September 2020

This story was inspired by a prompt from Reddit, here is my take on it.

When humanity sent out our first interstellar mission we didn't expect... this

Link to the original reddit thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/iq2gdl/wp_when_humanity_sent_out_our_first_interstellar/

Ram was feeling left out of the new years gala event. Middle aged Indians, he’d discovered, never partied. They participated in galas. It was just his bad luck that his name was drawn out of the crate; a list of names was chosen to handle the night shift at mission control at Antaryani Space Tech. He glanced at the large “HAPPY NEW YEAR 2041” over to his left and sighed. He glanced at his messages. It was Jay. Beer was being served. Ram was both envious and surprised.

Three rows over Vikram and Zen Senthil were huddled over at their Vikram’s monitors. They both seemed to be unusually animated. Pointing and gesturing. Too animated. Too agitated. Curious he walked over. “Hey, What’s up” asked Ram looking a little concerned. “This” said Zen. That’s weird thought Ram. The numbers were wrong. The telemetry of the last health check from “The Cosmos” placed it in the orbit of Neptune, 7 light hours instead of the expected 12 light hours away from Earth. “Huh...... you better call Australia. Wait... call Abhi first”.

“The Cosmos” was Earths’ first Interstellar ship. A collaboration between almost all nations of the planet. Costing almost 1.7 trillion US dollars to build and assemble in orbit, it was manned by 127 stellanauts from every nation that could train it’s personnel on time to leave. Leaving Earth’s orbit on its nearly 100 year journey to Ross 154 system on the 11th of March 2034 it crossed the Heliopause, an important event, on 26th June 2040. Telemetry from The Cosmos was received from radio observatories from all around the world and was designed with many overlaps and redundancies. Over the course of its journey out of the Solar system it had accelerated to nearly 12% the speed of light. Once every two hours the space colony ship beamed back telemetry data containing nearly every aspect of the ships’ health. This included it’s distance from Earth.

2 hours before new year, Ram remembered seeing the distance as 11.4 light hours. Running back to his console, he checked the logs to confirm. Confused, he called Abhi. She still had her party hat on all crooked and everything when she huffed over to the control room. The party hat looked completely out of place on an otherwise stern woman. Taking over Ram’s console and she began poring over the logs. “Have you called Andrew”? Abhi asked. “He’s already here” said Vikram pointing over to the big monitor at the center of the control room. “We’re seeing the same thing” said Andrew. “I’m calling everyone”.

A few hours after everyone was assembled over the conference it was decided to call the ship. The logs and the telemetry didn’t make sense anymore. Crew health seemed fine. Weird thing was, none of the crew of the ship seemed to get on the radio to call home. A call was made beckoning The Cosmos to send over crew audiovisuals confirming they were okay.

It took 8 hours for the audiovisuals to arrive bouncing over the many transmitters and receivers of the deep space network. When the message was finally decoded back to video everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Louis the captain of The Cosmos seemed oblivious to their situation but otherwise looked in good condition. Everyone was relieved. Everyone except Mark.

“Something isn’t right. Look at him. He seem right to anyone here?” asked the most experienced scientist over at NASA. He was right. Closer inspection of the video did reveal something of off about Louis. His eyes seemed smaller. His mouths seemed just so slightly crooked. This definitely looked like Louis but a facsimile. A badly made one.

Here's an interesting writing prompt I found on Reddit.

Every year several hundred thousand people go missing worldwide, the crazies said it was aliens. When you were abducted, you found out they were right. Turns out humans make astonishingly good pets. Not because we're smart or strong or fast but because... we're adorable.

The original thread can be found here. https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/iperh8/wp_every_year_several_hundred_thousand_people_go/

Hello. Hope you are well. I am well too. Although you are going to find this message in a bottle, so to speak, please understand that I am not in any immediate danger. In fact, I quite like it here. I do, however, have to tell my story to whoever listens to it.

My name is Adio. I finished top of my class at the CMU and joined the "Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd." in 1999. They were the only industry back home able to pay great salaries. In 2012 I was promoted to captain of the "Adventure of the Seas". I held this position until June 18th 2015.

