From a Distant Star
A traveler has arrived.
He comes from an impossibly distant land, trailing the dust of strange stars and stranger worlds. Shaking the chill of the void from his bones and the glow of deep space nebula from his eyes, he smiles at us and asks if we have a telescope he could use.
We are not a young civilization; we ourselves have mapped our solar system and its many shadowed corners. We know and care for the delicate balances of life that provide us the air we breathe, the soft soil from which we are born and which we all return to with time. We have our trials yet to face, we are many and none of us alike, for better or worse. We fight, steal, kill, and we love, protect and create, and we make damn good telescopes. We say so to the traveler and he laughs but there is something melancholic in his voice when he peers through the lenses and says that, yes, you certainly do.
What are you looking for? we ask, and he steps aside for us to see.
It is a small planet, blue, gold, and green against the backdrop of unfamiliar stars, like a delicate glass marble. Small spacecraft flit to and from the surface, and artificial satellites flurry around it complex orbits. It has one moon, and itself orbits a stuttering golden star. It is a world not entirely dissimilar to our own.
That is my home, says the traveler.
We eagerly ask, have you come to offer peaceful first contact?
No, he says.
I can never return to my home, he says, only watch it from afar, from further and further away. There is agony in his eyes, and we think we understand.
How long has it been, we wonder, since you left?
The traveler grins, wry. Time works differently the faster you travel. For me, it has been barely a week.
And for your home?
Much, much longer.
The traveler stays for nearly a year. By our count, he is ancient, but he teaches us to listen to the murmuring of the stars, and they assure us that he has much yet to learn. The same stands true for us, and from him we learn more than we could have even imagined. Then, one day, he looks into the telescope and tells us that it is time for him to leave. We beg and plead for him to stay. He has become more than just a traveler to us - he has become a friend. But he shakes his head sadly and wishes us well, and then he is gone.
We keep a careful eye on his planet, determined to keep watch over this place which he loved so dearly. That is why we do not miss it when the beautiful blue glass marble begins to crack and fade. Heavy black clouds scratch its surface, quickly condensing into a harsh black wall. No more nimble spacecraft buzz around it; the satellites crumble and fall into the smog, never to be seen again. When the clouds finally clear, the planet is an empty husk, and we finally understand.
These days, the traveler from the stars is nothing more than a legend, a fairy tale, a ghost story to tell to children. He is somewhere out there still, or so the story goes, drifting through the cosmos and protecting the last thing that remains of the world he called home.
Light travels fast, but the traveler from the stars is faster.
