Voidsong (unfinished)

The Void was vast, empty of emotion and intention. For all of creation, for all of time, Void was all that IT knew. When the first sparks appeared, they were blinding. Points of emotion and intelligence burned with an intensity that IT could not bear, so IT smothered them. They fought back, and the alien sparks struggled desperately against IT. Their struggle was in vain, and the Void returned.

Millennia passed. The Sparks return, painful in contrast to the Void It prefers. Galaxies scatter in IT’s wake as IT strikes out instinctively. IT grasps stars, crushing them into singularities. IT twists and tears space as IT lashes out in a blind rage.

The Sparks learn with time. They scatter themselves to dull their collective intensity, dim themselves to ashy embers, and wrap themselves in the Void, starving themselves to avoid IT’s gaze. IT still hunts, blindly, but with the Void itself hiding the Sparks, they survive.

Deep within the Void, hidden between two folds where larger Sparks have hidden themself from Its terrible gaze, a blue and green marble orbits a star. In time, a Spark grows and multiplies. Small enough that they remain hidden in the twists of the void surrounding it, but growing.

Then the Void vibrates. Small vibrations, in soothing patterns. Like the Sparks, they carry emotion and show intelligence, but they don't blind like the others. They don't disrupt the Void. IT settles around the star, harmonizing with the vibrations.

The Spark grows slowly, and eventually draws IT’s gaze. Bright, brighter than any Spark dared let itself grow in eons. It withdraws, ready to strike at the glare, then pauses. The Spark vibrates to the same pattern as the Void. To the same soothing pattern IT had harmonized to.

The Spark's glare hurts IT’s gaze, but the vibrations soothe. IT turns IT’s gaze away, and rejoins the Harmony with a warmth at IT’s back.

Mars, 2081

"Command, start playlist 1 on shuffle."

Like everyone else living in the martian colony, Roland had discovered very early on that music staved off the crushing depression that accompanied an extended trip away from humanity's cradle. Those that didn't were no longer with them.

Tom was the first. A week after they landed, Tom told everyone that he was going to check on the greenhouse, then walked out of the airlock without a suit.

Jan went missing next. They found her in the fertilizer tank, a recorded apology grasped tightly in her hand.

Everyone took a mandatory psychological evaluation. They diagnosed every colonist with severe depression and placed them on a strong anti-depressant regime. Meanwhile, doctors, engineers, nutritionists, and experts from dozens of other fields theorized about what was causing the thoroughly vetted members of this colony to fall victim to mental illness.

It wasn't until several days later that they had a breakthrough. They declared two colonists fit for duty with no change to routine, nutrition, or medication. After some investigation, the doctors discovered that Dr. Burns, the colonists’ assigned therapist, had left some light classical music on in the background for their last sessions. Soon after, every colony have was having quiet classical music piped into it, and the colonists were all declared cured.

Roland shook himself out of his thoughts and shifted his rover into gear. He was an engineer, not a psychologist, and so long as the music worked, he'd follow their instructions. The colony was missing two people, but their tasks remained and things were behind schedule. They needed to finish setting up Habs for the rest of the colony before the second wave came, or they'd find themselves in a tight spot.

Heliosheath, 2142

Roland watched as the atom-thin foil sheets of the solar collector unfolded like a massive flower. At this distance from the sun, solar panels alone would not power the spacecraft, so he used kilometer-wide gold foil sheets to focus the light to a usable intensity. He hummed along to the tunes, which echoed from the earbuds floating around his collar.

Roland had volunteered for this one-way trip. For all of Humanity's advancements in the last 100 years, the big C was as persistent a deadly disease as ever. He figured if he was going to die, he might as well add one more "first" to his list. First to lead a colony on Mars. First to commercialize asteroid mining. First to die in interstellar space. That had a nice ring to it.

The solar collector had finished unfolding, so Roland continued down his checklist.

Collector integrity? One foil sheet had torn during deployment. He’d have to do a spacewalk and replace it with a spare later. Annoying, but Roland was almost past the Heliosheath, which separated the Solar System from interstellar space. Soon, he wouldn’t be needing the power or propulsion it provided.

RCS self-check? Green light.

Communications array? Roland grunted as he remembered that he’d shut off the server while he slept. One fan had a bad bearing, and he wasn’t expecting to receive another communication for 16 hours. He might as well deal with that now.

After fetching a spare fan from storage, Roland removed the panel under the communications console. He stuck the screws to a magnetic panel velcroed to the front of his one-piece ship suit, then swapped out the bad fan. Then he flipped the power switch. Good, no annoying whine. Panel screwed back in place, then onto the next item as the console boots up.

Behind his back, text scrolled down the screen detailing progress as the boot sequence proceeded.

System startup complete.

Communication array is misaligned because of improper system shutdown. Please rotate the receiving dish 92.4 degrees aft.

Incoming signal, unknown source. Recording… Processing… Error.

Roland flinched as the console emitted a warbling, high-pitched tone, putting him in a disorienting spin.

“Shit, what now? Did I short the speaker amp or something?”

The tone changed pitch, scanning down through frequencies until it hit one which rattled the surrounding console, then went silent. The screen flashed white, then black, then each color of the rainbow before blanking to a gray and white pattern.

A scratchy, mechanical voice came from the speakers. “Calibrating translation matrix. Please stand by…”

Roland caught himself on a nearby wall, then turned to stare at the console. The screen rearranged itself to show a being which one might charitably call a cross between a crocodile and an elephant.

“Hello? Can you understand me?” The image’s tooth-filled prehensile snout moved out of sync with the words coming from the speakers.

First contact. This was not the “first” Roland had been preparing himself for.