Out of the Blue

“I’m glad you made it,” shouted a man through a thick grey mustache, holding down his hat beneath the whirling blades of a helicopter.

His haircut was fresh, cut close to the skin, and he was dressed in military fatigues with a prominent black star embroidered above his left breast pocket—so I assumed he was probably a big deal. As I exited the helicopter he reached out his hand and gave me a firm handshake. It was smoother than what I would have expected for a military man his years, and clammy. I could tell he was nervous.

“Please,” he said, directing me with an open palm, “We have it contained in a sealed facility just behind me.”

The facility was large, its bare metal glistening beneath the floodlights against the night sky. It was haphazardly constructed, a large dome surrounded by snaking outcroppings leading to barracks and what must have been hastily erected research stations.

“What is it?” I asked, now hurrying through a long corridor, matching the soldier’s pace.

“You’re here to tell us that.”

The corridor was long and brightly lit, with white tile flooring, makeshift steel walls, and overhead lights. The entire facility had been hurriedly constructed over the thing, caging it in. It was too dangerous to relocate.

“What agency did you say you worked for?” he asked.

“I’m from the Atypical Threat Reduction Agency.”

“I ain’t heard of that,” he said, his pace increasing to a march.

“Well, it’s new,” I said, struggling to keep up.

“Who’s in charge there?”

“Since it was created this morning, and because I’m the only person in it—I guess that would be me.”

“I’ll be honest—we didn’t know who to expect, sir. Once the president disappeared and the rest of the cabinet resigned, we didn’t know who they would send. We didn’t know who’d be crazy enough to want to come.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “sometimes it’s not the decision makers who rise to face the unknown, but the those who ask questions.”

“So you volunteered?”

“It came down the chain, and I was the first person it came to without the authority to pawn it off on someone else. I think most people would rather be home right now with their families. There was also a major concern it may be telepathic.”

“Ah, so it can’t learn any classified intel?”

“I was the only one not cheating on his wife. They thought a clean conscience might be the best representation for all of humanity.”

He looked back for just a moment with a wry smile, “She must be a lucky gal.”

“I’m not married,” I said.

We continued down the long hall, its walls shining in the light, and the recently placed, immaculate white tiles of the floor cascading down the hall. Finally, we arrived at a large steel hatch with a wheel lock. The soldier turned to face me as he bent over to turn the wheel.

“The room is pressurized, so if something goes wrong, we can’t get you out.”

“So what should I do?”

“Don’t piss it off.”

The door wheezed and a gust of moist air shot from the seams of the hatch. The soldier stepped in first. The room was brightly illuminated, with a large glass window from the floor to ceiling that looked into total darkness. At the center of the room was a small desk, the kind a high school teacher would have used in a school suffering from budget shortages, a single steel rolling chair with faded green cloth, and on the floor beside them was an old beat-up CRT television with a frayed cord spiraling out from behind it.

The soldier’s pace increased to just short of a run. He leaned over and lifted up the heavy television set and dropped it onto the table, rattling the ancient electronics within. “It talks through this,” he said, gesturing to the old television. “You’ve got an hour. Good luck.”

The soldier made his way to the door as fast as he could.

“Aren’t you going to plug it in?” I asked.

The hatch slammed shut.

The lights went out and the sounds of whirring mechanism churned as the room began pressurizing. Adjusting my eyes in the black, I could see a glow in the darkness beyond the glass, like the beam of a lighthouse suffocated by fog.

As the clicking hum of electricity filled the incandescent lights of the room, they flickered back on. I slowly approached the glass sheet that made up an entire wall of the large room and stood perfectly still. I couldn’t make anything out through the window. The light in the room was too bright, and all I could see was my own reflection in the still black glass.

“Hello,” I said, facing my own reflection. I didn’t have anything planned, and it seemed like a perfectly adequate introduction. My instructions were more than simple, find out what it wants. The unspoken addition to that, I assume, was to find out how to kill it.

I stood there, and waited for a reply. A minute went by, then five, then ten. I didn’t want to pressure it into speaking with me if it didn’t want to. I had done my job and it didn’t work—if it didn’t want to talk, I could go.

Keeping my eyes fixed on my own reflection, I backpedaled to the chair and unfixing the bottom button of my jacket I took a seat. Then the familiar whine of an old television set turning on shook me, and I looked over to the television set—now hissing static.

HELLO.

The letters were broken, unfixed on the screen; the word shook up and down, and occasionally split through the middle. The letters came in clear, white on black, and bled out on the sides in hues of red, green, and blue.

I shot my attention back to the glass. But it was still just me, sitting in a chair beside a desk. A perfect reflection against the perfect dark.

