Instant crush

This world is really something else.

Eight billion people on this planet alone. Billions of planets among the cosmos. And even more stars to count.

It’s truly amazing knowing that you still haven’t found the one. At this point, you might as well shoot for the stars. Perhaps the one you’re searching for might be up there, looking down with the same longing as you have.

—————

Even down on earth, you’re still in good company.

Another clear night in the open fields, ripe for stargazing. Everyone’s brought their food, their sleeping tents, and their telescope, but most importantly: each other. It’s become your primary bonding experience over the last several months.

These days, however, you prefer gazing up at the stars by yourself. It feels more comforting to be alone. No one really looks for you or shows concern when you suddenly disappear from camp, nor do they wonder where you’ve gone when you come back. You could have been killed and there would have been no trace, no search.

If anything, you’re more surprised you still keep getting invited.

Nevertheless, the night sky looks especially lovely tonight, with the countless stars shining at their brightest. While your friends prefer searching for the constellations, you’d rather admire them through your human eyes.

Every now and then, you hear your friends from afar, celebrating as the occasional shooting star passes by. It only emphasizes the loneliness you feel on a larger, painful scale.

On nights like these, you make a wish. You’re not the superstitious kind, but the faith and desperation makes you want to believe. Doesn’t matter if not a soul hears you, your innermost desire rings loud enough to be felt. The tears in your eyes show.

As the night goes further along, you’re about to make your way back to camp. Even from several feet afar, you can see them start winding down, the lights from their campervans flickering off. Everyone else begins to pack their belongings and settle in, when suddenly, another meteor flies past, its glow brighter than any other. You can hear the commotion, their voices loud and ecstatic, claiming they’ve never caught a star this close until now.

Hell, you can see its physical properties with your own two eyes.

As the star descends at blisteringly high speed, you’re hit with the realization that it is, in fact, going to crash nearby. Sure enough, it passes through your line of sight with a blinding gleam before landing several miles away from where you were standing minutes ago. Immediately, a trail of smoke ascends to the sky, its exact location clear as day.

Given the circumstances, it’s your opportunity to finally be seen. To be the first. To be recognized as something more.

While everyone else in camp scrambles for their gear, you make a quick beeline for the crashed meteorite, having given yourself a significant head start. Based on how thin the smoke it left behind, you’d imagine it to be nothing special: just a regular space rock. As you approach the site, and see the shallow crater it made comparable to the average garden excavation, your assumptions would be confirmed.

However, a thick veil of white fumes surrounds the crater’s entire circumference, rendering any attempt to see the meteorite inside impossible. Common sense dictates that one should never touch anything foreign, especially if said object is of extraterrestrial origin. For a while, you contemplate the idea. After all; you may be dumb, but not that reckless.

Seeing as the smoke has no intention to dissipate, you may as well brave the storm. Worst case scenario, you disintegrate into ashes or die from poisoning, but you’ve got nothing to lose at this point. Still, the hesitation remains, as you constantly draw your hand and finger back the closer you get to touching the barrier.

There’s a still, small voice calling out to you, likely your subconscious, daring you to pass through the veil. Your heart wants you to take the leap, your mind tells you to stay back. It’s a surprisingly complicated conundrum.

In the end, the heart wants what it wants. It wants to venture through the unknown. It wants definitive answers. It wants you to take that leap of faith.

Slowly but surely, you slip your finger through the thick white veil. Your skin doesn’t disintegrate nor does it burn. If anything, you feel nothing at all. There’s no smell or sensation as your hand completely disappears beyond the barrier, then to your elbow, until your entire arm is consumed by the fog. Your body moves of its own accord, seemingly getting sucked into an entirely new world beyond the smoke.

As soon as you’re completely taken to the other side, the fog vanishes instantly. Your feet suddenly stop, realizing you’re no longer feeling solid ground. As the earth beneath you crumbles, it turns out you were one step away from falling in embarrassing fashion.

More importantly, there’s no meteorite at the bottom. It’s already cracked into pieces of dust.

So you look up again. On the opposite end of the crater, an unexpected sight takes you off-guard. There’s a woman standing there, completely in the nude.

You can’t help but call to her. “Hey!”

With her back turned against you, looking left and right, your cry falls on seemingly deaf ears.

So you try again. Same result. Completely ignored.

You’ve got no choice but to run around and approach her, albeit cautiously. Even in the middle of nowhere, the danger persists.

