It was Alex’s idea, of course, to stake out in the field. You’re not even sure if it’s the right field – it’s not like Dr. Valentina had GPS coordinates she could write down – but you figure it’s as good a candidate as any. You’re sitting in a pair of borrowed lawn chairs, bundled against the cold, working on another cryptic passage from Dr. Valentina’s journal while you wait.
Last night, while looking for more information about the mysterious lights, Alex had found a scan of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Observer’s Handbook from the year the lights first appeared. “Obviously it was published at the beginning of the year so it’s not going to have any actual data about what happened, but I figured it still might be interesting.” As it turns out, their hunch was right. Several celestial bodies were in similar positions on the night the lights first appeared – August 19, 1975 – as they are this week.
Sitting in the dark, now, in your lawn chair, you shiver. You’re not sure if it’s from the cold or from excitement. “Pass me the thermos,” you whisper, and as Alex does, you’re instantly taken back to those nights at your grandma’s cottage. Staring up at the sky. Waiting for something to happen.
You don’t have to wait for long.
You’re not sure what you expected – a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mirage, or a glimpse of something at the corner of your eye – but that is not what happens.
One moment, the night is dark and quiet, and then suddenly, without any warning, they are here. Hovering, in the center of the clearing, shining as brightly as if it were in full daylight, is a…what? A sculpture? An object? A vessel? Its exterior surface is smooth, iridescent, dancing with neon colours that shift constantly before your eyes, like the shimmering surface of a soap bubble. Like a small child glimpsing something beautiful, you want to reach out and touch it, but you are afraid it will burst and disappear into nothingness again.
You dare not look away, but you can sense Alex beside you, know instinctively that their face bears the same expression of intermingled awe and terror as your own.
And then, a series of sounds like music on a scale unfamiliar to your ears, and a weird, otherworldly woman’s voice, that seems to come from inside your head and all around you at the same time:
FINALLY, YOU HAVE COME. WE’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.