There’s this story that my mom used to tell me. When I was a kid, she held me up to a telescope to show me the stars. I’d been born under an open sky two years prior; it was only fair that space and I got better acquainted.
She showed me constellations like Ursa Major, Auriga, and Orion. And the moon, of course. Finally, she set the telescope to one specific point.
Jupiter.
Then I started screaming. I went from warm and cuddly to panicked hell-screaming mini-beast at the drop of a hat. Mom never figured out why, and for many years, neither did I.
“It’s like he saw a boogeyman,” she says whenever she tells the story. “Or maybe he just didn’t understand what he was looking at. All that mystery can be scary.”
My dad jokingly says that this telescope was the cause for my interest in geology. Better to look down than up, he figured. I never thought of it that way, but he had a point. Personally, I think I’ve always liked to understand the fundamental puzzle pieces that makes this world live and breathe. That’s what geology is to me; an understanding of our home. Like knowing the foundations of your house.
So yeah, I’m a geologist.
I got my degree at MSU, got a master’s degree in Norway, and got an entry-level job at a government agency up in Reston, Virginia. By 2013, I was well on my way to earthquake-proofing my life and personal economy. Things were pretty sweet. But there were a few caveats.
First, I was desperately lonely. And second, I hadn’t used a telescope since that fateful day when I was two years old.
But that changed in March, 2013.
I’d just turned 24.
I’d kinda started dating this girl, Lynn. We’d only been out twice, but I had a good feeling about the third date. She was an intensely outdoorsy kind of person. She had all kinds of breathing fabric clothes, super-hydro-whatever water flasks, and she tracked everything about her life on her ergonomic hyper digital buzzword watch with the accompanying monthly subscription app. It was all a bit much, and I couldn’t keep up with her in any sense of the word. But she somehow tolerated me, and that was all that mattered.
We’d been hiking all day. Lynn had been hinting at a “surprise” at the end of the road. It was already getting too dark to turn around, so I figured we might be sharing a tent. She hadn’t told me to bring my own.
As we got to the top of a hill, I realized I’d been an idiot.
There was a camp of six other people. Men and women; all variations of Lynn. Eager sporty people with a violently upbeat vibe. Lynn turned to me with the biggest smile.
“Surprise!” she laughed. “We got a stargazing party!”
Yeah, I’d misread the entire date thing. I was supposed to bring my own tent, but Lynn figured that was implied. Apparently, you should always bring a tent when hiking. I hate unwritten rules.
In that moment, I was just a bitter man coming to the realization that we had vastly different ideas of what that date was gonna look like. Still, I had a good time. We had hot dogs and smores, and her friends had put up telescopes to play with. There was supposed to be a meteor passing by, and they all wanted to see it. Honestly, I think it was just an excuse to get out of town for a while.
One of Lynn’s friends had brought a bottle of schnaps. Not much, but enough to play some “never have I ever” and have a good laugh or two. By the time the meteor came around, we’d almost forgotten about it. Hell, I’d almost forgotten about Lynn.
We all got up and took turns with the telescopes. It was sort of magical, in a way. All of us standing on that hill, looking up at the clear sky. No light pollution, no passing cars; just a bunch of people and the stars.
Then it was my turn.
Looking at it through a telescope makes it seem more real, in a way. You can see details that you otherwise can’t. It reminds you that the stars aren’t just a pretty picture; they’re real things, in a very real space. I followed the meteor for a few seconds, ooh-ing and aah-ing with the rest of them.
Then it passed in front of Jupiter.
Something in me stopped. It felt like my soul dropped anchor, locking my neck in place. Ever since that day when I was a kid, I hadn’t seen the planet up close. Not like that. Not since.
There was a rumble. At first I thought it was some kind of motor error in the telescope tripod. Then it happened again. I took my hands off the telescope, but quickly realized I couldn’t look away. My neck was cramping; my throat closing.
I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t scream.
And the rumble grew stronger.
It got faster, turning into a vibration, or a… note. There was a middle note. A high note. Finally, a low note. Three repeating sounds bouncing against the inside of my cranium like an expanding echo. My eyes, searching desperately for a way to blink, finally locked onto something.
There, among the swirling storms of Jupiter’s surface, I could see spots of red. Some large, some small. And one so large it was impossible to miss.
Now, I know what it is in theory. I’ve heard about the storms of Jupiter. It’s a gas giant. But what I looked at, then and there, were no storms.
