When we first turned our eyes to the stars we saw that they twinkled in and out of view, not quite realising that something vast was moving between them and us. We were gleefully ignorant about the beings that slowly reached for us across the cosmos.
With the creation of the first telescope we caught glimpses of things moving between the stars and thought we were seeing a god. In a way we were right - they were beings of unimaginable scale and power, for their sheer size rather than miraculous abilities.
The better our creations, the more we saw and the less we wanted to see. By the 21st century we finally caught their eye... literally. It must have been ten times the size of the largest star we'd ever seen - VY Canis Majoris - and it was staring right at us with the same fear we all felt at that moment.
We wouldn't see the full ramifications of our actions for almost three thousand years after when it had left our side of the cosmos and moved on to whatever other world attracted its attention without acknowledging its colossal existence.
For the first time in humanity's memory all the stars shone brightly and not a single one twinkled.
With the creation of the first telescope we caught glimpses of things moving between the stars and thought we were seeing a god. In a way we were right - they were beings of unimaginable scale and power, for their sheer size rather than miraculous abilities.
The better our creations, the more we saw and the less we wanted to see. By the 21st century we finally caught their eye... literally. It must have been ten times the size of the largest star we'd ever seen - VY Canis Majoris - and it was staring right at us with the same fear we all felt at that moment.
We wouldn't see the full ramifications of our actions for almost three thousand years after when it had left our side of the cosmos and moved on to whatever other world attracted its attention without acknowledging its colossal existence.
For the first time in humanity's memory all the stars shone brightly and not a single one twinkled.
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