This is intended to be a novel. Knowing me, though, I will get distracted at some point with a new idea-I'm one of those people who can only write about what they want to write about at any one time. Indeed, I'm meant to be carrying on with my romance novel, not to mention another sci-fi story which hasn't gotten far past the prologue after several months.
Just thought I'd warn you. Also, this part of the story isn't really a "13", but it will become worthy of that rating later on.
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Jak Harrison gasped. The object had simply appeared, apparently from no where. And on such a cloudy night-he wasn't even looking through a telescope.
He had looked up, and suddenly a star, or something similar, simply appeared.
His first impression was that it was a shooting star, but then it wouldn't still be hanging in the sky, if his knowledge of such things was sound.
unless it's coming towards Earth...
Not an expert astronomer, or anyone with any knowledge of recent astronomical events, Jak decided it would be best to call a professional. Just in case it was something important.
"Hello?" Jane Gilbert, a prominent British member of the International Astronomical Union, answered the phone.
"Hi, I'd like to report a, um, something in the sky."
"Certainly, sir."
Bloody amateurs
"Do you know where?" She continued.
"Erm...No. But it's sort of directly upwards."
"Where are you, sir?"
"Eh? Oh, right! Uh, Wennington. Near London."
I only need to know you're in England. Then again, I guess that's obvious.
"Right...okay, I'll look into it. Thanks, bye."
Jane slammed the phone down. It was ten in the evening, and she wanted to get an early night-she needed to be up early to go to a conference in Paris.
Jane looked at her clock. It was two in the morning, and she still couldn't sleep. She got up, deciding to have a walk.
On the way down the stairs, she looked outside the window, and smiled.
"The sky's cleared," she thought out loud.
Jane thought about how the train would be leaving at eight o'clock, and it would take her at least half an hour-possibly more-to get to the station. She decided that gave her four hours to sleep. And she'd probably spend that time trying to get to sleep.
"Ah, what the hell."
Jane considered setting up one of her many telescopes, but decided to just look up with her naked eye. It was a long time since she had done that, and it wasn't as if she was looking for anything in particular. Sometimes, she thought, it's nice to just look at the stars for the sake of it.
She put on her coat, and went into the garden.
It was twenty minutes before she passively turned her gaze towards the west. Nothing struck her as extraordinary, until...
"I've never seen that before..."
Jane knew the night sky like she knew the palm of her hand. She once admitted that she didn't know the palm of her hand as well as she used to-wrinkles were starting to pop up, making the old familiar creases less and less familiar.
Even so, it was rare for her to see a celestial object and wonder what it was. Then something clicked-the phone call earlier that night.
Jane rushed in to get her favourite telescope. It was impressive, easily worth £20,000, or more-mainly due to it's antique status-a relic from the late twentieth century-but she had cared for it well, and it was still of a far better quality than anything most amateurs could afford to buy.
As she set the hundred year old instrument up, she noticed it was dangerously close to being eclipsed by the neighbour's house.
How long? Ten minutes? Twenty?
She managed to set up the telescope in time, and aimed it at the mysterious object.
Jane looked through the telescope, adjusting it, slowly.
What in God's name is that?
After taking several pictures, Jane picked up the phone.
"Hi. This is Jane. Sorry for calling so late...early...whatever......something to talk about at the conference? Oh, I've got something to talk about, alright!"
Twelve hours later, Jane was standing at the front of a crowd of fifty colleagues, putting her hands in the air, waiting for silence.
"Thank you, thank you! Now, I was going to talk about some...well, nothing of particular interest. The same old passionate talk about Galileo and Patrick and so on. But last night, I looked into the sky. Expecting nothing, much. Just looking, for the sake of it, as I'm sure everyone else here loves to do."
A murmur of agreement followed.
"But I saw something. Something incredible. Ladies and gentlemen, please forgive me for the poor quality of these photos. I used the best quality telescope I could find which wasn't too heavy to carry-a twentieth century antique. But I'm sure these will arouse your curiosity."
Behind her, an image appeared on the screen. The image had a black background, a few stars, here and there.
In the centre of this image was the object. It appeared to be a metallic cube-lit up by the sun, one side had been hit by so much light that it's reflection made it appear white.
The audience sat in silence for what felt like hours. Then, it erupted into a frenzy of activity.
"What is this? A joke?"
"No," Jane said, "This is not a joke. This is real-this is what I saw, last night, at about three AM. If you don't believe me, look for it yourself."
Jane pointed at the co-ordinates printed on the top right of the photo.
"I don't know what this is. So I suggest we find out. We need to get as much funding as necessary to find out exactly what this thing is, where did it come from, and when."
Bobby Florence, an unheard-of American journalist, was sitting in the corner. He thought this would result in perhaps a paragraph's worth of interesting facts-nothing spectacular, and certainly not worth his time. He was also the only person in the audience who didn't stare at the picture of the object for more than three seconds. He licked his lips.
Jackpot...
I wanna know how Jak and Jane are connected in this! I loved the way you brought them both into the story without using the word "meanwhile" - very, very original.
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