They were eyes. Every storm, every spot; red eyes.
I finally understood the rumbling. That feeling that bore through me. Middle, high, low. It wasn’t just spasms; they were syllables.
The more I listened, the clearer they got. Like fine-tuning a radio. And in that one perfect moment, as everything aligned, I heard it. I heard Jupiter. I felt it. Not as a voice, but a movement. A trembling bass, like standing next to a silent but deafening song.
And it said;
“I see you.”
For the other stargazers, it looked like I had a seizure. Lynn later described how I took one look through the telescope and immediately started shaking. She offered to get my coat, which I’d left by the campfire. When I finally pried myself loose from the telescope, all I could do was froth at the mouth and screech the same three tones over, and over. But they didn’t understand. How could they?
Middle. High. Low.
“I see you.”
“I see you.”
I was only out for a couple of minutes. The circle of friends looked down at me, trying to figure out how bad the damages were. They’d fetched their first aid kits and Lynn’s satellite phone. Prior to me waking up, they’d been arguing whether to call someone. They could also follow the blue tape on the trees, which would lead to a ranger station. Luckily, I woke up just in time to stop them.
“I’m fine,” I gasped. “Really. I-I… I don’t know what the hell that was.”
“That’s epilepsy,” one of them said. “My cousin has it-“
“No, that’s blood sugar,” said another. “Guaranteed.”
Someone said something about chakras. Another started talking about the liver and pushing me to eat their special Minnesota Sunflower Seeds.
What a wild night.
The next day, I headed straight home. I said goodbye to Lynn, who insisted that I kept her updated. I crashed in my bed, headfirst; leaving my hiking gear strewn across the hallway. Even though I’d gotten a good night’s sleep, my mind needed to recover. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and my eyes felt warm. I would also get bouts of strained jaw muscles, sending these fiery signals up my spine to poke me like an infected wound.
I slept for 14 hours straight. This long, dreamless sleep. Like turning off a light and waking up with no idea what planet you’re on.
Waking up felt like starting a machine. Something in me moved, and I looked straight up into the ceiling. Without thinking, I said it aloud.
“I see you.”
I tried to chalk it all up to stress and fatigue. I’d been hiking all day and topped it off with booze; not a great combination. I spent a few hours just looking up stuff about Jupiter to try and explain what I’d seen. I read about the storms, the composition of dust and gas, the invisible rings, the moons… it was all there. Jupiter is no mystery to us.
But what I’d seen were no storms. It felt like I’d seen through them, spotting something beneath. Something deep and profound; like breaking through the ice of a dark lake, only to see something shimmering at the bottom.
I was at a crossroads. Try and ignore it or confront it. What else could I do?
I decided to ignore it.
For a few days, it worked. There was the occasional shiver when I heard an uncomfortable tune, or the frequency of a machine or motor. There was this one noise that I kept hearing from my fridge that gave me pause. At one point I just stood there, head pressed against it, listening. Traces of that mysterious rumble, looking to grasp me.
Lynn and I kept in touch. She was worried about me, asking me to get checked out. I couldn’t be bothered at first, but she made me promise. I thought about telling her I’d gone, without actually going, but she was so sincere. I couldn’t bring myself to lie, no matter how convenient.
The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Not physically, at least. I kept getting distracted by all the hums. I imagined hearing that frequency in a little bit of everything, directly translating to spotty words in the back of my mind. I could hear “see” coming off a computer screen. A “you” from the rumbling pipes in the bathrooms.
Just spots of recognition, sending flakes of ice up my spine as a constant reminder that I was, in fact, nowhere near okay.
It all came to a breaking point one evening when I was making dinner. I was alternating between frying chicken and answering messages from Lynn, when I got into what I can only explain as a groove. There was a hum coming from the kitchen fan which resonated exactly with one of the frequencies. It was calling to me, over and over.
“You. You. You. You. You.”
I have no idea how long I stood there. My mind just synced to this rhythm. At some point I realized I was coughing, nodding my head to the alarm from the smoke detector going off. My chicken was burned.
I ended up pouring myself a bowl of powdered tomato soup. And even then, as I stirred it with my spoon, I imagined the storms on Jupiter. The red swirls, hiding an unfathomable chaos. I watched it spin round, and round, and round again.
