It’s an opening act that for decades has been a subject of both popular entertainment and serious speculation. And everyone seems to agree this whole them-coming-to-us thing is bad. In fact, there were very good reasons to think it cannot be good. Even if they—the big, unknown they—really are good after all.
So, when everyone woke up on a February morning and found that great triangular form hanging over a snowy Milwaukee, all the little chyrons running across the bottom of the news channels might as well have said, “Wakey wakey, humankind. Your doom has arrived.” And that’s not too far from what some of them did say.
I hadn’t turned on the television that morning, so I didn’t find out until I was on the bus, the curiously empty bus, where the driver and I seemed to be the only people in St. Louis who hadn’t gotten the word that this was a very good day to sit at home, eat a hearty breakfast, and wait to see just how we were all going to die. When I first saw the wide black spike hovering in the frosty Wisconsin dawn—invisible to radar, but very definitely there—it was about an inch across on the screen of my phone.
Maybe that was for the best. Nothing seems all that shocking if you can pretty much cover it with your thumb.
For the rest of my twenty-minute ride, I passed along comments from the news to the bus driver, who, despite there being exactly no one to pick up, insisted on pulling over at each stop, right on schedule. It’s definitely aliens. The ship is about thirty miles across. No one knows what’s keeping it up there. No one has seen what’s inside.
The driver’s only reply was to repeat the same scatological term each time. Although she did add more h’s and an occasional vowel with each iteration, so that by the time I climbed off the bus in front of the university, the term had become shhhheeeeaait. It might not sound like a deep conversation, but she came remarkably close to capturing my own feelings.
The winter-brown grass between the pink granite buildings of the campus was not as empty as the bus had been, but many of the students crossing the quad that morning did so with a lot more alacrity than was usually reserved for making a seven thirty calculus class. Despite the cold and a biting wind, I saw several students, and even some of the staff, standing together in groups of two or three, peering together at a phone or tablet. This was one of those moments that demanded to be shared. I suspected that the big screens mounted in the student center and the entry rooms of the residence halls had already become the center of nervous crowds.
While I wasn’t ready to settle down and watch just yet—at least, not with the first random people I met—as I pushed open the side door to the science building and headed for my office, I was already thinking of where I could go to spend this time being Not Alone. There seemed little doubt that classes would be canceled for the day. Maybe there would be a faculty meeting. Maybe Johanna would come in, and we—
That was about as far as I got before I saw the man waiting by my office door. He was short, with the kind of long black wool coat a lot of businessmen wore, and the top of a gray suit just visible at the collar, though the effect was a bit ruined by the knit cap tugged down hard on his large head. He saw me approaching, glanced down at a paper in his hand, and looked up at me again.
“Dr. Fetherstonhaugh?” he said, voicing every syllable carefully.
“It’s pronounced Fanshaw.”
The man looked at the paper again. “Really?”
“Really.” I stopped, fishing in my pocket for my keys. “Can I help you?”
“My name’s Kelly,” said the man. “You pronounce it Kelly. Only with ‘Detective’ in front of that.” The man held up the paper. “They want you.”
My fingers squeezed the keys hard enough that the little teeth dug into my skin. “They? Who is they?” I asked, but I was only killing time. The moment he