[SF STORY] Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – The End
August 23rd, 2019 11:14 AM
“Rise and shine, bud!”
“I don’t wanna get up. Go away!” Silas shouted, pulling his pillow over his head. Even with his eyes closed, he felt like his vision was spinning.
“C’mon’, let’s get you out of bed…” Lucas cooed, laughing, tugging at his blanket.
“I hate you,” Silas moaned.
“I’ll dump this wata on ya head, son,” Lucas threatened, holding a bottle of water over Silas’ bed, his thick Australian accent twisting the words.
Silas sat up, rubbing his head and running his hands through his hair. His eyes felt like they were on fire and his skull felt as if it were about to split. “This is your fault. Oh my god.” He rubbed his eyes. “Why do I always let you do this to me?”
“I don’t do anything to ya,” Lucas laughed. “Ya put the alcohol in ya mouth all by yer lonesome, and ya know it. I just make a convenient scapegoat. Looks like it paid off anyway, aye?” He pointed to the space behind Silas.
Turning, Silas noticed there was someone in the bed with him. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, jumping out of bed and leaning uneasily against his nightstand, his balance not quite yet catching up from the night before. “Who the hell is that?”
Lucas smiled. “The person who seduced ya and then stole one of your shirts by the look of it. Think her name was Lacy? Lucy? I dunno mate.”
“It’s Lilly, actually.” Her voice made them jump as she stretched and rolled over to see who was talking, dark hair fanning out behind her. “Hi boys,” she smiled. “How was your evening?”
“Excellent, Lilly, ma’am,” Lucas replied, slapping his chest. “I can actually hold my liquor, unlike mah friend here.” The girl looked at Silas coyly. “And you? How was your night?” She winked.
Silas glared at Lucas before replying. “Dunno. Can’t remember.”
“Oh,” she said as she stood up. She touched Silas’ arm and gave him a kiss on the cheek before pulling on a pair of pants and walking out of the room. “That’s a shame,” she called from the hallway. “I had a great night. Later boys.”
They listened to her walk down the hall and heard the front door shut before saying anything. “Hoohoo!” Lucas shouted, clapping his hands. “You don’t remember that? You sorry son of a bitch!”
Silas slowly sank down and sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his temples. “Shit. I’m hungover as fuck, man. Well, whatever. There’s another party tonight, right? Sure I can snare another bunny then.” “Yessir. Now get dressed. Classes is gonna start soon. And put some fuckin’ pants on this time, ya twit.”
“Take your pill today, mate?” Lucas ran up behind Silas, shouldering his pack.
“No. Crap.” Silas sighed. “I guess I’ll go back.”
“No worries. I figured ya would forget. Here ya go.” Lucas reached out and dropped a small white pill into Silas’ hand. “Here’s some water.”
“Thanks babe,” Silas replied, popping the pill in his mouth and taking a swig from the bottle.
Lucas shifted uncomfortably as he paced himself next to the slightly shorter Silas. “That’s weird man.”
“What?” Silas exclaimed. “Dude, we’ve been making people think we were gay for each other since we were thirteen. If it made you uncomfortable, you’re about ten years too late in telling me.”
“It’s not that,” Lucas replied. “It’s just… Well…” He toyed with something around his neck.
“Oh, Jesus wouldn’t approve? Cuz he hates gay people?”
“Jesus doesn’t hate gay people, Silas. Jesus don’t care what ya stick ya dick in. And it ain’t about Jesus. It’s… Uh.” Silas stopped in his tracks. “I swear to God, if this is Emily talking again, I’m gonna smack the ever loving shit out of you.”
“She don’t like it, man. Sorry.”
“C’mere,” Silas said, reaching for Lucas’ face.
“Fuck, no,” Lucas protested, ducking as Silas’ hand flapped about.
“I said c’mere!” Silas shouted, smacking at the air around Lucas’ head. “I told you I’m gonna smack the shit outta ya!”
