Story

Fifty years ago, bright lights appeared in the sky.

A farmer found something in his field beyond his comprehension. He took it to the scientists at the University of Waterloo, who realized:

We are not alone.

For decades, the scientists performed experiments in secret, but they could not understand the strange message—or was it a warning?

Now the lights have returned, and with them the questions:

Who are they?

Where did they come from?

Can we figure out what they want from us—before it is too late?

Prologue

When you were a kid, you loved to look at the stars.

You couldn’t see many of them from Toronto, but your grandma had a cottage up north, and every summer you’d spend two or three weeks there, fishing off the dock and roasting marshmallows and playing checkers when it rained. At night, your dad would fill a thermos up with hot chocolate and your mom would roll up a big wool blanket and all of you would walk through the woods to a large, bare expanse of limestone. “This is part of the Canadian Shield,” your dad would say the first time you went there each summer, and then he would deliver an impromptu lecture about geography or geology or the Indigenous people who lived here long before the first European settlers arrived.

Eventually, however, he’d go quiet, and you’d all lie on your backs stretched out on the big blanket and just stare out at the endless expanse of inky blackness lit up with twinkling points of light surrounded by the glowing dust of faraway galaxies. Sometimes your mom would recite poetry, by Walt Whitman or John Keats. Eventually, a shooting star would streak across the sky, and you would all gasp in unison. “Make a wish!” Grandma would whisper, and you always made the same wish: to become an astronaut someday.

Unfortunately, just before you started high school, you were diagnosed with an eye condition that disqualified you from becoming a pilot – let alone flying a spaceship – and you were fitted with a thick pair of glasses. So instead, you started spending all your free time reading about perilous journeys and new discoveries, both real and imaginary.

Before you knew it, you grew up. Your grandma got old, and she sold the cottage a few years ago. Other than the occasional trip to the observatory on campus with your best friend Alex, you don’t spend much time looking up. You’re too busy: working co-op jobs, studying for your classes in Biology and History, playing board games with your friends.

You don’t realize, of course, that all these years, the stars have also been looking at you.

Part 1

Less than one week before the day when you make first contact with alien life, you are sitting in the SLC picking at the remnants of a shawarma bowl and wondering whether it is actually humanly possible to pass organic chemistry. You squint at the diagram in front of you for the tenth time, hoping that this time the correct sequence will become clear. “Hexane, nonane, decane,” you mutter under your breath.

“That’s a weird spell,” says a voice. You look up to see Alex grinning at you, a smoothie in one hand and a laptop in the other. With their mop of curly hair, round tortoiseshell glasses, and collection of vintage wool blazers, they always look like they took a wrong turn in 1955 and wound up here by mistake.

You sigh and lean back in your chair, massaging the tense muscles of your neck with your fingers. “Please say you’ve come over here to tell me that the world is ending in the next thirty minutes and I won’t have to take this quiz this Friday.”

“Sorry,” Alex says, plopping down in the chair next to you and placing their laptop on the table in front of you. “Best I can do is a distraction.”

You and Alex are always making puzzles and games for each other; you first met at a game of Blood on the Clocktower your first year and have been inseparable ever since. Lately, however, you haven’t had much time to hang out; your coursework has been kicking your ass, and Alex has been busy with an undergraduate research assistantship for a hotshot professor in the Astronomy department. “When did you even have time to make this?” you ask, looking at the screen.

“Let’s just say that my work has left me inspired.”

Part 2

You’re sitting in an anthropology lecture, half paying attention as the professor talks about the history of games.

“The first primitive dice games appear as early as 9,000 B.C.,” he says, “though that’s mostly speculation. We don’t know how they were played, or even if the ancients had the same conception of games that we do. Later, of course, we’d see board games, puzzles, fortune-telling games that are the predecessors of the cootie catchers you might have made in school. Cards are a relatively late addition, first appearing in China around 1200 years ago. Games are so ubiquitous around the world, in fact, that some anthropologists argue that it is not intelligence or tool use, but our persistent love for games, that truly makes us human.”

None of this is new information for you, but it gives you an idea. The perfect response to the puzzle that Alex showed you yesterday.

You find them in the library an hour later and drop a piece of paper in their lap. “Made you something,” you grin.

“What is it?” they ask, narrowing their eyes.

“Why, an ambidextrous hexatetraflexagon, of course.”

