Dark Stars

I saw dark shapes in the sky.

It was Summer—midnight on the hottest day of the decade. Of course, you didn’t have to wait long to declare the new “hottest day of the decade” back then. I’m not sure anyone keeps track these days.

I was only young, but old enough to notice when the stars went out.

Of course I understand now, but it wasn’t until I got to University that I put it together. It doesn’t take a lot for the light from those dimmest stars to become invisible to the naked eye. You need eight—eight or more photons have to arrive on a rod cell in your eye for you to ‘see’ in low light. So, when the incoming ships’ metamaterial shielding added just a little extra loss and scatter to that ray from lightyears away, the stars would flicker. They blinked on and off as the ships passed them. The ships were completely invisible to all of Earth’s best equipment and detectors, over as much of the EM spectrum as we could cover—but you could still see them. What a strange foible to have—interstellar travel, full-spectrum obfuscation, and you can still be seen entering a solar system by a kid with a crap second-hand telescope.

Apparently the starting gun was fired when Voyager II made it past the Kuiper Belt, and stopped transmitting back to Earth. Nobody told us. I may have seen them, back on that Summer night, but we didn’t see them coming.

---

I don’t know if I’ll continue with this piece, so I thought I’d just have it up here for posterity. I posted two versions of it on Twitter to a cacophony of almost-total silence. I did get one very helpful reply via DM though (you know who you are!). Still, it’s hard to tell whether my lack of followers or a lack of interest was the culprit. Either way, I’ve got too many other things to do to waste time on something no one will read (other than my novel! haha)