“Fuck off mate!” Lucas shoved Silas. “Jesus!”
Silas stumbled momentarily before catching himself and feeling slightly guilty.
“Sorry.” Silas looked at the ground and tucked his hands in his pockets, feeling slightly guilty. “It just kinda feels like she’s coming between us sometimes. I know you’ve been with her a while now, but… I don’t know man. Maybe it’s that time.”
“Nah,” Lucas replied. “It’ll never be that time. You’re my brother. Always will be. But we’re adults now, man. Lives, jobs, girlfriends…”
Silas snorted. “Maybe for you.”
“Ya gotta grow up sometime, Silas.”
“You always were the responsible one.”
They walked together in silence for another minute, taking in the sunlit campus before Lucas turned to walk down a different sidewalk. Pausing, he looked at Silas. “See ya at the party tonight, right?” He smiled, his curly blonde locks falling in front of his eyes.
“Right,” Silas replied, rolling his eyes exasperatedly. “Where else would I be?”
“Silas! Lower the lights as you come in here, please.”
Blearily, Silas passed his hand over the switch as he walked by.
“Good, thank you. Now! Good to see you could make it. If it weren’t for your perfect test score last week, one might begin to think you don’t care much for astronomy.”
He waved at his professor as he sat down, acknowledging the remark. “Long night,” he grunted. “Sorry Professor McCarinn.”
Satisfied that her favorite student had shown up, the professor continued with her lecture. “Hope it was worth it! For those of us just joining us, we have an interesting phenomenon occurring today. We will have several near earth misses this evening. What makes this interesting?” She glanced around the room, waiting to see if any of her astronomy students had paid attention to the field recently. Receiving no answers, she rolled her eyes before continuing.
“Seriously? None of you? What makes this interesting is the fact that we just noticed these objects this week, and that we have absolutely no idea what they are made of.” She clicked a remote and an ancient projector rattled on from the back of the room, casting an image to the board where the professor stood.
The image was a high contrast photo of Jupiter which one might see when looking through the Keck Observatory’s infrared files. The gas giant filled most of the frame, with Io peeking in at the corner. In front of the planet was… Silas squinted through his bloodshot eyes.
“As you can see here,” the professor tapped the center of the image where Silas was focusing, and which contained several masses of distinct nothingness. “We have roughly five or six ‘objects’ here which absorb all radiation that comes into contact with them. Upon further inspection, each object appears to be a ‘cloud’ of smaller objects. Each object is about a quarter mile in size.”
She clicked the remote again and flipping to a new slide, this one zoomed in on the objects in question.
“They aren’t even in Jupiter’s orbit anymore. Whatever they are, they move very fast. What you’re looking at right now is actually fairly close to us. In a week’s time, they have moved from Jupiter to just a little over the distance from us and the sun. Tonight, they will be passing by the moon, affording us a good look at what they are. We, and the rest of the astronomical community, will be observing them.”
Silas tuned the lecture out, focusing on his hangover and personal life.
He and Lucas had been friends forever. Done everything together.
And then Lucas met Emily. Neither of the boys had ever been particularly religious, but suddenly, Lucas began wearing a silver cross, talking about the greatness of the love of God and trying to get Silas to come to church. Silas wanted nothing to do with it.
Slowly, over the course of several months, Lucas stopped drinking as much, quit smoking marijuana and eased himself off the narcotics they’d both been addicted to since they were toddlers.
Which was fine. Silas was happy for him. He just wished Lucas would stop trying to convince Silas to do the same. Silas enjoyed his life. Minus the hangovers. Those were all on Lucas and his parties.
“God, my skull…”
He shook his head and tried to focus on what the professor was showing them.
“What’s interesting,” she was saying, “Is that we have no idea what could be causing the non-reflectivity we see here. Our only alert to their presence is their absence of visibility. We cannot see them using modern methods. This is why tonight, the astronomical world, ourselves included, will be trying to get a glimpse of them using the old fashioned method. Telescopes, class!”
