BY DANIEL ARENSON
Neon lights flickered, the last pot of coffee percolated, and even the janitor had gone home when the first photo of an alien life form came in.
Eliana sat alone in the sprawling office, her coffee mug down to dregs, her eyelids heavy. She often stayed late. She liked the silence of the night, the hundreds of monitors gone dark, and the headlights from the highway outside streaming through the windows like beacons from other worlds. While her coworkers spent evenings with spouses, friends, children, safe and warm in cozy houses, Eliana sought her quiet time here. She had always been alone. She had always been a dreamer. The stars had always been her family, her port of call.
“It’s here.” She sat up in her chair, and tears filled her eyes. “The first photo. It’s here.”
Her breath shuddered. She could scarcely believe what she saw. Alerts popped up across her monitor. A life form detected. Data streaming in. A photo being downloaded.
Her mug fell from her hand, spilling its last drops of coffee across the desk.
She leaped to her feet.
“Oh stars, it’s here. It’s downloading.”
In only a few minutes, the last bytes of data would arrive—arrive from out there—and she would be the first person in the Agency, the first human in history, to gaze upon alien life.
She spun away from her desk. She padded across the carpeting, barefoot, and placed her hands on the windowpane. Outside, the highway stretched through the desert, and above shone the stars, countless, brilliant, the celestial roads of the cosmos.
“I always knew,” she whispered, voice trembling. “I always knew you were out there.”
As tears streamed down her cheeks, she was a girl again, a girl alone in a very different desert, in a very distant country, climbing up the hill with her father, lying in the darkness, gazing up at the stars, the falling comets, the brilliant moon, the Milky Way the elders claimed was the heavenly path of chariots. The war had taken her father, and her life had taken her here to the Agency, but the stars remained forever above her, forever inside her, forever a dream of finding a better world. Of finding wisdom up there. Of finding hope.
She blinked the tears from her eyes. For so many years, the others had mocked her, pitied her—the woman with no family of her own, no house but her trailer in the valley, no life but her search for other life, for life above.
But it was worth it, she thought, fresh tears budding. I’ve found that life. I’ve found the hope and wisdom I’ve always sought—up there. In the stars.
Behind her, her computer dinged.
The data had downloaded.
The photo was here. The first photo of alien life.
Shakily, Eliana returned to her office chair, sat down, and leaned forward. The file blinked; she just had to click. She just had to open it. She just had to look.
And yet she hesitated.
How would one process such a thing? How could one prepare to see such a monumental sight, such a fundamental discovery, the culmination of one’s dreams in an image? Would her brain process it at once, or would the photo sink in slowly, breath by breath? Perhaps she should wait until tomorrow. Perhaps she should wait until her coworkers returned, to look with them, to—
She realized she was panting. She took a deep, shaky breath.
Just click, Eliana, she told herself. Just look…and the universe will open up before you, full of light and wisdom, full of welcome and comfort.
Again her tears fell. Perhaps all the hatred she had felt, all the loneliness—the fire that had taken her parents, the flight across the sea, the life in darkness, the unbearable loneliness of stargazing—perhaps it would all fade. Perhaps the eyes of the alien would gaze upon her through the monitor, telling her it was all right. That she was safe. That they had always been watching, that the cosmos was not cold and dark and barren but warm, full of life, full of love for her.
Her hand trembled on the mouse.
She clicked the file open.
And she looked.
And it looked at her.
It’s…it’s…
Her breath caught. Her fingers shook. Her reflection stared back at her from the monitor, superimposed over it, staring back at her, gasping, pale.
Oh stars.
She screamed and placed her palms against the monitor. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Her cry echoed, her voice hoarse, torn.
“So ugly,” she whispered. “So ugly…”
She fell to the floor. She curled up. She wept.
She wanted to rise, to smash the monitor, to run, to jump out the window, to die. To die. To stop seeing. To gouge out her eyes.