Part 3

When you look back on everything that happened, it’s hard to pinpoint a beginning, or a moment where you could have turned aside. Everything feels out of order. Did it begin when you were a kid? When you learned their names, understood their warning? Or did it begin that day when Alex called you – called you – and breathlessly told you to meet them in the Physics building late one night?

You’re already in your pajamas, and grumpy about being disturbed halfway through your second episode of old school Doctor Who. “Can’t you just tell me about it over the phone?” you grumble.

“Absolutely not,” they whisper. “You have to come see this for yourself.”

The building is dim and echoey when you arrive, illuminated by the red glow of the emergency lights, and the occasional glow spilling out from under a closed lab door. Finally, you get to the office that Alex shares with three other student researchers, and with a furtive glance back and forth they pull you inside.

“Calm down, James Bond,” you quip, but Alex is serious. “I don’t know who’s watching,” they say. “So I’m erring on the side of caution.”

Once you’ve taken your coat off and sat down, they fill you in. They’ve been spending most of their research assistantship so far this term helping their supervisor go through old files: cabinet after cabinet of old lab notes, quizzes, and attendance sheets. They had just finished emptying out a dented brown metal filing cabinet, but they couldn’t get the bottom drawer to close. Finally, they found the culprit: an ancient spiral bound notebook with yellowing pages that had fallen behind the drawer and gotten stuck.

“It’s not just boring physics notes or whatever,” Alex whispers. “It’s some kind of journal. Of something weird.”

On the inside cover, in spidery handwriting, the owner has written “Property of Dr. Ellen Valentina. Confidential.”

You flip open the notebook at random.

October 9, 1975

I haven’t dared to tell anyone about the voice in my head; the voice that I somehow know is their voice. They don’t take me seriously enough as it is.

Sometimes, it’s just sounds: clicking, or distant music. Sometimes there are words, but the words feel all tangled and wrong, like talking to my aunt Mary after she had her stroke. Sometimes, like today, they just sent me a set of images.

I copied them down immediately, and have recreated my drawings below. I have no idea what to make of them.

Why did they choose me for this task?

Part 4

“What the hell is this?” you ask Alex, putting down the notebook.

“I don’t know! That’s why I called you!”

“Is it some kind of prank?”

“I don’t think so,” Alex says. “I looked through the records for our lab, and Ellen Valentina was a real person – a post-doc in Physics and Astronomy. She seems pretty normal – she’s a co-author on some papers about particle physics – and then suddenly she just disappears.”

“What, she dropped out?”

“No, I mean, like, she disappears. I went on the Archives website and pulled up old newspaper articles and there are notices asking for any information regarding her whereabouts.” They show you a scan of an old newspaper clipping, featuring a faded photograph of a young woman with long red hair and a serious, faraway expression.

“Whoa, creepy.”

“I did some googling, and she never turned up,” Alex says. “She completely disappears from the university records. But her name appears from time to time on conspiracy theory sites, UFO discussion boards, stuff like that.” They click over to a tab open to r/UnsolvedMysteries. “February 13, 2026 will mark fifty years since Dr. Ellen Valentina disappeared,” the headline reads. “Is the Canadian government covering up what really happened to her?”

“It’s mostly just paranoid raving,” Alex says, saving you the effort of reading the wall of text. “Combined with the basic facts of the case. Though they do mention some unusual astronomical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in the months before, which I thought was pretty interesting.”

You grin. “Of course you’d think that was the most notable part.”

“Okay, but there’s one more weird thing, Alex says. “Because right after I called you – like less than a minute after – someone slipped this manilla envelope full of polaroids under the door. I ran out into the hallway but I couldn’t see anyone.” With a magician’s flourish for the dramatic, they produce the envelope from under a messy stack of papers. On the outside, in small block letters, someone has written: WE ARE WATCHING YOU WITH INTEREST.

Part 5

As you flip through Dr. Valentina’s journal, the shape of events becomes gradually clearer. It’s difficult, because she was taking notes for herself, not writing for posterity. She goes on tangents, leaves out details, refers to people and places by initials or nicknames. And there are many pages that are completely inscrutable, filled with codes and diagrams you don’t understand at all.

But eventually, you piece things together. Fifty years ago, neon lights appeared in the sky over the region, growing brighter every night, flashing in sequences that did not seem to follow any known pattern. This was long before the internet or social media, but the town was buzzing with speculation: every student paper, every coffee shop conversation, mentioned the lights. What were they? Weather equipment? Soviet satellites?

Dr. Valentina had theories of her own. No recognizable reference to existing programming languages, she writes early on, but lights might make more sense in base 8??

