The idea for this piece came from reading Derrick Bell’s short story, “The Space Traders,” a few weeks ago. As with my previous attempt at writing science fiction, I hope this is at least bearable for the reader.
The first true and verifiable hint that humanity was not alone in the universe came as a series of data blips that appeared out past the orbit of Neptune, embedded within the deep space radar data collected via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The anomalies were first noted by a junior technician on the overnight watch and were brought to the attention of the shift supervisor. Over the next few days scientists continued to track the blips, gradually refining their models until they came to the conclusion – which was quite surprising for most of them – that the blips were both changing velocity by unnatural means and were also on a direct course for the planet Earth. Excitement spread like wildfire throughout the community of those in the know, but the high level decision was made early on to keep news of these anomalies from the press and the public. Much of this had to do with the somewhat ominous nature of the anomalies as they continued to travel directly toward our planet. Gravimetric data suggested that whatever they were, they were big, and there were lots of them. An already eventful year was about to become even more exciting.
Of course, even the best kept secret doesn’t remain a secret for long. As the objects approached Earth at high velocity, amateur astronomers began to visually observe a large number of silvery dots that by this time were within the orbit of Saturn. The distance still kept the amateurs, with their relatively crude instruments, from being able to obtain sharp images of the objects. The much more advanced equipment found within the various international agencies, however, were able to collect well-defined pictures of a mass of large, metallic-looking objects, generally cylindrical in shape. Over the next few days (for the objects were travelling at velocities unobtainable by any earth-born vessel or probe), the cloud of objects moved closer, and soon even the amateurs were able to clearly tell that something unnatural was afoot. By this point, the news was uncontainable as information continued to leak out onto the internet faster than intelligence agencies could suppress it. Finally, the president, the general secretary of the United Nations, and other select world leaders gathered to hold a formal press conference announcing that…something…was approaching the earth which was neither natural nor of terrestrial origin. Whatever it was, it was moving fast and appeared to be doing so under power. The word “aliens” was never actually said during the conference, but everybody knew that it was aliens.
The effect on societies across the globe was profound and disruptive. Stock markets crashed while gun stores in the free world sold out their stocks of firearms and ammunition within hours. People sat plastered to their televisions and smartphones, waiting for every tidbit of news that came in. The global economy virtually closed during the week in which humanity awaited the arrival of the…vessels?…which had been calculated from the most recent deep space radiometric data. As the objects came within the orbit of Mars, they began to slow slightly, which was taken as a positive sign that at least those controlling the vessels didn’t intend to use them as some sort of “colony drop” weapon against the Earth.