So ugly…
She lay on the floor, hugging her knees, and sobbed.
• • •
Joe was sitting at his desk, reading an old western paperback, when he heard the scream.
He leaped to his feet, keys jangling at his belt, and began to run.
That was Eliana screaming, he thought.
He had been working night security at the Agency for ten years now—ten years of long, quiet nights, of escaping the unforgiving neon light into worlds of cowboys, sultry saloons, and the sweeping landscapes of eras long gone. The hours were long, the job dreary and dull, but in his books, Joe could become a hero—a younger, stronger man, battling bandits and saving damsels.
Tonight he would have to be a true hero.
His ample belly wobbled before him as he raced down the hall. Sweat dampened his uniform, and he was breathing raggedly by the time he reached the office doors.
“Eliana?” he called, wheezing. “Eliana, are you all right?”
His heart pounded as if trying to escape his rib cage. His shirt slipped out from his pants, and sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging. He stumbled into the office, wishing the Agency had given him a gun, a baton, at least a transmitter to call for help.
Oh God, don’t let it be an intruder. Don’t let me die. Please, God, I have a daughter. I have a daughter.
The office spread before him, hundreds of monitors dark and lifeless. He saw nobody. One neon light flickered, and the headlights from the highway outside streamed across the walls like ghosts.
“Eliana!” he called again, heart thumping.
He heard no reply.
Oh God. She’s dead. Somebody killed her. Somebody is here, in the shadows, waiting.
Joe wanted to turn around and flee. He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t a cowboy like in his books. He was just Joe Benkowski, fifty-six years old, a hundred pounds overweight, a single father whose daughter was getting married next month.
I have to run.
He took a deep breath.
No.
Eliana needed him. She was like another daughter to him. The others who worked here, the most brilliant minds in the country, rarely spoke to him: a few distracted hellos when he came into work, some years a Christmas card or two. But Eliana had always truly cared about him. She always stayed late after the others left, and often she spoke to him, asked him about his daughter, even borrowed some of his paperbacks and talked to him about their stories.
Eliana needs me. And I’m going to save her.
Mustering courage he didn’t know was in him, Joe stepped deeper into the office, feeling a little like a cowboy stepping into a rough saloon.
“Eliana!”
Still he heard no reply. He walked between the desks, the lights buzzing above, the highway humming outside. Rows of monitors stretched ahead on their desks, all of them dark but one. That one monitor cast an eerie, pale light, like the moon.
Joe walked closer, his heartbeat increasing. His fingers tingled—that tingle his doctors had warned him about. Sweat trickled down his back.
“Eliana?” he whispered.
He gasped.
He leaped forward.
She lay on the floor, curled into a ball.
“Eliana, my God! Can you hear me?” He knelt beside her. “Are you all right?”
She panted. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Those eyes flicked toward him, and she gasped, scurried back, and covered her face. She shook wildly.
“What happened?” he asked. He needed help. He needed to call an ambulance. With trembling fingers, he reached for his cell phone, only for the device to slip from his sweaty hand. He cursed.
Eliana whispered.
Joe caught his breath, leaning down to listen. “What is it, Eliana? What do you need?”
“So…” she whispered, “… so ugly.”
Joe’s heart felt ready to crack. His lungs felt ready to collapse. So ugly? What did she mean? Did she mean him? Herself?
The glow of the monitor fell upon him, and Joe felt something. Felt eyes staring. Felt himself being watched. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something, a presence, a swirl of color, eyes staring.
Slowly, he raised his eyes and looked at the image on the monitor.
And Joe Benkowski began to scream.
He collapsed onto the floor, agony stabbing his chest, knowing that this was it, the long-awaited heart attack the doctors had warned of, and Joe didn’t care, didn’t want to live. He whispered through stiff lips.
“So ugly.”
He closed his eyes and never wanted to open them again.
