river by way of the Flesh Bridge. The river was calm, lackadaisically slithering through the town of wood, stone and mud that it so cleanly bisected. Sometimes Hans wished he could be carried away by the river, to end up in lands unexplored and unfamiliar - it wasn’t that Hans didn’t enjoy his craft, but the opportunity to see something new and give a release from monotony wouldn’t be unwelcome.

As Hans continued on his journey, ambling towards the church of St. Lorenz, in the shadow of which his workshop lay, he paused for contemplation - between the half-timbered buildings, he caught a glimpse of a sliver of red on the distant horizon. Hans reflected on the cycle of days and nights and the repetitiveness of the world: the sun would inevitably rise every morning, no matter what happened, and fall every evening. He didn’t know whether to feel comforted or disillusioned by the thought.

The sun climbed the rungs of the celestial ladder, revealing its splendour to the burgesses of Nuremberg. Rays of light flashed through the narrow winding streets as the city began to rise from its slumber, and soon the sun was liberated from the chains of the Earth to once again become airborne, free from the land that restrained mortal men.

But this was to be no ordinary sunrise preceding an ordinary morning. Hans had an uncanny feeling that something was not quite right - he felt the hair on his arms stand to attention, and there was a certain stillness in the air. The chorus of birdsong that customarily accompanied sunup was eerily absent. Every rustle of fabric, every breath suddenly stood naked and vulnerable in the deathly silence. 

And before Hans even had time to register it, a menacing pair of blood-red crescent moons dissolved out of the sun’s disc and stood proud ahead of its rosy circle. Hans felt his body shudder as the silence was pierced by guttural screams and wails echoing through the streets, and he noticed the sky immediately surrounding the sun turn a sickly crimson. Hans’ blood ran cold and beads of sweat materialised on his wrinkled forehead. His thoughts raced and as his mind frantically searched for an explanation, he remembered what he had heard in the many sermons he had attended - he wondered if he would see the gigantic angels appear from the heavens to announce the end of time. But instead of forms like humans, a huge sphere of what appeared to be almost like iron slowly floated in the burning sky. From all corners of the sky, balls of deep red moved across the heavens, arranged about the sun in a scattered pattern, gently hovering like kestrels hunting for mice. Perhaps these were demons - and men were mice. Hans could hear the Lord’s prayer now being frantically chanted by the dozens who had awoken from their slumber due to the commotion. More spheres appeared in the same manner as the last cohort, but this time arranged themselves into curious lines and squares across the sky, as if pebbles arranged by children in a game of nine-men’s morris. Out of the chaotic arrangement, three or four blood red crosses materialised. Hans was momentarily distracted as an old woman collapsed nearby, hitting the stony ground with a heavy thud. She promptly began to roll this way and that like a pig in the mud, frothing at the mouth like a babbling brook while frantically uttering strange unearthly words. Lines of blood streaked across the sky as if a mighty giant had his veins cut open, and several more globes appeared within these lines that now varied in thickness and began to gently waver as if affected by a strong gale. Presently the spheres inside and outside the sun raced towards each other, appeared to swap locations in less than a second, and began to vibrate violently from side to side, merging into and out of each other. Hans stood rooted to the spot. He observed the sight for more than an hour, unable to move, as the spheres appeared to battle with each other in the skies - they appeared to chase each other about the sky, or disappear inside one another, or violently jerk around each other like a bizarre tug of war. After much fighting, it appeared that the spheres had become fatigued, for after an hour, the spheres suddenly plummeted towards the horizon, and disappeared. Hans was sure he could see a gargantuan plume of smoke rising from the horizon. And then moving swiftly from east to west, a long black spear, piercing the dawn, seared the sky in half. 

And suddenly it was over. The morning resembled any other, the sun shining valiantly in the now brilliant blue sky. Hans heard cries of relief echoing through the town, and was compelled to join them. What God meant by this display, only God could truly say.  

Hans rushed to his workshop, nearly tripping over stinking pigswill carelessly left in the street, and feverishly began to scrawl what he had just seen. This was to be his latest woodcut - Hans would spread God’s word, as any man should. He hoped his account would be a record for his children, and their children, and their children’s children, and that if he could at least capture the slightest impression of what he saw, and record it in print, he felt that through servitude to the Lord was his way of thanking him for all creation. 

***

Gliding through the vast gulf of space, the colony drove themselves on. Dictated only by instinct, and without a single thought for what they were doing, the army of balloons moved together like a cloud. They had not respired in over a year; not since they left the comforts of Jupiter with its cosy, homely atmosphere of hydrogen had they exchanged any gas with the rest of the universe, apart from for locomotion. One small, explosive puff was all they needed to set them on their way through the void of space, and Newton’s second law did the rest. These creatures, to the human eye, superficially resembled a cross between clouds and jellyfish. Essentially, they were huge bags full of gas, some as large as cities, composed of a hollow, thick fleshy and somewhat translucent membrane that ordinarily had a dull, pinkish glow. This lengthy journey across the solar system was made every 500 years or so, and it wasn’t made lightly. This was a family reunion. 

Half of the colony were closer to humans than we ever could have imagined. A hundred or so eggs had been laid - or rather fired - deep into the crust of the Earth, falling to the planet like meteorites, and had waited hundreds of years for one moment. On detecting the presence of their brethren, this mass of larvae, resembling their Jovian cousins in shape, but far smaller in size, had risen through the atmosphere into space, to meet their proverbial other halves, and the celestial courtship dance began. 

The organisms arranged themselves in space, in a loosely scattered pattern some 500 kilometres above the surface of the Earth, while another large group had arranged themselves into a pair of curious crescent-like shapes. Bioluminescence caused the creatures to glow brilliantly, the Earthly males emitting blinding light a deep crimson colour, and the Jovian females a luscious blue. Then their colours swapped with each other, so that the males were in shades of blue and the females in red. This alternation continued for some time - over an hour - and in the blink of an eye for these creatures. The frequency of colour changes varied - sometimes their alterations happened at such a speed, while the beings glided together through space with the speed of a bullet caused by forceful expulsion of gas, that the effect from a distance was like a tapestry of glowing orbs constantly moving and flickering, and, that to an observer they would almost appear to be fighting or engaged in a struggle. 

Throughout this occurrence, the males fired what resembled blood red, glowing flares that left trails in their wake, crossing each other on the separate paths, and upon their capture by the females, a dozen or so eggs were fired from their jellylike bodies down towards the Earth. Immediately afterwards the females died and floated into space, never to be seen again. The males then ejected a spurt of gas, moving off into the direction of Jupiter, where they would enter a pupal stage and re-emerge as larger females. 

The eggs that the females had ejected as their last act were on their way to Earth. This time they landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. It would be 500 years before humanity would discover their existence. And one could reflect on how blinkered humans were, and all the wonders of the solar system, and indeed the universe, that were waiting to be discovered.

Inspired by the account of Hans Glaser as published in a broadsheet of the celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg on the morning of 14, April, 1561