The woman’s eyes turn toward you as you reach her. Nudity aside, her appearance is glaringly pretty. An unnatural beauty that you’ve never seen before. Long black hair, pouty lips, and a pristine face worth dying for. She’s really heaven-sent.

However, instead of showing concern or worry, her expressions show that of indifference and apathy. A little curiosity, even. As if she doesn’t know what she’s doing or where she is.

“Excuse me.” You’re trying not to stare at anywhere else but her beautiful face, and even that gets your heart racing. “I’m sorry, but you’re standing out naked in the middle of the cold,” you tell her, slowly falling into temptation. Eventually getting the better of you, you give yourself a tiny glance of her boobs, hoping she doesn’t catch on, and thankfully, she stares idly, “You might need some warmth.”

She doesn’t respond. Instead, she merely blinks and watches you intently.

“Um,” you swallow, unsure of what to say or do, like anyone else in this situation. “Do you know where you are, miss?”

The woman continues to stare at you, occasionally blinking, before finally answering, “Planet 120121, codename Earth.”

Her monotone delivery and the peculiar string of words that came from her mouth take you aback. She continues before you’re even able to say anything, saying, “You are a resident species of planet Earth. Homo sapien. Codename Human.”

And she goes on by listing your complete biology, down to the smallest details. Your personal information, your biometrics, your history. Somehow, her voice saying your name sends shivers down your spine.

The revelation dawns on you, hits you like a truck. “You’re not human.”

Suddenly, before you can ask another question, you hear the shouts of your friends, having finally reached your location. They’re also calling for you, though not as lovely sounding as the alien right in front of you. You turn around and see as they emerge from the disappearing smoke. But as you quickly face her again, she has suddenly disappeared without any trace.

“There you are,” says one of them, the self-professed leader, before you can even react. “Thank God you were okay. We didn’t realize you left on your own, and lo and behold, you’re the first one in our group to discover a meteorite. Who would have thought?”

“There’s nothing here,” interjects another friend, surveying the crater with his camera and scanner, noting the lack of physical evidence. “That’s strange. Usually there should be a meteorite, but it’s just nothing but rubble.”

Unsurprisingly, they’re quick to jump to conclusions. Most of them. The leader narrows his eyes, though his voice remains pleasant and friendly, albeit incredibly shaky. “Look. I know it feels good to feel important, but how about you let us have a little peek? Promise, we’ll make sure you get the credit.”

None of them would ever in the slightest believe what you had seen even if you told the truth. If anything, it’ll be an excuse for them to finally ostracize you. Now you’re caught up in a rather inescapable situation with no clear outs.

“Um.” Your gaze avoids the four sets of eyes intently glaring, threatening to force information out of you with every step forward. You can’t do anything to save your life, including throwing a punch. You reason with them, “Look, I know this might seem hard to believe—”

“What? You broke the meteorite?” The leader interrupts, the three others right behind him, now visibly enraged. Besides the fun and fellowship, there’s plenty at stake. There’s money to be made. Fame and glory. It’ll be memorialized in museums and books. A lasting legacy broken with one simple mistake. “You just wasted us thousands, if not millions with your blatant stupidity—”

“Don’t. He’s correct; he doesn’t have a single trace of foreign material on him,” The guy with the scanner says, stepping ahead to protect you. At least someone in the party has a little common sense. “He’s correct; the meteor must have destroyed itself upon impact.”

You can tell by the leader’s disapproving stare that he doesn’t buy it. At all. Still, for his own reputation’s sake, and to avoid impulsively murdering someone in front of several eyewitnesses, he relents. As he walks away from the scene, you can see his lips moving, silently cursing you.

“Right. Let’s get back to camp and rest up,” he gathers the party and takes his departure, leaving you on your own to catch up.

Of course you don’t follow back. You spend some time looking around the crash site, searching for the mysterious extraterrestrial, but to no avail, having completely disappeared without a trace. It’s a reminder of not dabbling with strange elements you have little to no experience with.

Still, the alien’s strange presence stirs in your mind. Something about it felt human. It certainly possessed a body and spoke like your fellow man, even though its speech could have been ripped from any computer. Maybe it was indeed an alien; you’ve never seen a face like that, so captivating, so dreamlike, yet so familiar. It really makes you think.

Slap yourself a hundred times. It was a hundred percent real and not a hallucination or an illusion.