• • •
Dr. Robert Jensen’s dented Corolla clunked along the highway, sounding like it might collapse at any moment, sending hubcaps and fenders flying into the desert. Even the radio sounded like some dying old beast, struggling to cough out “Moonshine Blues” by Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid before fading to static coughs.
“Goddamn piece of junk.” Jensen grunted and stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray.
He was still miles away from the Agency. Miles away from that hub of scientists in the desert. Apparently, a bunch of them had finally gone completely mad—as if searching for alien life wasn’t mad enough. And when your alien hunters become catatonic, who do you call? Dr. Robert Jensen, of course—the closest, cheapest psychiatrist around.
The desert spread all around Jensen’s car. The sun beat down, gleaming off the distant road, creating mirages of water he’d never reach. Nothing but that tarmac ahead, the dirt and rocks beyond, the cruel sun above. Heat and light and emptiness. Perhaps that’s all that remained of his life.
“That and this damned car.”
Jensen sighed. His wife had left him little more in the divorce. The house was hers. The kids were hers. The comfy Lexus with those lovely leather seats—hers. All Jensen had left was this clunker, this desert, and his work.
“You’d think as a shrink, I could figure out how to hold a marriage together.”
He reached for another cigarette. Two other things the divorce had left him with: a two-packs-a-day habit and a propensity to talk to himself.
Jensen adjusted the car mirror and stared at himself. If nothing else, he still had some good looks. At age forty-four, he stubbornly clung to a certain rugged handsomeness, he thought. A craggy, tanned face. Graying temples. With the cigarette between his lips, he thought he could be featured on one of the highway billboards, riding a horse somewhere in Montana and advertising his smokes.
He coughed out a smoky laugh. As if the brand he smoked these days had money for advertising. He couldn’t even afford the good stuff anymore, just these cheap sticks that left his throat burning and would probably kill his good looks even before they killed his lungs.
He was tapping the radio again, trying to revive it, when he saw the Agency ahead.
The complex sprawled across the desert. It would have looked like any other office plaza if not for the massive radio dishes that rose behind it, dwarfing even the three-story buildings before them. The great white ears of humanity, pointing ever into space.
“And those ears picked up something.” Jensen puffed on his cigarette. “Something they shouldn’t have eavesdropped on.”
He rolled the clunker into the parking lot, surprised that it had made it this far. He parked, stepped out, and stretched. His joints creaked. The sun still blazed down, white and blinding, but Jensen shaded his eyes with his palm and gazed skyward.
They said they found something up there. A shiver ran through him. Something that’s terrifying them more than a divorce or rattling cough.
Jensen grunted. Aliens? He didn’t believe in aliens. The isolation out here was getting to people, that was all. Hell, if he’d spent so long out here in the desert, he’d be imagining alien friends too. Jensen already felt this place seeping into him, this . . . this emptiness here in the desert, those damn dishes that kept staring up into the sky. It was enough to drive anyone mad, let alone some kooky scientists who spent their lives stargazing and dreaming of little green men.
Jensen cracked his neck and walked toward the main building. Perhaps he’d even find a kooky scientist who also happened to be female, single, and looking for companionship with a rugged psychiatrist who might just look a little like a billboard Marlboro Man. It had been too long since Jensen had spent time with a woman.
Perhaps I’m lonely too. Perhaps I too am isolated.
He shook his head, banishing the thoughts. Today he would be a professional. Last he had heard, fifteen men and women had lost their minds in this place. He would have to treat them, to cure them. Their sanity—and his wallet—depended on it.
He flicked down his cigarette butt and stepped into the front lobby. Rather than a receptionist, a white haired, harried-looking man in rumpled slacks greeted Jensen. The man held an ornate cane, its head carved into the shape of a planet. His button-down shirt still showed the folds from its original plastic packaging.
“Doctor Jensen?” the old man said, rushing forth.
Jensen nodded. “The same.”
