First Contact is a multidimensional narrative connecting centuries, continents and sub/cultures, unravelling coincidences and conspiracies, computer viruses, and viruses which infect your mind. It details a kaleidoscope of revolutions and counter re...
IT WAS, TO PARAPHRASE PHIL COLLINS, JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE. There was a blackout at 5am but Paul didn't realize until 9am because his clock radio was dead. Just bad luck, he thought driving the 60 kilometers to work when he felt a drag on the freeway and pulled over to find his rear tire flat. It's not the end of the world, he decided, I won't be too late! and then he passed an hour and a half flagging traffic until, on such a hot and blustery day, a carload of flannies screeched up and commanded him to get the fuck out of their country. Paul began contemplating Murphy's Law and other cosmic conspiracy theories, but his boss wasn't buying any of it. <<You could always move out of the sticks>> he suggested insensitively. <<Don't talk to me about alienation>> Kristi complained when he returned from the office. <<At least you're not stuck in Paradise all day, every day.>>
An evening of gameshows and sitcoms on top of that would have been unbearable. After dinner he went for a stroll not knowing if he would ever come back.
Near their house a knobby hill protruded from the sprawl of identikit yellow brick homes and pebble driveways. A narrow lane lined with native shrubs and eucalyptus trees wound up to the Paradise Estate Lookout, a garden bench with panoramic views of the outer suburban developments. The bench had been popular with local lovers until a rapist commenced stalking the undergrowth, but Paul wasn't worried tonight. He slumped back in the bench and stared at that vaster panorama above him, those thousands of stars and the planets that must orbit them and the life that must inhabit them and he thought: I wonder what they are doing now?
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As he was looking at Orion, something sparked in the center of the saucepan. <<Hell>> he whispered, waiting for the streak. Although he was not superstitious, the psychological boost of a meteor was urgently prescribed. But the light stayed still. If it was a plane flying at just the right angle to appear motionless, where was the blinking navigation light? If it was a satellite, why wasn't it moving? This was getting really out there, man! The spark looked out of place in such a familiar constellation, fuzzier than the Orion Nebula, no hang on, it was steadying into a star, brighter than Bellatrix. The thing was gaining luminosity by the second! Wait till he told Kristi about it. <<It must be a weather balloon>> she'd say <<or Venus, or your imagination!>> but Paul knew that he was on to something more profound. The object was burning ever stronger, fierce as red Betelgeuse, the armpit of the hunter, in 10 astounding minutes as dazzling as the left leg of the giant. It was about that time that Paul remembered where was and how long he had been sitting out here.
Surging with an elation he could not comprehend, he ran home with his eyes still fixed skywards.
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<<HAVE YOU SEEN THE new star?>> was the most exchanged question round the watercooler next morning.
<<Firstly, it's not new, and it's not a star anymore>> explained Suleyman, Paul's supervisor. The old Turk knew fucking everything. <<The papers said it used to be a star too faint to see but for some reason it blew up last night. Went supernova.>>