Silas groaned. He was going to have to choose between a definite killer party and possibly catching a glimpse of something new and unknown in his chosen field.
“Now,” the professor continued, “Here on my desk I have a stack of papers, each containing an outline of things I want you to look for and what we know about these objects so far, as well as the current theories on what they might be. You can do this on your own or you can meet me as a group at the usual spot tonight. Class dismissed.” As one, the student body rumbled, stood and began moving towards freedom. “And remember people,” the professor yelled over the clatter of feet and bags heading to the door, “this could be something that completely changes the future of astronomy!”
Silas shook his head again, temples splitting as he did so. “Fuck.”
August 24th, 2019 12:38 AM
It was a beautiful night over the ocean. The moon glowed in all her soft glory as the stars glistened and shone without a single cloud to obstruct their light from reaching the Earth’s surface. It was Silas’ favorite kind of night, but he found himself unable to focus on it. What he was looking at through his telescope defied conventional description.
He could definitely see the objects, but when viewed with the naked eye, they just looked like a congregate of small asteroids, perhaps two hundred altogether, maybe two hundred and fifty, flying in clumps of no more than fifty or so.
There was something weird about the shape of the individual objects, though. They all looked the same. Dull. Gray. Lumpy. And all nearly perfect replicas of one another. Some were bigger, some were smaller, but still – all too similar. To anyone else, that might be just run of the mill, but for Silas, who knew about asteroids and their formation, it bothered him in his deepest parts. And the way the group was moving… It seemed almost too slow for a group of asteroids. They twisted and spiraled, but none pulled ahead of the other, none ran into one another. In a cloud of asteroids, one would expect collisions. He stared intently.
His phone rang, causing him to jump, smacking his eye into the rim of his scope. “Mother ffff… Hello?”
“Hey! Where are ya, mate? I came to wingman for ya again.”
“For the love of…” Silas sighed. “Don’t you check your texts?”
“No,” Lucas replied. “Dunno why you keep sending them.”
“Super important astronomy assignment, man. Possibly a new kind of interstellar body.” Silas gave his friend a brief description of what they were doing before explaining that there was something very odd about what he was looking at.
“Maybe its aliens,” Lucas laughed. “Wouldn’t it be sick if it’s aliens?”
“It’d be pretty cool. Would love to meet one.”
“Intimately?” Lucas asked coyly. “I could always wingman you an alien.”
“You fucking weirdo. Go home to your girl.” Silas hung up and went back to looking through his telescope, peering at the sky once more, taking notes.
As he looked, he realized that every few moments, light would emit from the end of every single object at the same time. A reflection from the sun? Gas? Could these be young comets? No… No, they would already have tails.
They were too close to the sun to not have tails.
He made another small note and then called out to the rest of the group. “Is anyone else seeing the refraction off the outermost end of these things?”
“Yeah,” someone yelled back. “I see it. It almost looks like the beginning of a comet tail.”
“I don’t see any other comet like features, though,” someone else shouted.
“And they’re too close to the sun to not have tails right now,” Silas called back. Professor McCarinn came over to Silas’ scope and picked up his notepad, glancing over it. “Good stuff here Silas. Nice theory, too. Condensed by the gravity of a passing black hole? I like it. Might explain the uniformity and how they’re moving so quickly.” She gestured at his telescope. “Do you mind? I do love your scope.”
“No,” he replied, stepping back and grinning. “Go right ahead.”
As she stooped and looked through the scope, Silas couldn’t help but admire her form. The moon in the sky wasn’t the only thing that was full that evening…
“Hey!” She exclaimed. “Are they changing direction?”
Any thought of his professor’s figure left Silas’ mind as he processed what she had just said. If anyone else had said it, he’d take it as a joke. But Professor McCarinn wasn’t known for making astronomy jokes. She took the subject very seriously.
“Changing direction? Let me see that.”
“Look for yourself,” she said, stepping away and gesturing for him to take back his scope.
