Under the Weather

First contact has unintended consequences

It wasn’t a signal from the stars, nor a giant mothership hovering ominously over a city. No, the first time we ever met something from somewhere ‘else’ it could almost have been mistaken for a bit of unusual weather.

Almost.

It was late May, on the west coast of Gozo, and an Italian couple was busy baking themselves on the rocks.

Roughly four thousand metres above those rocks, a small but unmistakable ripple appeared. Then a raincloud. Then torrential rain. How much rain was hard to say, as most of it poured directly into the sea. Yet those several square metres of land unfortunate enough to lie beneath the downpour also happened to be occupied by equally unfortunate Italians.

To outside observers, it was as though a wall of water sheared the rock face clean off. Those who glanced up saw what was quickly declared the first directly observed space-time distortion. While the distinct sound of laughter that thundered through moments later was less hastily declared ‘first contact’.

It wasn’t long before “‘Freak Weather Event’ Caused By Alien Invaders!” was at the top of every newsfeed. Suddenly the aliens were responsible for all unusual weather. People reported seeing “shimmers” wherever there were storms, floods and even unrelated phenomena such as volcanoes.

Humanity was quick to react and even quicker to abandon responsibility. The climate rapidly became a non-issue. It wasn’t us. It was them. The others. The shimmers.

Within a few decades, Earth had wasted away.

Within a few centuries, the conflict had spread to half the galaxy. Everywhere humanity ventured, the shimmers were there.

They had to be stopped.

By 2639, transdimensional weaponry had been developed. It worked by creating static quantum bubbles which prevented the usual effervescent exchange of particles between dimensions.

That was when things got really weird.

For the so-called ‘shimmers’, the encounter manifested somewhat differently.

Being unfamiliar with any of the three dimensions that humans so casually inhabited, they were equally unaware that a new game practised among their youth, wherein assorted items were skimmed across the literal river of time around which their civilisation was based, was causing problems.

They had in fact only become aware of their strange counterparts when the first bubble disrupted a funeral-wedding of sorts. Several of their number were to be fused into a new entity and sent floating down the river to the next stage of existence, when all of a sudden, the river branched off in three separate directions, sending their progeny off to uncertain and undoubtedly lonely futures.

After investigating the source of this terrorist act, an amalgam of minds from across the vortex opted to essentially dam up part of the river — thereby forcing all time experienced by humans, and anyone else unlucky enough to share their section of reality, to pour into its own static little pool where it couldn’t bother anyone.

The result for humanity, dogs, elephants, the Black Monoliths of Orion, the Fluttering Firmament of Horologium, the Great Vegetative Ensemble of Plexiglass 9, and every other conscious being in the infinite expanse of that ill-fated three dimensions, was a rather profound, unsettling and ultimately justifiable sense of nihilism.

The war continued.

From El’s perspective, this was all a bit of a hassle. As a fully self-actualised omniscient eleven-dimensional life form, whose species had achieved sentience some 14 billion years prior, El was constantly dealing with the unfortunate consequences of unruly cosmic organs and appendages.
It was a bit like having a stomach ache. A big ball of neurons and other organisms that seemed to have a mind of its own and kept getting into fights with itself.

El had, at one point, consulted a physician, of sorts, who had suggested introducing ‘prophets’ — a kind of vaccination that operates in fixed dimensions to imitate a cell type and, in essence, teach the others how to behave. She had tried it several times with some success for short periods. But in every case, there were always side effects that exacerbated the problem. One time it was a brief headache. Another time it was enough gas to forge a few more superclusters.

Now, it seemed, the illness was spreading, and it was as though her whole body was at war with itself. To call it a fever, would be a poor metaphor and a drastic understatement.

Nevertheless, the fever was getting worse.

El needed to do something. She needed to stop this thing before it became a real problem. Her physiology had evolved over literal eons to serve as a harmonious assemblage of life across infinite space and time. It could not be brought to a calamitous halt by some unruly biota.

She thought about trying another prophet. Perhaps this one could calm everything down by explaining again how ‘we’re all one’ or something to that effect, but she was less than optimistic.

“Well…” said Om, her best friend, and alternate reality. “Have you tried talking to them directly? Perhaps just telling them all to relax.”

“The doctor said it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Well, what other choice is there?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yeah. What’s the worst that could happen right?”

“Yeah, right,” Om responded, with unwarranted confidence.

El took a deep breath and for a moment the universe seemed to expand slightly faster than usual.

“Ok, look!” she said to the infinite three-dimensional space of the humans and the infinite fluidic vortex of the shimmers simultaneously. “I’ve about had it with the lot of you!”

There was silence. Mostly because every conscious mind in existence had imploded.

‘Oh shit,’ thought El. “Oh shit, oh shit! I don’t feel so good.”

“What did I tell you?” her physician would later chide. “But don’t worry. There’s something we can try. It’s called ‘primordium’. Might take a while, but it should get things going again.”