Short Stories Volume 1

"Space Sirens"

As humans have evolved over time they have made fascinating new discoveries. Be it in medicine, science, math or in nature. But some things no matter how long we study them for, will always remain a mystery.

That couldn't be any truer than that of the vast and infinite space. The stars, planets, galaxies and everything in between providing beauty and wonder.

However in our attempts to explore it, we found there is danger as well.

One of them was black holes. They have led to an infinite amount of deaths of astronauts that have "accidently" stumbled into them. Even with all the research and funding, there's still not much we know about them. Many scientist have their own theories about them. Why we couldn't seem to avoid them. They seemed like magnets to us.

However we never expected one camera to get lucky that explains everything and yet leave us with more questions.

On the trip to one of the many galaxies we've barely discovered and named, we saw things unimaginable.

At first we thought it was just space dust. Clouding the view it was initially thought that the pilots were playing a prank. But eventually beautiful things, or creatures or whatever you want to call them began to appear from the dust clouds. They had this glow around them and their colors were still so vibrant and varied from one another. Their heads looked like it was a flower, eyes deep and a rich purple with white specks around them, with a long tail that also were diverse from each other.

The tail had four leaved fins, so thin they looked transparent. Along the edges were strings that imitated a jellyfishes' stingers with little pods at the end. Basically, they were so beautiful and mesmerizing that the engineer who was driving and controlling the camera followed one of them and the equipment was sucked into the blackhole that was nearby. Every person on that ship not only disappeared but was presumed dead. Their pulse signals flatlined once they were out of radio contact.

After reviewing the footage it became apparent that the first consensus was correct. The engineer was lured by it and into the hole. Those who were watching the video entered the same trance and were crashing into the monitors they were watching it from.

Millions of dollars went into funding, creating new cameras and machinery along with recruiting pilots to be able to get another glimpse of them. Each one winding up like the first. Eventually they had to create algorithms that would allow them to study the space sirens without being lured into destruction. Space sirens was the name given to them since they did appear to look like the mythical creatures sirens and did in fact lure those to their death.

They got so desperate that they asked civilians who knew code to help them create the perfect algorithm to allow them to get close.

Eventually, a group of two hundred people created one. They sent a ship up, with no people, only to be guided by the code they made. The moment they reached the spot where they were located, everyone held their breath. They couldn't risk looking at any of the monitors without taking the chance of compromising the whole thing. So beforehand they made sure to receive hourly updates of any footage and a separate team would review it.

It was perfect.

For years, we were able to study their elusive nature as closely as we can. Every single one of them appeared to be female. Only on one occasion was there evidence of a possible male. This one had only two leaved tail fins, but still transparent and had the jellyfish stingers and little pods. Their head wasn't in the shape of a flower per say like a giant pod of a flower that had yet to bloom. Colors weren't dull but they neither had the glow or vibrancy.

We still didn't know of their mating rituals or anything else. When they realized that they couldn't lure the ships they just ignored them. Many thought they would've become hostile but they just floated or swam around in the dust.

No matter how long it took, we were determined to study the new species. These space sirens, if able to be tamed or somehow allied, they can help lead us to new places we have yet to discover. They might even be able to get us through the blackholes without any danger.

Only time will tell.