And the longer I looked, I could feel the eye coming closer.
My hands cramped, locking the plate in my hands. I could feel a rumble boiling in my stomach, like a volcano about to erupt. Three familiar notes, translating into an immediate, marrow-curdling screech.
“I SEE YOU.”
I threw the plate across the room. It shattered, and the red droplets spread across my egg-white wall. Swirling dots, dancing like distant Jupiter storms. The hum in me faded into a steady stream of whispers. Whispers that eagerly reminded that I was, unquestionably, seen.
For the next few nights, it just got worse.
I prayed for a dreamless sleep, but it wouldn’t come. Instead I kept finding myself carried off into the void, coming face to face with an eye the size of continents. Chemical storms that could strip the skin from my bones; leaving only thoughts and screams behind. Knife-edged ruby mountain ranges circling an endless black iris. No matter how much I kicked, twisted, or turned, it sucked me in. Pulling me into an eternal stomach-churning freefall.
I would wake up drenched in sweat, completely off-balance. I’d fall out of bed and flop around on the floor, as if gravity still eluded me. It’d take me a few seconds to realize nothing’d happened. And maybe, if I was lucky, I’d gotten half an hour of sleep.
I gave up. I told Lynn all about it, begging for help. She came over within the hour. Drove me to the hospital, all that. Hell, I don’t remember filling out a single form. She made sure they called my emergency contact and updated the doctor on what’d been going on. She was unstoppable.
I tried not to look and listen too much, and my mind was reeling from a lack of sleep. I have vague recollections of hallways and blurred faces. By then, I could feel the rumbling everywhere. Every electrical outlet, every fluorescent light. I could feel it in the texture of my rubber soles dragging across the white linoleum floor. It wasn’t letting up.
The only clear memory I have is of staring into the eyes of a doctor as I had a moment of clarity. He looked at me like I’d slapped him.
“Good,” he said. “Then your eyes are working.”
“I, uh… what?”
“You can see me, right?”
He took down a few notes and checked my eyes.
“You said so, just now.”
They kept me overnight for observation. My mom came by with some supplies and words of encouragement. She stroked my head and made sure I always had a glass of water on hand. Whenever my feverlike rants and seizures would start, she was there to calm me down. Well, to the best of her ability. At that point, I was so far gone that I couldn’t even explain it to her. It was just this constant assault on my senses, like my brain was swollen with voices.
Then, at some point, it stopped.
I remember it clearly. Mom had opened a window overlooking the parking lot, and I had a clear view of the night. Distant stars making their way across the sky. After shivering constantly for days, the relaxation I experienced was indescribable. Euphoric. This warm, enveloping feeling, spread all throughout my body. Like becoming a comfort blanket.
Mom stroked my hair.
“You always liked that,” she said. “Remember? You used to sleep with the window open.”
“I, uh… I don’t remember that.”
“No stuffed animals, or night lights. Just an open window. Anything else and we’d get a nasty tantrum.”
She sat with me for a while before she got up to use the restroom. When she got to the door, she turned back to me.
“You know, the night when you were born, we never thought you’d make it,” she said. “It was all a mess. The car broke down. Your dad thought we could cut through a field to make it to the hospital on foot.”
“I know,” I sighed. “I was born in a field.”
“The paramedics found us,” she continued. “If it hadn’t been for the bright night and the stars, they never would’ve. It saved your life.”
I looked out the window. There was something strangely comforting about that vast darkness now that it didn’t fry my nerves. Like a dark sea, where you can imagine the waves.
“We thought you wouldn’t make it, but as soon as we heard them, we knew you’d be okay.”
A primal thought swum to the front of my mind. A vague feeling of people around me. Being naked and cold in an open field. Hands grasping me. A voice, far above, whispering;
“Don’t worry, kid.”
A breath that lasts for a lifetime.
“I see you.”
The next morning, I was discharged. My nerves had calmed, and I’d gotten a prescription for seizure medication. I was rolled out of the main entrance, where Lynn met up with us. It wasn’t the kind of introduction I’d planned on doing that day, but that time was as good as any. Mom had her promise to take me home, and Lynn was happy to help.
We started to drive, and I immediately felt something strange. A tinge of something cold. Like a snowflake hitting an open wound.
“Do we need to stop?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“No, just… wait.”
As I looked around, the feeling shifted. And at one specific point, it disappeared. It just disappeared. I followed the direction with my finger, pointing at something in the distance.