The man clasped his hand in a sweaty grip and shook it wildly, clinging to Jensen like a drowning man to a rope. “Thank goodness you’re here. I’m Dr. Sullivan, chief of the Agency. We’ve spoken on the phone.” He turned around. “Come, follow. Let’s find a place to talk.”
The old scientist turned and began to walk down a corridor, his cane rapping. Jensen followed. They passed by the glass walls of several offices. Within, men and women huddled together. Some whispered. Some merely stared at their feet. Jensen didn’t need his doctorate in psychiatry to sense the nervousness in the air, the fear. Oddly, he was reminded of his long walks through mental institutions; this felt more like a place of madness and terror than science.
God above, what did they find up there?
Dr. Sullivan led him into a small, cluttered office. Hundreds of books covered the shelves, a blend of science and science fiction. Scribbly drawings of unicorns and houses—presumably the masterpieces of Sullivan’s grandchildren—plastered the walls around a poster of the various constellations. In stark contrast to the crowded shelves and walls was Sullivan’s desk: it was spotless, dustless, empty but for a single sheet of blank paper.
“Sit down, please,” Sullivan said, gesturing toward a chair.
Jensen sat down uneasily, and Sullivan took the seat across the desk, joints creaking. Jensen stared at the paper on the desktop. He could vaguely make out splotches of color showing through from the opposite side. An upside-down photo, he surmised.
“Is this it?” he asked, reaching for it.
Sullivan gasped. The man looked as if Jensen had just tried to pat a ravenous wolverine with gravy-coated fingers. The old scientist slammed his palm down onto Jensen’s hand, nearly crushing his joints.
“Do not lift it!” The scientist’s lips trembled. His white hair stood on end. “Do not look! That photo…” Sweat beaded on Sullivan’s brow. “It does things. It…Dr. Jensen, please, remove your hand from this photo while we speak.”
Jensen shook his head in wonder at the scientist’s reaction, but he grunted and obeyed, placing his hand back in his lap. Sullivan leaned back, shaken and pale.
“Dr. Sullivan,” Jensen said, using his calmest voice, “surely a piece of paper cannot harm me.”
Sullivan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow. “You don’t understand, Dr. Jensen. This is the first photograph ever taken of an alien life form.”
Jensen nodded. “So I’ve heard. I’d quite like to see it.”
“As would I.” Sullivan gulped. “As did fourteen of my top scientists, the world’s leading astrobiologists. As did our night security man. All fifteen are now catatonic. They cannot even tell me what they’ve seen. When they’re not weeping or screaming, all they can utter is: ‘So ugly.’”
Jensen raised an eyebrow. “So E.T. isn’t the best-looking alien in the galaxy.”
“It’s more than that, Doctor!” Sullivan gripped his cane and rose to his feet. “Whatever is in this photo—and I have dared not look myself—is so hideous, so monstrous, so terrifying, that all who see it go mad. My dear friend Eliana, our top scientist, has lived through warfare and poverty, has seen things in her childhood you or I cannot imagine, and she overcame them. But since looking at this photo, all she can do is curl up in her hospital bed, repeating the same two words over and over, the same words they all say: ‘So ugly.’” Sullivan shuddered. “We went searching for an alien. We found a monster.”
Jensen felt that nervousness, that icy hand that had been trailing down his spine all day, finally grip his heart and squeeze. Cold sweat trickled down his back.
He swallowed the lump in his throat.
Calm down, he told himself. You’re a professional. You’re a psychiatrist. You don’t get spooked by this cosmological mumbo jumbo.
Jensen rose to his feet and began to pace the cluttered office. He clasped his hands behind his back to hide their tremor. “Dr. Sullivan, what you have here must be some kind of optical illusion. Have you ever seen those optical illusions online, the ones that seem to swirl around, make you see colors that aren’t there, make solid lines bend? Those happen because our brains don’t know how to process every visual signal sent through our eyes.” He stared at the upside-down photo on the desk. “What you have here must be an optical illusion so powerful, so vivid, that it traumatizes the brain.”
