Starcosmo

Chapter 3: The Object

In later years, all the eyewitnesses would report a remarkably similar set of initial impressions of The Lights.

Dr. Banner was no exception.

The three most commonly occurring initial observations were:

1)     It was in the sky.
2)     It was massive.
3)     It was glowing.

Given Emily’s advanced training in science generally and astrophysics specifically, her impressions were a bit more refined: it was clear from atmospheric effects that it was in orbit, not just 'in the sky'; that it was gargantuan, not simply 'massive'; and that it was luminescent, not simply glowing.

Its shape did not lend to easy classification. To look at it and try to assign it a shape was to bend your mind in on itself, like trying to bend your line of vision around a blind corner. Emily's highly-trained mind sputtered through biradial-symmetry and fractalesque and finally settled on Mobian. It was this last that would stick, in the public mind and in hers.

The Mobius strip, of course, was the famous topological phenomenon whereby a strip of paper was cut cleverly and reattached to itself so that it only had a single side, and ran around itself recursively forever.

But that was just a clever kid's trick, done with scissors. This thing looked like it was alive.

The luminescence was like fireflies or dinoflagellates ,not the harsh brilliance of stadium lights. That, plus the shape, made Emily question if it was a manufactured entity. Yet she wouldn't call it organic. Others would, later, and be shouted down by those who didn't believe anything so pristine and alive-looking could persist in space, and those who plain didn't like the word 'organic' anyway.

In the Space Center, that first night, Emily remembers standing stock still, first in shock, then in fright, then in awe, as wave after wave of emotions collapsed over her. She actually shuddered with the electric brightness of the movement, a crisp and hard reality that snapped down around her with a crushing finality. This was one of those moments, she realized, when your life becomes Before and After. It was her first such moment in twenty-seven years of life. It would not be her last.

She had run outside then, of course, Jason trailing behind her, and stood in the ashy parking lot, intensely aware of the grit under her heels, the gentle sway of the peach blossoms on the tree, the tang of rain in the air, her senses sharpened to record the tectonic shift in reality. Pay attention, human, her limbic cortex screamed, Everything is new, and you must survive this.

Everything is new.

You must survive this.

The Lights hung, as if suspended by the invisible cords of angels' harps, bringing Deity back into their lives for one bright, poignant moment.

"Oh, my God. . ."

The scale of it was breathtaking. It dominated the sky and overwhelmed the senses.

Emily was watching. She was watching closely, and so she saw the surface of the Lights ripple, a faint play of luminance roil across the surface, like the tendrils of the Northern lights extending a corpuscular hand across the belly of the Beast, as if waving, Hello. I am here, just before it disappeared.

In the blink of an eye, a peripheral flash, it was gone. One moment: Big Mystery From Heaven. The next: Nothing.

Emily stared at the empty sky, searchingly, her eyes watering from the effort, for a barest pair of heartbeats, and then spun on Jason, who almost fell over from the violence of her turn. She turned back to the sky and the emptiness of it crushed her and she screamed.

Although some two hundred people would be hospitalized for hysteria that First Night, Jason would later swear he'd never heard a less-hysterical scream. It was an entirely emotive scream, a pure, high, tonal, almost angelic scream of absolute cleansing, purging her endocrine and hormonal system of cortisol and serotonin, a prelude to a sleepless night of absolutely ferocious scientific discovery.

When she was done she took a deep, remarkably non-shuddery cleansing breath, and wheeled on Jason.

"Fuck. Did you see that? That was in-fucking-credible."

Jason, stammering through an overloaded limbic system, had no reply.

"Come on. Let's get inside and figure this thing out."

* * *