I know that you are probably not going to believe this. But those alien abductions stories you hear from around the world are true. I was just like you. Unable to believe; brushing those stories aside as crazy people stories. I even scoffed at Daniel Badrick once when he told me. I hope he isn’t as immature as me and forgives me. I will completely understand if you choose to ignore this and move on with your life. Like I said before, I am doing quite well. I have been eating well. Granted the food is not like back home. I have never been a picky eater to begin with. Truth be told, I am glad this happened. It’s almost as if my wishes have been granted. After all, how long was a man just supposed to stare at the stars? Now I travel through them.

On the night of June 18th in 2015 I was on deck with Bardick Devan. At around 3:30am, when things were quiet, we spotted what I now know is the Drroluman transport ship. It was a bright royal blue thing. So elegant. So...... smooth. Bardick and I went out to investigate. I still remember when Bardick shouted out “UFO.... OH MY GOD”. When I opened my mouth to say something to Bardick I felt this force I can’t really put in terms that is in the realms of your experience. But I now know what it was. These people.... yes they are people, have mastered gravity. Because at that moment I was definitely falling INTO the transport ship.

I landed hard. My 44 year old knees stung like shit. I tried standing up but when I struggled, I felt someone’s “hands” picking me up. Gently. I wasn’t expecting that. The shock made me scream. My screams shocked him instead and he roared like some kind of wild cat. I don’t know how long I stared at him, but when I came to me senses the first thing I asked him was “what the fuck are you?”. I didn’t understand anything that came. But this much I knew. He was trying to explain something to me.

And that’s what was so shocking to me. That I knew he was trying to explain something to me. When I was done collecting my thoughts I knew three things.
1. I was definitely inside of an alien ship
2. I was staring at an alien.
3. Other than the fact that they were huge and seemed ungainly, they looked remarkably like people. Shit... I even had an uncle that looked like him.

I have been here, by my count, 2 years and 167 days and this is what I have to report about these people. They are miners. They mine metals, minerals from any place they can lay their hands on. Asteroids, planets, moons, dead stars. Everything. Not in a thousand years humans would be able to replicate the way these people process these mined materials. I am currently riding on a space ship these people made. They seem so ungainly, but god damn, they can build great things. Not to mention their “robots”. God, these things were more human than human. So nimble, so quick. I can't explain it in enough words.

Now the people. In every way they seem like humans. Larger in every way. Larger heads, large body, large legs, large hands, large fingers... you get the idea. Their skin only looks remarkably like ours. But it’s different. Brown with splotches of black here and there. These markings are unique to every individual. They don’t have a discernible body language but they do have a vivid skin language. Laughter for example makes their skin make these beautiful waves of pink crawling all over their body. Like some kind of sophisticated chameleon. Anger makes it go a dull orange. Happiness a bright pink.

I don’t know where these people truly are from, but all they do is travel between star systems, mine and trade it with other people of their kind. I can tell they’ve colonized an many systems and they live everywhere. There are billions of them. Humanity could talk about solving over population all they want, but this truly seems like the answer.

I did figure out why they took me. I am... for lack of a better word... a pet on their ship. Something to distract them from. Something to love. To like. I have a free run on the whole ship. They feed me well. In every aspect they have provided for me. There’s a reason they take us. We look vaguely like them. From their point of view we look like tinier versions of them. Like monkeys. But intelligent. Our voice sounds tinny and squeaky to them and delights them.

I know what you are probably thinking. No. It’s not demeaning in any way. Yes, I am, for all intents and purposes a pet. But these people know what sentience is. They did seem apologetic for taking me. But I was okay with it. Two failed marriages. 2 daughters who don’t want anything to do with me. A fuckton of alimony. Why wouldn’t I choose this over my life back on Earth.

I still haven’t figured how they manage to communicate in space. They don’t seem to be using any radio. All my training at the CMU and I still haven’t found anything that resembles a transmitter or receiver. After months of scavenging I built a radio. I did test it out a couple of times to check if I tripped some alarms, but all seems well. They still haven’t figured I got a radio.

---

Crossing the vast distances across space, the radio waves finally washed over Earth. An empty Earth. If there were any humans left, the year would have been 11,491. But there were none. Poor Adio, all his training at the CMU, and he completely forgot about relativity.