“Dr. Jensen!” Sullivan’s eyes widened. “You don’t understand! This photo was taken by a rover sent to planet Kepler-62e in the Lyra constellation. The first planet where we detected clear signals of life. Our probe was programmed to focus on a living creature—an alien life form—and send us photographic evidence of its existence. This probe wasn’t pointing at some… some book of optical illusions! There is a life form in this photo. A life form so hideous, so ugly, that its sheer monstrosity is enough to traumatize even the most robust minds.”
Jensen licked his dry lips. He needed another cigarette. “A photo of a monster…”
The old scientist sank back into his seat, and tears filled his eyes. “You must help them, Dr. Jensen. You must help them tell us what they saw. You must help us all. Oh God…I’ve spent my life searching for this life form, Doctor. My life’s work, here in this photo, and…” He covered his eyes, and tears trailed down his cheeks. “And now they’re in the hospital, gone mad. Catatonic. Because of me.” He looked up with pleading eyes. “Can you help us?”
Jensen had seen hard cases in his day, but now he felt more shaken than he had felt in years. He sat down again and stared at the paper.
“Dr. Sullivan,” he said softly. “I have some experience dealing with trauma. I’ve helped veterans who’ve seen war. I’ve helped genocide survivors, people who’ve witnessed the very depths of human evil, find new meaning in their lives. I’ve treated survivors of abuse, of torture, and many have made much progress in their healing.” He stared up from the paper at the old scientist. “With every patient, I work to fully understand what hurt them. To listen to their stories, even the most painful details. To help your people, I must understand what scared them. I must look at this photo.”
Sullivan gaped. His cheeks lost whatever color had remained in them.
He looks as if I just asked him to run me over with his car, Jensen thought.
“Dr. Jensen!” Sullivan covered his mouth, struggling to speak. “I cannot allow this! I…by God, first speak to the patients. First see how they tremble. Hear how they whisper of the ugliness. Whatever’s in this photo would crush you! Haunt you!”
Jensen’s knees were shaking now, and his heart pounded, but he forced himself to smile thinly.
These hermits have spent too many years in the desert, looking up to the sky, expecting to find a cute little Ewok. When they finally saw something unsettling, it fried their minds. But I’ve dealt with trauma. I’m hardened.
He thought back to his most difficult cases. The victim of an acid attack. A survivor of torture. Refugees of war and carnage. He, Dr. Jensen, had not spent his life staring up at beautiful stars. He had spent his life staring ugliness in the face. He would stare at some ugliness again.
“All my life,” Jensen said, voice strained, “I’ve never shied away from terror. Not when it can help my patients.”
Before Sullivan could react, Jensen reached across the table, lifted the photo, and stared.
• • •
As the old scientist gasped, Jensen examined the photograph in his hands—the first photograph of an alien life form.
He narrowed his eyes.
His breath died.
My God…
Tears filled Jensen’s eyes, and his lips trembled.
It’s beautiful.
It seemed unfair to call this an “alien life form.” The term seemed too pedestrian. This was no mere creature. This was . . . a being. A deity. A paragon of purity.
Tears flowed down Jensen’s cheeks.
The being in the photo seemed woven of starlight, of pure color, of colors Jensen hadn’t even known existed. Eyes stared at him, endlessly wide, endlessly deep, endlessly knowing. They were the eyes of the cosmos. The eyes of angels, of gods, of souls. The being’s face was the face of heaven, of wonder, of wisdom, painted with brushes dipped in liquid beauty.
An angel, Jensen thought, weeping. They photographed an angel.
She was the sky itself. She was the light of the stars, the dust of space, the soft embrace of night. She was a goddess. She was love. She was purity. She was the song of space, music taken form, solid and liquid, light and darkness, life. She was life. She was evolution stretched into heaven, a being of nirvana, a shining star pulsing, beaming out, knowing all. She was perfection.