Looking back at the television set, I bent down and looked beneath the table. And there, still dangling freely, was the power cord.

I sat back and composed myself as best I could. The word “hello” still flashed on the screen beside me, taunting me and driving me towards a loss for words. In this moment, the enormity of my purpose here came into full focus.

“Where do you come from?” I asked as clearly as I could into my own reflection.

I looked into the screen and watched the same dancing letters still spelling “hello.” Turning again to the glass it was still, like a pool of black water casting a shadowy reflection.

The words disappeared from the screen, and were replaced.

DISTANT.

It wasn’t excitement, or anxiety, but an entirely new feeling washing over me. I was a child again, asking my father every question I could manage. What we could learn from this being, what it could answer.

I AM HERE.

“What does that mean? I didn’t ask that.”

I AM HERE.

The words repeated. Flashing.

“Yes, you are. You are here. We have you here, and we need you to answer a few more questions. Then, maybe we will release you.”

The screen went blank.

“Why did you destroy this town? Why did you kill all of the people here?” I tried to ask the words as politely as I could.

I AM HERE.

“Why are you here?” I asked, shooting forward.

TO PROTECT.

“You’re here to protect the Earth?”

YES.

“Then why? Why kill all those people?” I caught myself after I asked the question, and quickly eased my tone. Looking back to the glass I asked calmly, “What do you want?”

TO PROTECT.

“Yes. Protect the Earth. What is it about the Earth you want to protect?”

ANIMALS PLANTS BACTERIA.

The text faded from the screen. The answers came quickly now, the creature sending its responses at a frenetic pace.

ALL ONE CHEMICAL REACTION.

ALL THE SAME.

Looking towards the wall of glass, I tried as best as I could to see the thing. If I could see it, maybe I could better understand it. But, like an echo not returned, there was nothing.

“Yes, all life on Earth is related. We’re all a product of evolution.”

NOT HUMANS. HUMANS ARE REACTION.

“A reaction to what?”

METEORS

“Meteors? Like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs? Friends of yours?”

HUMANS ARE IMMUNE SYSTEM. PROTECT FROM METEORS.

“Are you warning us of a meteor that’s coming? Are humans in danger?”

NO METEOR. HUMANS IN DANGER.

“So if there’s no meteor, then how are humans in danger?”

NEW IMMUNE SYSTEM.

“A new immune system?” I said facetiously, getting frustrated at the glow of the old television and its incessant static hiss. “For the Earth? Created by all life to protect itself? Right?”

I AM HERE.

“Yes, I know you’re here. What do you want? Why have you attacked people?”

YOU ARE BORN WITH YOUR FACE TO THE STARS. YOUR BACK TO THE EARTH.

“So we’re an immune system, then,” I said shrugging. “From the brine shrimp in thermal vents under the Arctic to the bacteria in my toilet, we’re here to protect them from meteors? We were born to watch for threats from the stars?”

YES.

“And then what were you born facing?”

HUMANS.

I stood up. Tired of reading the flashing lines of text. “How is that possible? Where are you from?” I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been before.

DISTANT RELATIVE. DEEP BELOW.

“And how do you know how to communicate with me? How are you doing this?”

IMMUNE SYSTEM DESIGNED TO DEFEAT THE THREAT.

“And what will you do—with you in there? How will you defeat this threat?” Fear gave way to anger. “What can you do now, you’re trapped. We have defeated you! Now how did you stay undetected? How did you shut down our power? Why did you kill all those people?”

I AM HERE.

“I know you’re there. And you’re going to stay there. And you’re going to rot there. So you need to start giving me answers!” I yelled, approaching the glass.

The crack of guns discharging, muffled by the thick walls of the facility, rang out from behind me. I turned my head up to look as the overhead lights shut off, leaving me in complete darkness—bar for the glow of the old television. The wavering text of the screen still shaking in the static, “I am here.”

Looking back to the glass, my reflection was gone—replaced by a creature standing face to face with me. It was tall, much taller than me, and covered in bony plates that overlapped like layers of pitch-black armor. Like a giant isopod from a nightmare, it had chittering mandibles and reflective black orbs for eyes that stared right through me. Crackling electricity seemed to run beneath its skin, and it lit up like a paper lantern. Black mist poured out of the sides of what must be its head, filling the small space with a thick fog, reflecting its light like a roiling thunderstorm.

I looked back to the television. The message, “I am here,” remained.

Then there was a deafening bang on the hatch that echoed around me.

I AM HERE.

Then another.

I AM HERE.

A shriek of air as it escaped through the hatch behind me forced me backwards into the glass. Then another crash-landed against the hatch, bending it inwards.

I AM HERE. It repeated.

I AM HERE.

I AM HERE.

Then they were.