Part V — The Arrival

At 03:17, an unidentified object entered the atmosphere. Witnesses described a light that appeared to be watching them. No sound was detected. No propulsion system was identified. No explanation could be agreed upon. The object remained stationary above the intersection of Art and Technology. Below it, the girls were feeding their faces into the machine. Below them, the roots were drinking from a river. Below the river, the bodies were becoming soil. Below the soil, the geological record continued without a human observer. The object began to descend. Through the telescope, it resembled a pupil. Through the camera, it resembled a flaw in the lens. Through the eyes of the cat, it resembled the other half of a world that had never quite aligned. We transmitted a greeting. The object transmitted a question. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SEEN? We transmitted our archive. Every photograph. Every confession. Every carefully composed declaration of who we believed ourselves to be. We transmitted the recordings of the dead. We transmitted the names we had removed from the photographs. We transmitted the polished versions of the girls, the unpolished versions, the versions that existed before anyone had thought to look.