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Voyager

Voyager 1, envoy to the stars, carrying information about the human race and the planet they call home, Earth.

Sent out and left to drift for all of eternity though the universe. It would be millennia before it would reach the nearest star in its path. The chance of it actually coming into contact were beyond miniscule as the vastness of the universe was truly immense. The people of Earth had sent it out with much fanfare, but doomed it to forever be alone in its everlasting voyage.

It would sail out beyond the Sol system into the dark parts of the final frontier and be largely forgotten as the people of Earth busied themselves with their own lives. The craft fell out of common knowledge, only to be vaguely referenced by astronomers and hopers.

Nearly three hundred years after its faithful launch, it still drifted, dead, without power. It had gone farther than any other manmade object. But, still there and using inertia to continue its journey into the black void.

It was here that it finally succeeded in its mission. It was here, billions and billions of miles away from home that it finally made first contact.

"Hey Franky." Alexie called out over his shoulder to his friend. "I found something interesting." He tapped the screen of his computer with the end of his pen. It was an image form a radio telescope set up on Pluto, meant to scan space and map out the universe. A tall order that would take decades to accomplish, but had intrigued enough people to get funding.

"I told you not to call me that." Frank reminded Alexie. He too was looking at a monitor, looking for discrepancies and errors in the images. If an asteroid or a mining ship went by the telescope at the right moment, it would form a dark splotch on the final results and it was Alexie's and Frank's job to find such splotches and fix them when possible.

"Fine... Frank, look at what I found." He turned his chair around to look at Frank who was still sitting with his back to him. He could have just poked him in the back to get his attention, but that would just annoy him and in the small office that they would be calling home for the next six months, bad tempers were not healthy.

They had both volunteered to work on the mapping project, filled with excitement about going to Pluto. It was an astronomer's dream, on paper. In reality, a small underground concrete box with a server room, stuffy living room/ bedroom, another server room, a bathroom and a storage room. The other parts of the facility such as life support were inaccessible unless you were willing to suit up and go out onto the frigid Plutonian surface.

"It better not just be another strangely shaped rock." Franks said and pushed off his desk, suing his wheeled chair to roll the couple of feet necessary to position himself next to Alexie. He came in fast and used his hands to stop himself, knocking over a bag of freeze dried potato chips. They fell to the ground and spilled out, joining the other food clutter that found its way to the floor. It wasn't like it was going to go bad, they were marked good for consumption upon opening for three years.

Alexie ignored his now lost snack. He pointed to a small black dot on the screen. To the normal eye it was just that, a black dot, but to someone who had trained for this at a college for eight years, it was an anomaly. "See, look at that."

Frank leaned forward and pulled his plastic framed glasses off. He squinted his eyes, trying to figure out what exactly he was looking at. "That's not normal."

"That was yesterday." Alexie hit a few buttons on his keyboard and a new image appeared. The black dot was larger and there were now dozens of them. "This was this morning." The obvious excitement in Alexie's voice washed over Frank who grabbed the keyboard and began o furiously type commands into it.

Information of all sorts began to appear on the screen and both of the scientists soaked it in. Alexie had a huge grin on his face, Frank had a frown and was beginning to sweat.

"This can't be right." Frank muttered. "It's travelling too fast... it's..." He didn't finish his sentence. Pushing off the desk, he returned to his own and brought up the same images side by side. Studying them more, he brought up the same information and repeatedly hit the refresh keys, hoping that the computer had made a mistake, except these computers were just about as mistake proof as it got.

Alexie on the other hand, didn't catch onto his partner's anxiety and worry. He leaned down and retrieved the half empty bag of potato chips. Pulling one off, he inspected it for dirt and then promptly bit into it with a crunch. "We're going to be famous for this one." He imagined receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics or something.

Distraught over his friend's attitude over what was now obviously multiple objects travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light and heading right for them, Frank turned around and looked at Alexie. "What has gotten into you? They're heading right for us." He reached up and grabbed his hair in frustration. The object were also kilometers in size as well, an impact, even if it missed their station would be like dropping every single bomb ever created onto the planet. It could damage the telescope, or worse the life support. The next ship wasn't due for another month. At this rate , the impact would be in...

