Little Green Men - Maybe Not

 

    Mankind, as well as Hollywood, has always assumed that alien spacecraft would be small, maybe the size of half of a football field.  But what if they were monstrous?  So large in fact that upon their arrival they blocked out the entire sky?  What if the very sound of them flying close to the Earth creates massive disruption to the planet, the ocean, the tectonic plates, rivers and cities?

    Our orbiting telescopes should be able to see something of that magnitude coming at us, not that any early warning system would do any good.

It began with a sound.

Not thunder. Not jets. Not anything the Earth had ever known. It was a low, resonant hum that seemed to rise from the bones of the planet itself. Windows trembled. Oceans stilled. Birds forgot how to fly.

At 3:42 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the sky disappeared.

Not darkened. Not clouded. Gone. Replaced by a vast, seamless underside—an alien hull so immense it stretched horizon to horizon, blotting out the sun, the stars, even the memory of blue. Its surface shimmered with symbols that pulsed like breathing architecture, unreadable and alive.

People screamed. Some prayed. Others simply stared, mouths agape, as tectonic plates groaned beneath their feet. Rivers reversed course. The Atlantic surged into the Carolinas like a thirsty beast. Entire cities tilted, as if the Earth itself were trying to look up.

The ship didn’t land. It hovered. Its presence alone was enough to bend gravity, distort time, and unravel the delicate choreography of weather. Lightning struck upward. Volcanoes wept. The moon blinked out, as if embarrassed to share the sky.

In a quiet town in Florida, a boy named Terry stood in his backyard, clutching a plastic telescope. He had been watching the stars every night for months, hoping to catch a glimpse of something extraordinary. He never imagined the extraordinary would come looking for him.

The hum grew louder. Not in volume, but in meaning. It was no longer sound—it was instruction. The trees leaned toward it. The ants marched in spirals. Milo’s dog lay flat, ears pressed to the ground, as if listening to the Earth’s last lullaby.

Then, a voice. Not spoken. Not heard. Known.

“You are not alone. You were never alone. We are not here to conquer. We are here to correct.”

Correct what? No one knew. But the oceans parted. The tectonic plates realigned. The sky began to flicker, like a faulty screen trying to remember its purpose.

And just as suddenly as it had come, the ship began to rise—slowly, impossibly, until it was no longer a ship but a shadow in memory. The sun returned, sheepish and pale. Birds resumed their flight. The rivers remembered their names.

Terry looked through his telescope one last time. The stars were back. But they were different now. They blinked in patterns. They whispered in code.

And somewhere, deep in the Earth, the hum remained.

 

The end
(for now)