As Silas looked up at the heavens, what he saw chilled him. More than a hundred asteroids, changing direction, light flaring from their sides as they slowed and turned, spreading further and further apart from one another.
“Oh my god,” a girl exclaimed. “They’re breaking up. Drifting apart.”
“And gaining speed!”
“And they’re headed right for Earth,” said Professor McCarinn, having grabbed someone else’s telescope. “But that means… Oh, my, God.”
“C’mon, man, pick up the fucking phone!” Silas was running across campus towards the frat house, trying to call Lucas.
Again, no answer. Again, no answer. “Fuck it,” he exclaimed, breaking into a full sprint, bowling people over as he pushed his way through. “Outta the fuckin’ way!”
He burst into the house, looking around frantically. Not immediately seeing Lucas, he yelled at the kid on the couch. “Hey! Joe! Where’s Lucas?”
“Shit man,” Joe said tiredly. “I dunno. Think he’s at the sorority with Emily. You wanna hit off this bong? You look like you could use it.”
Ignoring the question, Silas demanded Joe toss over his keys.
“Why, man?”
“Just do it Joe, or I swear to God I’ll steal your stash. I know where it’s at; you keep it in your vent.”
“What the fuck man,” Joe complained as he tossed over his keys. “Now I gotta move it. Dick move, man…”
Running back outside, Silas rapidly pressed the alarm button on the fob, listening for the wail of the horn. Locating it, he quickly jumped in the car and tore onto the main road, heading away from the campus. “Why is the sorority so far away?!” he raged to himself.
After Professor McCarrin’s saying aloud that she believed they were witnessing an entire fleet of alien ships heading for Earth, all hell had broken loose in the astronomy group. Silas had immediately left, needing to reach his friends and family. “Shit.”
His family. He pulled his phone from his pocket, speaking to it. “Call MOM.”
The phone rang several times before his mother answered. “Hi sweetie! How are –”
Silas cut her off, waving his hand around as if she were actually in front of him. “Mom, stop talking and listen to me. I need you to take Kendall and Alicia and get somewhere safe.”
“Silas, what’s going on?” A hint of concern crept into his mother’s confused tone.
“I don’t have time to explain. I just need you to get to someplace safe. A bomb shelter would be best. If not, drive out to the cottage. Just go before everyone else tries to get there. Please, just listen to me.”
“Silas, I don’t unders-“
“Mom! Just go! I’ll meet you when I can!” He hung up the phone, hoping his mother would listen. He had a very bad feeling about what was happening. It was going to be a long thirty-minute drive across town. As he drove in silence, he went over what he knew and what he had observed. This fleet of alien ships first appeared around Jupiter, which made it likely that they had hidden behind the gas giant on their approach into the solar system. They were made of a material that defied all means of detection, except the fact that they made a “hole” in scans wherever they were. And they had waited to show that they were anything but an astronomical oddity until they were practically in Earth’s orbit.
None of those facts put Silas at ease. In fact, most of it sounded like war tactics to him. Nothing about that was good. An advanced interstellar species on silent approach? The knot in his stomach grew.
His phone rang again. Glancing at it, he saw it was Lucas. “Hello? I’ve been trying to call you. Where the fuck are you?”
Silence. And then… “Silas? Are ya watching the news?” Lucas spoke in a hushed tone.
Silas’ stomach dropped. Whatever Lucas was looking at; it couldn’t be good.
“No. Why? Is it the asteroids?”
“I was just kidding when I suggested it was aliens, man… They’ve got the whole planet surrounded. They’re just up there, hovering.”
“What?” Silas strained to look up through the windshield, but all he saw was the familiar night sky.
“Yeah. They spread out and they’re all around the planet. We’re trying to speak to them. No answer though… Where are you?”
“I’m on my way there. Hold tight. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Yeah.”
The line went dead as Silas threw the car in low gear and stomped on the gas pedal, tires squealing and smoking as he sped into the night.