She writes about the visible spectrum of light for different animals, and documents similar reports in tabloids and historical records. Interspersed with these research notes are her frustrations about the mundane happenings of daily life. She is constantly overlooked for grants and research opportunities in favour of her male colleagues. An experiment isn’t working the way she wants it to. Someone overhears her accent at the grocery store – Dr. Valentina was born in Romania – and calls her a “dirty commie.”

Suddenly, the research and speculation shift to action. A senior researcher in her lab has come down with an unexplained illness, and she is asked to replace him. She is nervous, but ecstatic. The university has received a strange report from a local farmer. There is an emergency meeting. She has been chosen as part of the response team. I will report back as soon as I can, she scrawls hastily before she leaves.

After that, there is a gap of several days – the longest she has gone without writing since the beginning of the journal. Then, in an entry dated September 27, 1975, she writes a long report of what they found in that farmer’s field. It begins, in emphatic capital letters:

EVERYTHING I USED TO BELIEVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE HAS BEEN PROVEN WRONG. WE ARE NOT ALONE.

Part 6

You’re not sure how long you and Alex stay up in the lab excitedly flipping through Dr. Valentina’s journal and taking notes on its contents, but the next thing you know you’re blinking awake, head on your arms, your sleeve wet with drool. Eugh. “Dude, have we been here all night?” you mutter, looking over at Alex, who is curled up in a chair, rumpled but still awake.

“Pretty much,” they say. Their eyes are still bright with discovery. “There’s still so much to figure out.”

Under the harsh fluorescent lights, last night feels like a surreal dream. “I mean, we can’t stay here indefinitely, can we?” you ask. “Like, I have classes to go to. That big OChem quiz to study for!”

Alex actually rolls their eyes. “I can’t believe we’re dealing with an actual mystery that took place here on campus, with the most delicious real-life puzzle I’ve ever encountered, and you’re worrying about homework. When is that quiz, anyway?”

You double check your phone. “Uh, the 30th. Friday.”

“See, you’ve got loads of time. We get to the bottom of this in the next couple of days, you cram all your proteins or whatever the night before, and badda-bing, badda-boom, you’re good.”

“Okay, okay, let’s say I do that,” you say, throwing up your hands. You have to admit, this is way more interesting than proteins. “We still can’t stay here the whole time, right? Like, you have office mates who will be coming in soon.”

“Fair enough,” they say. They check their watch – they wear an actual analog ticking watch, because of course they do – and wince. “Actually, I have a couple classes I really shouldn’t skip either. Let’s shower, eat, go to class I guess, then meet up again at, like, five to work on this?”

“Works for me,” you say. You stand up and stretch, put on your coat, absentmindedly check your phone. “Huh, that’s weird,” you say.

“What is?” Alex is instantly by your side, attentive.

“Oh, probably just spam,” you say, as you open the text from an unknown number.

“That doesn’t look like any spam text I’ve ever received before,” Alex murmurs.

It seems that Alex isn’t the only one receiving mysterious messages.

Part 7

You’ve often wondered, when watching horror movies, why the characters are so resistant to actually saying “zombie” or “vampire” or whatever. They’re always making up weird nicknames instead of saying the obvious out loud.

You get it now, though. Even as you read through the entries from Dr. Valentina’s journal – even when it’s obvious what she’s talking about – the word “aliens” still feels clunky and artificial on your tongue. At first, she calls them simply “the visitors,” or “the travelers.” Then, in an entry from October 11, 1975, they get an official nickname: “The Spinners.” Because of the ship they found in the woods, you infer, neon-colored and playful as a light-up top.

Even now, you find yourself saying “Spinners” whenever you can instead of stating the obvious.

“Did you believe in – you know – before this?” you ask Alex that evening.

“I mean, as a possibility, maybe? Like, panspermia? Not little green men in UFOs.”

You vaguely remember learning about panspermia – the theory that early life was seeded on earth and other planets by a common source – but it hasn’t been a big focus of your biology degree. Even that theory felt fringe, before.

Now nothing seems as certain. Ellen Valentina was a respected scientist, accomplished, committed to the scientific method. And yet here she is writing about making contact with Spinners, receiving secret communications from them that only she can understand, decoding the messages they send to her.

It would sound crazy, except that you’ve been receiving strange messages too. Is this a prank? A coincidence?

Or the beginning of something much, much bigger?