Frank didn't know. He whipped back around and frantically tried to calculate the time until impact. He did hundreds of computations at a time, using the immense processing power of the computers at their disposal to help. When he did finish the computations, he was confused. On the screen, a countdown timer had come up signifying how long they had, except it read -1:54:22. The impact was supposed to have occurred nearly two hours ago.

He leaned back into his chair in a daze. Maybe it missed them. No, he quickly dismissed the thought. It was supposed to have hit Pluto, at the speed it was going at, even gravity wasn't going to divert it enough.

"I need a fresh image." Frank muttered to himself, ignoring the snacking man behind him. He put in an override command to give him control over the telescope. He was usually only supposed to do this if an image was too malformed that it needed to be retaken. He put in the coordinates of where the image was taken. He then waited the long and grueling few seconds it took for the telescope to arrange itself. He bit his finger nails.

A confirmation message appeared and Frank held his breath as the image uploaded. He was horrified to see the image turn up completely black. The entire screen was just black, as if whatever the object was, was directly over the telescope, blocking its view.

"Cool." Alexie said. He was licking bits of slat off of his fingers and had propped his legs up on this desk.

"Wha.. What is wrong with you?" This wasn't Alexie, sure he was still a slob, but he was normally the serious one of the two.

"Nothing." Alexie replied. He suddenly brought his legs down and hopped up. "We should go take a look."

"We need to message Earth." Frank countered.

"No!" Alexie's sudden outburst caught Frank off guard. The man had his teeth bared and his finger nearly went up Frank's nose when Alexie pointed at him.

"Whoa, calm down." Frank back up, but was caught between his desk and Alexie.

His partner visible relaxed and brought his finger down. "C'mon, let's go take a look." He skipped past Frank childishly towards the airlock leaving Frank behind.

"Screw you." Frank finally said once Alexie had left sight. The way Alexie was acting disturbed Frank greatly. He needed to get in contact with someone to report this, whatever it was. For it be sitting above the telescope, meant that it had slowed down. Things just don't slow down like that and stop, especially after travelling as fast as it was going. Something had told it to stop, something not human. Humanity didn't have anything that could travel even close to that fast, it was why no ship had ever left the Sol system, it wasn't safe or practical.

He began typing out a message warning Earth. He didn't specify what it was, because he didn't know. Instead he attached the images and calculations that he had. It would be enough to let them know how serious the situation was.

With the message finished and double checked, Frank pressed the send key. An uploading bar appeared about a quarter of the way through then stopped. "No." Frank screamed and bashed his hand on the side of the computer in terror. "No, no no." He yelled over and over as a new messaged appeared.

Signal Lost, Please try again once you have reestablished connection.

"Fuck!" He cried out to the grey concrete ceiling above him. "It's not supposed to be like wifi." He fell to his knees. The communications system was a basic long range relay that was rudimentary, but durable enough to survive most kinds of disasters. Something must have happened to it for it to fail like this.

"Told you no." Alexie's voice came from behind him. Frank turned around slowly to look at the man. He had a bundle of wires in his charred hands. He had ripped out the circuitry to prevent him from sending out the warning. "They must not know." He wagged a finger at him like he was a dog that had gotten into the garbage.

"They?" Frank asked, on the verge of tears.

"Humanity must not know we are coming." Alexie's voice went extremely deep and his pupils dilated to the point that there was only a small amount of white showing. "They must not know." He repeated and took a step forward towards Frank.

"Get back." He gave an empty warning and grabbed the chair, keeping it between him and what used to be Alexie.

"Foolish human, you cannot comprehend us nor stop us." Alexie's body continued to move forward, step by step towards Frank, who had wet himself in fear.

"What do you want?" Frank asked and the form stopped.

"Everything." It said and whatever had control of Alexie released him.

He fell to the ground with a thump. Looking up at nothing with glazed over eyes, Alexie spoke with a rasp. "We're all going to die."

There was a rumbling in the ground and Frank had enough time to look at the collapsed man before, he, Alexie, the telescope, and the rest of the facility simply ceased to exist.

There was nothing left behind to be discoveries except a large crater where everything used to be. Above it was a ship, curved and organic, three kilometers longs and half that wide. It slowly lifted up, leaving behind the destruction it had caused and joined a flotilla of other similar ships.

Aboard one of the ships stood a being, looking down on the crater, satisfied and with one goal in mind: Earth and the rest of humanity.