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.

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Here's story 183, of 240 so far.

Point of Origin

The primary emotions on the faces of the council of world leaders were disbelief and fear.

The grand and ornate debate chamber, circular and with a soaring ceiling, was draped with the flags of every nation — but no-one was looking at the decor. The round area of open floor in the dead centre of the vast space was not empty as it usually was. Instead, a creature stood there. It was humanoid in general outline, though almost twice as tall as a human being. Its eyes were large, its skin was monochromatic and featureless, and it had no visible mouth, nose, or ears.

It wore no clothing, unless its exterior was entirely covered in its clothing, and in its elongated, four-fingered grip, it held a single piece of technology which seemed to translate its own language into those of all the assembled delegates.

The upper portion of the chamber was now panelled with video screens, hundreds of them, showing live scenes from most major cities in the world. Each one displayed a huge crowd gathered in a public area, watching the proceedings.

The ship had been detected weeks ago somewhere beyond Neptune, making a long and slow approach to Earth. There had been chaos, of course, as humanity was suddenly forced to confront the realisation that their species was not alone in the universe as sentient beings. There was panic in the military of every country at the near-certainty of massive inferiority of weaponry, in the event that the visitors were hostile. Politicians had done their jobs, for once, and appealed for calm, and police forces and armies had backed up those appeals with necessary authority to bring back some semblance of order.

By the time the ship entered a high orbit, there was hardly a person alive whose attention wasn’t focused on news channels every waking hour. With the International Space Station now streaming constant footage of the ship around the clock, and any number of photos of increasing resolution taken by not just orbital telescopes but now even terrestrial and amateur instruments, social media was a carousel of fixation. Artists in every country had drawn the thing, and painted it, and modelled it — but now they would have a very different subject, since the alien vessel had revealed its first occupant.

The creature had appeared suddenly in the council chamber, flickering into existence amidst a strange luminance and a mild atmospheric disturbance. There had been no time for speculation as to the nature of the relevant technology before it began to communicate, and its first synthesised utterance was to offer its greetings, and to invite questions.

The Australians asked if it was physically here, or some kind of projection. The creature responded by approaching a nearby vacant table, and lifting a jug of water carefully into the air before setting it back down again.

The Dutch had asked if its presence posed any mutual risk of infection. It answered no. The French asked how it could breathe in our atmosphere, and it answered that it had undergone adaption for that purpose; a commonplace and trivial thing.

Of overriding interest to the English delegate was how the creature should properly be addressed. The creature had simply replied that it could be addressed directly and without preamble.

The responses were in a neutral voice, obviously artificial in source but not in sound, and in each case in the same language as the question it had been asked. There was no delay after a question had been voiced, and there was no audible repetition of the question in whatever language was native to the being. Its responses were calm, concise, and informal. Its large, dark eyes never blinked.

The ambassador for Germany was speaking.

“How long did it take you to travel here?” she asked.

“You have watched my vessel’s approach”, the alien replied, and the ambassador nodded.

“But how long for the prior part of your journey, before we detected your ship?”

“Moments”, it said.

There was hushed conversation throughout the chamber, and the chairperson waved his arms to appeal for quiet. It had been decided that the gavel would be inappropriate, as the sudden loud sound could be alarming to the visitor.

The American ambassador pressed the matter. “You deliberately slowed down so we’d see you coming?”

“Yes. To minimise fear,” it replied.

The answer didn’t seem entirely satisfactory to the elderly senator, but few things ever were. He reluctantly sat back in his chair, yielding the floor to the Chinese.

“What planet, in which star system, was your original point of origin before you came here?” she asked, choosing her words carefully, as was her custom.

It was difficult to tell what the creature was looking at with any precision, due to the size of its eyes and their lack of any discernible pupils or corneas, or indeed ocular movement, but its head was angled generally towards the woman who had just spoken.

“Earth,” it said.

There was uproar and confusion, but the creature seemed unmoved. This time, the chairperson resorted to slapping a palm against the polished wooden surface in front of him, glancing nervously at the creature as he did so. Eventually, an uneasy silence returned, and the representative for Nigeria leaned forward to his microphone.

“How can you have come from here?”

The creature’s head swivelled, and there was something about the motion that implied there might be a great deal more freedom of movement in its neck than had been initially assumed.

“With a technology beyond your understanding, we can choose not to be seen. We sent a single vessel from orbit to appear at your outer planets, which then returned slowly. There are many more such vessels.”

There was silence in the chamber, and the faces of many of the delegates had gone noticeably grey. The creature spoke again.

“You have already seen this technology. I have been in this chamber since first light of this day, and have watched all of you arrive.”

Its head swivelled again, taking in the whole sweep of tiered desks, and little flags, and shocked faces, now more united in their basic humanity than they had ever been. Then the creature lifted its gaze to the screens above.

In every city, there were the same unusual lights, in uncountably many places — and each one revealed a creature of the same kind. Millions upon millions, everywhere, on every street and in every doorway.

At least a hundred more flickered into existence in the debate chamber itself, lining the walls and the passageways. Previously hidden and intangible, but there all along.

“Your world is already ours,” the creature said.

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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