A flash of life for Archie Stibb

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

What would be more terrifying - if there wasn't a single shriek of pain outside the atmosphere of planet Earth or if trillions upon trillions of howls and wails ricocheted from one end of the universe to the other?

Archie looked up at the night sky and pondered this question. The evening was clear and the stars were endless. He took a sip of coffee and let it sit in his mouth a moment as he thought.

What if this is the real deal? What if aliens do actually exist?

A video had come across his newsdesk of a UFO sighting sent in by a local man who had been out hiking up in the mountains. Archie loved writing these stories. There was no question more interesting, he thought, than whether humans were alone in the universe.

He'd spent the day visiting this man who had seen the UFO, interviewing him about his experience. The guy was the sort that usually spots UFOs. Straggly beard, balding head, a floral shirt partially hiding parched, tanned skin underneath. He looked like every other person in history who'd made an alien sighting.

Archie took another sip as he rested his arms on the low wall outside the newspaper's office, looking out at the bright lights of the city. How had he got here? A man in his early thirties working for a local paper thousands of miles from home. No wife, no kids, not many friends. He'd had some of those things but they were gone now. Mostly, he had his work and his thoughts to keep him company.

He knew no one would believe this man, too wide-eyed and animated about what he claimed to have seen. But isn't that exactly how you would react if you'd witnessed something that wasn't of this world? In these parts UFO sightings were plentiful and each as fanciful as the next. But there was something about this one, about the way the man spoke. The tone of his voice and the look in his eyes, something between fear and joy, as he told his story.

What if, Archie thought, the man was telling the truth?

Scrog knew the answer to this as he looked down at the Pacific Ocean two thousand miles below his ship.

A couple of lights flickered on the dashboard. Time to get moving. He finished the last of his sandwich, a marvellous invention created by the people living below, and took the controls off auto-pilot, yanking the ship to the right and down towards Earth.

None of the eight billion people on the planet knew who Scrog was and that was how it was supposed to be. Well, a few had known, at least for a brief moment. Some presidents and prime ministers, selected scientists and engineers, those memories of their meetings carefully extracted and false ones inserted in place. A few musicians, artists, and other people Scrog found interesting had also been exposed to the truth, although the less said about those encounters the better.

It was for the best, Scrog had been told over and over again while studying at the academy, that humans were led to believe they were alone in the universe. That each of their own incremental technological developments should be seen as their own bold new steps into the future. They were to be kept in the dark for as long as possible.

For the 10,000 or so years he'd been in the job, he'd watched his assignment, the humans, evolve from primitive hunter-gatherer communities to what they were today. With a few nudges and pointers along the way, everything was going as planned. Earth was not just on track but on the very precipice of having the curtain drawn and the enormous knowledge of extraterrestrial life poured into its home. Earth was on the verge of finding out it was not alone.

For the time being, however, Scrog had a list of far less grand and much more irritating tasks to tick off. A dozen or so squabbles between various countries threatening to break out into violence, politicians serving their own interests and holding back the progress and harmony of humanity, scientists wasting time down dead ends as they independently sought answers to questions Scrog and the rest of the universe had already learned while they were in high school.

But first, there was something else that took priority.

No telescope, radar, or pair of eyes on Earth saw Scrog as he made his descent. Although there was one pair of eyes that would be seeing him in just under 14 minutes. Those eyes belonged to a newspaper journalist called Archie Stibb.