“Can we go, uh… there?” I asked. “Right there. That way.”
“The highway?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“To where?”
“No clue.”
Lynn pondered it for a sec, then nodded.
“Highway it is.”
We followed it for hours and turned the day into a road trip. We crossed the state line into West Virginia somewhere in the afternoon, and Lynn didn’t seem to mind. She made an adventure out of it. Between my spontaneous bouts of nausea and confusion, I enjoyed her company. Not to mention the snacks she got us.
As the sky started to darken, I figured she’d have us turn around, or look for a motel. But no, she kept going. I could feel the point in the distance shift faster and faster; we were getting closer. There was something there. Something that made the shaking fade, and clarity return. A piece of me settling back to where it ought to be.
We ended up going down a long gravel road. Every twist and turn came suddenly, forcing us to crawl at a snail’s pace. Lynn didn’t seem to mind though. She’d put on some John Denver and had her own little sing-along.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “We could be here all night.”
“That’s okay,” she smiled.
“You sure?”
“A fourth date is a fourth date.”
“I’m sure you’ve had better.”
“I’ve had worse.”
As the gravel road turned to dirt and came to a stop, I could feel we were getting close. I tried to explain it, but I couldn’t find the words. It was like a spot of nothing, growing bigger. If I could just get there I had this aching feeling that everything would, in one way or another, turn out okay.
Lynn stopped to get her hiking pack, and that was that. Off we went.
We wandered through the wild forest. There were no trails, no leads. It was just us, and a vague sense of direction. Lynn didn’t seem to mind; she had both a compass, satellite phone, and all kinds of tools.
Two hours of dark nothing, and suddenly, light.
It was almost midnight by then. A starlit sky opened as we stepped onto the top of a short ridge overlooking a lake. I could see almost all the way around it from there. In the distance, I spotted a few boats. Fishermen.
It was all quiet. No matter the direction I looked, it was all just… quiet.
I looked at Lynn and laughed. I was so relieved that I couldn’t express it. Like a muscle knot untying itself, or a massive headache just… melting away. Like putting a soothing balm on my soul. I gave her a big hug, and she returned it in kind.
“I don’t know why, but… this is it,” I smiled. “This is it. The spot.”
“I think we’re in, uh… Greenbrier County? That someplace special to you?”
“Never been here before.”
“Well then.”
I sat down and took in the scene. No humming. No whispers. No cold creeping along my spine. Just the silent night and distant lights from stars and fishermen.
“You want some soup?” Lynn asked. “I got a thermos.”
“When did you-“
“Got it in my pack,” she smiled. “Want some?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “That’d be great.”
She poured me a cup and handed it over. My eyes drifted upwards.
Something red, moving across the sky.
I shook my head and turned away. My pulse started beating, and I dropped my cup of soup. I tapped the side of my head, as if trying to realign an antenna. Lynn put a hand on my shoulder.
“You okay?”
The red in the sky. The red eye. I could feel it. I scrunched my face as hard as I could, telling myself it was all gonna pass. Telling myself it was over. I’d won, and this was just an aftershock.
Then, Lynn spoke up.
“Is that a plane?”
She saw it too.
I looked back at Lynn, seeing a red gleam in her eyes; a reflection of what loomed overhead. The joy faded from her. She could feel it too; something was wrong.
A reflex in me made me look up. A stupid, inane little reflex.
A red swirl in the distant sky; a sailing star. Long out of reach. My breath grew shallow as I realized I couldn’t look away. Everything else faded as my sight was slowly swallowed by that distant vision.
“Lynn? Lynn!” I called out, waving my hands behind me. “Don’t… don’t let it take-“
I felt her fingers brush against mine as the rumbling began. But this time, it was different.
It was a pulse. A pulse so powerful that my left eardrum immediately burst; leaving me screaming like a child on the ground. It burned me to my core, wrapping itself around my spine and squeezing; forcing these guttural sounds up through my esophagus.
Somewhere far away, I could feel Lynn shaking me. But all I could focus on was that red dot in the sky.
It resonated with me. With my every pulse, it pulsed back. Our duet. Our signal.
I choked on my lungs, spitting up single syllables like a hiccup.
I.
See.
You.
It grew faster, and faster. Turning from three syllables to two. And, gradually, just a sound.