With a strangled yelp, Jensen noticed his own fingers holding the paper.
Old, wrinkled fingers. The knuckles hairy. The joints knobby. They were profane things. They were an insult. They were blasphemous. They sullied this perfect being with their wretchedness.
Jensen screamed and dropped the photo to the floor, daring not defile it any further with his impurity.
With the photo gone, Jensen found himself staring at the most monstrous, disgusting, impure creature he had ever seen.
The beast sat across the desk from him, clutching a cane, dressed in a wrinkly shirt.
It’s Dr. Sullivan, Jensen realized. And he was hideous. The old man’s face was a network of wrinkles, pores, blemishes, an oily patch of filth. His hair was a ragged mat, revealing bits of dry scalp. Next to the being Jensen had seen—that angel, that goddess—the old scientist seemed no better than an ape, primordial, grunting.
“Dr. Jensen!” the ape said. “Dr. Jensen, are you all right? Can you hear me?”
All right? Jensen laughed bitterly. How dare this ape speak to him? How dare humans, these beings barely more evolved than worms, learn to speak? How dare they gaze at the wonder of the stars?
We’re not ready! Jensen wanted to scream. We’re not evolved! We’re apes! We’re nothing but apes. Filthy, sweaty, disgusting, reeking, leaking, spitting, foul. Impure. Impure.
Jensen struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the back of the room. When he leaned against the window, he caught sight of his reflection.
He looked at his face, a face he had once thought handsome—what a fool he had been!
Look at yourself! Look! Look at the creature you are!
Thinning, graying hair. A leathery face, his skin nothing but pores and wrinkles hiding the pus and rot beneath. His nose hiding hairs. His eyes bloodshot. His teeth yellow. How had he—he, a creature so base—ever dared to gaze upon the angel? How had he dared to lay eyes on something so perfect, so pure?
We’re nothing but animals, he realized, trembling, sobbing. We’re nothing but sacks of meat, hairy, sweaty, hiding ourselves underneath clothes, cosmetics, our own vanity. We’re so ugly.
“Dr. Jensen!” Sullivan cried, shaking him with those hairy old hands. “Dr. Jensen, can you hear me?”
Jensen spun around, gazed once more at the white-haired ape, and then collapsed to the floor. He curled up and covered his eyes, never wanting to stare at another human, never able to look upon this impure world again.
“So ugly…” he whispered, tasting his tears. “So ugly.”
• • •
Dr. Sullivan stood above the trembling, weeping man on the floor.
Another victim. Sullivan’s hands shook. Another lost soul.
He grabbed his coat off the wall and, squinting, tossed it onto the floor, hiding the photo that lay there. Then he turned back to Dr. Jensen and knelt, his joints creaking.
“Dr. Jensen! Dr. Jensen, can you hear me?” He touched the doctor’s shoulder, and the man yelped and cowered. “Dr. Jensen!” Sullivan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What did you see?”
The psychiatrist would not reply, only lie curled up, catatonic. Shell-shocked. Just like the rest of them. Just like Eliana. Just like Sullivan’s dearest friends, all those he had doomed to madness.
“What have I done?” Sullivan whispered.
He turned toward the window and stared outside at his life’s work: satellite dishes the size of football fields, buildings housing the world’s brightest minds, and a clear, vast sky above…a sky Sullivan had always sought to understand, to explore, to scour for life, for a sign that mankind was not alone.
“We found that life,” he whispered. “And we must never find it again.”
He would cancel the exploration program today. He would shut down all communications with the rover, delete all its software and files, erase all records that it had ever existed, that the cursed planet had ever been found.
“No one will ever see the photo again.” His voice shook. “I will never hurt anyone again.”
Sullivan pulled his lighter from his pocket. Screwing his eyes shut, he knelt and rummaged under his coat until he found the photograph. He straightened, eyes still shut, and lit his lighter.
With trembling hands, he brought fire and paper together.