Part 8

“Do you think maybe we should ask someone else for help?” you ask. You’re huddled in a corner of the library, trying to make sense of a page of Dr. Valentina’ s journal that’s entirely in code.

Alex looks up from the cloth-bound volume about wartime codebreaking that they had been studying. “What, like a faculty member?” Alex says. “No way. They’re part of, like, the system.”

You sigh. “Okay, not a faculty member. I was thinking maybe someone like Samantha.” You’ve never met someone as good at puzzles as Samantha Li, the president of the board game club where you met as first years. These days, she’s a PhD student at MIT, doing some kind of advanced robotics research you can’t even begin to understand.

“I thought of that,” Alex says, “so I looked her up. Turns out she’s on a research sabbatical until, like, April 15.”

“Oh.”

“In Antarctica.”

“Oh.”

“So that’s a no.”

“Well, shit,” you say, turning your attention back to the page in front of you. “I guess it’s up to us, then.”

Part 9

The journal ends abruptly with a cryptic, paranoid entry.

February 13, 1976
There is nothing left for me here – nothing but dismissals and denials, ignorance and boredom. I am a fly caught in a web, a fox with its leg in a trap.

I can’t stand by anymore and let this happen without saying something. They don’t belong here, and neither do I.

I have deciphered their final message, and decided it is time to leap. I will enter the light, or be lost in darkness, but I will not turn from my path. I am concealing this journal where I hope it will remain safe until I return – or until it is found by someone who can carry on this work.

I must save them, so that they can save us.

After that entry, there’s some random detritus stuffed in the back of the book – a grocery list, dry cleaning receipt, a few used bingo cards – but nothing important. Surely it can’t just end right here?

Part 10

You’re standing in the DC atrium, looking up at the strange winged contraption dangling above your head. Is it a kite? The sails of a ship? You think about journeys, about strangers, about traveling beyond the limits of your knowledge into the great unknown. A tap on your shoulder breaks your reverie. It’s Alex, finally free from their last class of the day. “Hey!” they say. “How’s it going?”

“You know, Da Vinci had designs for a flying machine in his notebooks,” you muse aloud. “Based on the movements of birds, dragonflies, maple keys. None of them worked, of course. It was more than 300 years before the Wright Brothers finally built a successful airplane in 1903.”

Alex rolls their eyes. “I mean how’s it going with you?”

“I just told you,” you shrug. “Thinking about flight.”

“Right.” Alex zips up their coat, and the two of you walk out of the building, instinctively bending your bodies to cut through the wind. “What do you think happened to Dr. Valentina?” they ask, as soon as you’re out of earshot of the other students.

“I don’t know,” you say, honestly. “Maybe she died. Maybe it was an enormous trap, and the Spinners tortured or killed her. Maybe she went insane, and went off the grid, and is still out there somewhere wearing a tin foil helmet and scribbling on the walls.” You gesture at the photocopied page of her journal you’ve been trying to decipher while you waited for Alex to get out of class. “I mean, these don’t necessarily seem like the writings of a reasonable, scientifically-minded person.”

“You don’t really think that, though, do you?” they ask, with a sad look on their face.

“I’m not sure what to think,” you say, wrapping your arms around yourself. It’s already getting dark out, and the first few stars are appearing above you. “But I want to believe she’s still out there, somewhere. Having adventures. Traveling far beyond our solar system.”

Part 11

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.

Part 12

The next few hours pass in a blur, like a distant memory or a night of heavy drinking. You don’t remember what happened so much as you remember how you felt: overwhelmed, incredulous, thrilled.

Before you know it, you’re back on campus, with instructions to carry on as you have been and await further instructions. WE MUST BE CAREFUL, the voice had said. IT IS NOT YET TIME.

“This is so surreal,” Alex says, shaking their head. “Like, we didn’t imagine that, right? We saw a UFO last night? Like an honest-to-goodness alien spaceship? And now we’re just…sitting in my office again?”

“It’s so weird,” you agree. “I know exactly how Ellen felt.” You’re not sure exactly when you started calling her “Ellen” in your head, but it feels right. Like she’s your friend. Like you’re in this together.

I feel like I am going to come apart at the seams, she writes on November 12, 1975. The most momentous discovery in human history is happening, and yet around me no one has any idea. How am I supposed to care about campus gossip or the price of gasoline when this is happening? How much longer can this carry on before everything comes to light? How can everyone be so blind?

As if to illustrate her point, she has tucked a yellowed copy of that day’s student paper between the pages.