I. See. You.
Isee. You
Iee. Oo.
Ee. Oo.
Until finally, all that remained was a single word. The name, the signal, the thing.
Eo. Eo. Eo.
And with every beat of my heart, the thing in the sky started to turn.
I could hear Lynn in the distance, as through a pane of thick glass. I heard her worry. Screaming. Fumbling to connect her satellite phone, only to be met with a pulsing static. She tried dragging me away but was shocked with a burst of static electricity. Every hair on my body stood at attention, reaching for the stars, letting every little breeze cut right through me.
The red thing grew bigger. That… something. A dust particle of the infinite; heading our way.
It was a matter of minutes. Using a rope from her pack, Lynn managed to get a lasso hold of my legs. She dragged me away, but it was too late.
It was like my nightmares. Something distant and red growing bigger; swallowing everything.
Eo. Eo. Eo.
In the moment of impact, something burst inside me. I coughed up something black and viscous. Perhaps it was the connection that tied me to this thing to begin with. Maybe it marked me at birth to demand a favor somewhere down the line. Maybe this was all something cashing in on my life.
The sky burned my retinas, but only for a heartbeat. In nothing but a moment, the sky went from burning red to nothing. The ground shook. There was steam, and so much cold air was pushed out that Lynn was knocked off her feet.
The red thing was shaped like a wedge. It came down at an angle, roughly the size of a school bus. It tore into the lake, cutting up a wound in the earth itself. Effectively cracking a hole in the ground, revealing some sort of cave system underneath.
In a matter of minutes, the entire lake was laid bare; all water drained into the caves beneath.
What little remained of the red thing turned to ash.
Red, swirling, ash.
Lynn propped me up against a tree. My head was ringing like a bell. My vision slowly returned, as the pulse subsided. The black viscous blob I coughed up quickly dried up into a powder, turning into flakes of metal.
I tried to talk, but couldn’t form the words. I couldn’t hear myself. I was so disoriented that my body couldn’t understand whether I was breathing or not, making me light-headed. Leaning against the tree, I forced myself up. I had to see the aftermath.
An entire lake, drained in seconds. I could only see little parts of the fishermen’s boats; some of which had been blown into the surrounding trees. There was no way they would’ve survived. Much like the remaining fish, flopping about in the mud.
I turned to Lynn, trying my best to speak. My body recognized all the physical sensations of speech, but couldn’t form the words. Using my fingers, I gave her numbers. I pointed to her satellite phone. We had to call goddamn everyone. The Army Corps, NOAA, the EPA, the Division of Natural Resources. Hell, I had to call my boss at the USGS.
Everyone. We needed everyone. So we called them, one by one.
And… that was that.
For me, at least, things were finally at peace. I couldn’t feel it anymore. Maybe I’d served my purpose and paid my debt, in a way. Over time, my eardrums would heal. Turns out I also had a fractured rib, and two throat ulcers. Still, I could overcome it.
The whole situation was just… absurd. There were reports of a “small geological event” without anyone mentioning the goddamn meteor that changed course to hit us. Coincidentally, there were also reports of “escaped convicts”. Residents were asked to stay inside.
Despite having called literally everyone I could think of, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the site. I got no updates, no debriefing, nothing. The only thing I got was one of the corporate landowners telling me I’d been “trouble enough”. That line alone tells me they know something I don’t, and it bothers me still.
But there are only so many brick walls you can beat your head against. At some point, you get too dumb to care. That’s where I’m at now. The past few years, I’ve been able to look into the sky without a twitch of a care. I’ve looked at Jupiter countless times, and I can’t even imagine what I used to see anymore. I know there’s something there, but it’s like… a filter. Something in my mind can’t look past it anymore.
And Lynn? Well, it was her idea to write this down. She thinks there are people out there who might’ve seen something about this. Other perspectives. We know for a fact that there was a cover-up at the local news station, and someone must’ve been down at the lake.
For me, the only thing that still remains in me is that word. That strange sound, meaning nothing, and everything. Like something out of a dead language, begging to return. I can say it a hundred times, but there’s no point anymore. It feels like it has burned out of me. There’s nothing left to make it sound true.
Eo.
Just a noise.
I hope someone out there can make use of the truth. Get some kind of closure. As Lynn and I are expecting our second daughter any day now, I feel like this chapter needs to be closed once and for all.
And no.
She won’t be born under the stars.
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