Adventures of the Stardust Sisters: A Prologue

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like out there?” I didn’t need to look directly at her to know where she was pointing. Her fascination with space was astounding, even at an early age. Almost as if it were part of her, tethered to her body like her shadow. While other kids were learning colors, Pax was studying moon phases.

Classmates would come to school and share stories of losing training wheels, or obsessing over teen idols. But Pax was searching the cosmos through a telescope and lining her bedroom with star charts. If sneaking out was ever a concern for my parents, it was only during meteor showers or freak auroras. Dad always supposed it was because we were born dreamers with our heads in the clouds. When I sat and thought about it I knew he was right, he usually is. Which explains why my sister and I were never really ‘normal’ by any teenage standards. Though for two kids named Straea and Pax, I suppose we were as close to normal as we could ever hope for.

“Of course, I wonder what’s out there. Not as much, or as often as you,” the ideas begin to bombard me. Images of other creatures, other lives, other worlds in which we might visit. Pax and I would pick up customs from other worlds, collect them like souvenirs, pack them carefully and carry them with us. Eventually we would take them home and show them of like the galactical travelers we always knew we were destined to be. I would never admit it openly, not as openly as she, but Pax and I knew there was more than just balls of burning gas stuck in each other’s gravitational pull floating around up there. Which is probably why there was no surprise when the global announcement came a week ago. After centuries and decades of trying to contact any other life in space, we finally received a response. Global confirmation came in all forms, most of it was anarchy until everyone realized not much would immediately change.

“Come on, we’ve got to hurry, the city is on lockdown in twenty minutes,” we had more than enough time to make it back to the apartment from the park on any normal day. However, today was far from normal. Ever since the official global acknowledgment (OGA) the world has been in complete shambles. Any semblance of law and regulation went out the window. Getting back home would prove more difficult now in these hurried throngs of people.

Pax locks her hand in mind and shoves herself in front of me, plowing through the crowd like a salmon swimming upstream. I ducked slightly behind her, streaming her jet trails as she made her way home. The thought of missing the very first broadcast message from another planet lit a fire under her, and she weaves in and out, here and there, dodging anything that looks like a potential hang up in our otherwise smooth course. Though many people viewed it as apocalyptic, Pax and I both took this as a welcome opportunity. The OGA, backed by a live broadcast of their first message of contact is almost like witnessing the invention of fire. A life changing moment, the world collectively sharing, yet each in its own respect. They type of ‘you remember where you where, when…’definitive every generation has.

Once outside our building, the people begin to thin out, funneling into their respective complexes. Though less busy than the main throughway, the sound of dogs barking in the distance is second only to the sirens in the distance. Seemingly unending since the OGA, now it would be unsettling not to hear the sirens somewhere in the distance, always on but too far out of reach. At least that was unchanged.

Pax loosens her grip slightly, while we wade through the people still milling about. Most people chose to ignore and brush off this ‘mass hysteria’ as just so. For a second I try to take it in, ‘the before’. Before life changes forever. Before we knew we aren’t alone in this world. Before everything we believe to be true, is not. Everything else from this moment forward would be ‘the after’. Pax yanks me back into motion as she bursts through the lobby door.

As if the doorframe transported us to another time, the empty lobby was still and quiet. An eerie, still silence almost as assaulting as the chaos we were fighting outside, all but stops us in our tracks.

“Where is- “ before I can finish my question Pax cuts me off.

“Where we should be, lets go.” Though her voice never wavered, she moved slower now, as if the silence tied a weight to her. We trudged through the brutal mass of placidity, through the foyer, up the stark deserted stairwell, to our door where our mom waited. The look of panic on her face told me everything I needed to know. We missed the beginning of the broadcast. “Hurry! Hurry! they are having some technical difficulties.” She waves us in the door and shuts it gently behind us stopping there to lean. Glances dart across the room and I realize the still, heaviness from the lobby followed us up and into our home. Settling on all of us like dust, the silence made a home for itself. For once I ignored it.

“-and we are back, breaking news cast coming from an alien planet. Let’s cut to that feed now.” They change in time to catch the very end of the broadcast. Only one word registered. Only one word seemed important. Only one word, unmistakably foreign. It stuck in my brain. Like an imprint or a brand on livestock, the word cemented itself in tomb in my brain. What did it mean? Caught up in thought, my mind a million galaxies away, words by the thousands flood my mind. Beautiful. Exotic. Strange. Curious. New. Alien. So many words in my mind, yet only one word on my tongue.

“Earth.”