On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

Here's story 153, of 240 so far.

No Response

It was a Friday, at least in most of the world, when it came.

There was no warning. No long approach from beyond our solar system, no amateur astronomers spotting something against the backdrop of stars. No flash of light, or distortion of space. When it arrived, it appeared suddenly, and it was already in our upper atmosphere. A few miles above the Pacific ocean, where there had been only empty air moments earlier.

A passenger on a commercial airliner actually caught the instant of arrival on video, and the flight had wifi, so the footage had spread across the globe by the time half an hour had passed, on every social network and every news site and programme. The video was broadcast intact, including the profane exclamation of shock that the phone’s owner had uttered. Almost immediately, panic began to spread.

Governments initially declared the video to be a fake, but there was also a sudden scrambling of military personnel and vehicles everywhere in the world, and so it took less than a further two hours for the leaders of most countries to make public addresses to their populations, confirming that an enormous vessel of some kind was now hovering over the ocean, and that no-one knew how it had got here, and that it was not of human construction.

Civilians were urged to remain calm, but they were also urged to return home and remain indoors. Supermarkets became chaotic scenes, as the flighty and feeble-minded somehow concluded that the existential and perhaps even mortal crisis could be ameliorated by the stockpiling of toilet paper.

The craft — if craft it was — simply sat there in the air. Fighter jets dared make ever-closer approaches, and naval vessels took corresponding sea positions, though not directly beneath. Satellites were repositioned to look upon its upper surfaces, and situation rooms the world over were packed with stressed soldiers and analysts every hour of the day and night.

It was only with the dawning of the following morning that something unusual was detected. The light of sunrise showed a distortion in the air at equally-spaced points around the thing’s surface, as if there was a vortex there. Generals and admirals panicked, prime ministers and presidents fretted, and scientists speculated whenever they were allowed to. In time, drones were launched, laden with equipment, in an attempt to discover the nature of the phenomenon and thus discern its possible purpose.

The readings took a handful of hours, and the analysis took barely the same amount of time. The conclusion was clear. The craft was scrubbing carbon from our atmosphere.

We tried to communicate, first via radio transmissions, and then via laser projections, and finally via directed loudspeakers, but all to no avail. The craft was producing no electromagnetic emissions whatsoever, and every attempt to open a dialogue, or even to send a greeting, was met with the same result: no response.

On the fourth day, the craft suddenly began to descend, slowly, towards the ocean surface. It took several hours to reach a height of barely a hundred metres above the waves. The Russians overreacted and launched a ballistic missile, to the horror of everyone watching all around the world, but the projectile was deflected before it could reach the craft’s hull, apparently by means of a targeted form of intense artificial gravitation. The craft made no retaliatory move, nor did it change its posture in any way.

Once it came to a little under fifty metres above sea level, small disturbances appeared on the water’s surface at regular intervals in a grid arrangement, over a distance of at least one thousand miles. The only effect on the hundreds of international navel vessels in their path was a very slight turbulence in the water, and again scientific equipment was deployed to seek answers. Again, the answers came: the craft was filtering the seawater, not just in the Pacific but globally, drawing out contaminants, industrial chemicals, microplastics, sewage, and even certain bacteria. It remained in place for nine days, and then rose to 1,500 metres and abruptly shot off towards Asia.

Interceptors were scrambled, more missiles were fired, but once again the weapons were useless; batted away and detonated moments later in mid-air, having caused neither damage nor delay. The craft came to rest over one city after another, sometimes remaining in place for a day or more, and sometimes for mere hours, going from India to China, and to every other country and then every other landmass. Its journey took weeks, tracked at every moment by every military and every intelligence department on the Earth. It pulled pollutants from the air, and from the rivers, and from the soil. It lifted miles of open landfill, and it somehow even drew up stored radioactive waste without exposing the wider environment. In place of all these things, it left vast cubes of pure elements, solid and inert, ready for whatever processing and use we might find for them.

And then, one day, it lifted up one final time but kept going, reaching the edge of our atmosphere. It paused for a handful of moments, and then it was gone. It did not fly out into space, and nor did it pucker reality and escape through a rip or a portal. It was simply there, and then it wasn’t.

It was years ago now, and we still speak of it every day. Politicians, and generals, and teachers, and children. There are theories and there are arguments, interpretations and disagreements, but there is consensus on one thing. As it cleaned the air and the land and the water, saving us from ourselves, even though it never answered us and never spoke, it did convey a message nonetheless, from whoever sent it here.

Our planet is important — but we are not.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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