What They Wanted

The aliens came.

For a while, it looked like they were going to stay.

Some people thought the world was ending, and others thought that the age of miracles had begun.

Visitors from space, or invaders from space.

Conquerors or saviors?

The aliens came, and then… one day, they were gone.

Some people were relieved. Others were disappointed.

At any rate, nothing had happened. There was no cure for cancer, no mass harvesting of organs. The aliens had not built armies, and they had not built flying cars or time machines. They had not strip mined the planet, and they had not saved it from global warming and pollution.

No. They were there for a while, and then, they were gone. That was all.

No one knew what they wanted.

They’d never said much more than hello.

They were gone, and maybe it was better to leave it at that.

Life went on.

A little boy aimed a ham radio at the stars, and asked a question he’d forget about when he grew up. “Why did you come here?” He asked. “What did you want?”

The radio signal faded out into space, and even he gave up waiting for an answer.

The radio was nearly dead and covered in dust, and his great-grandchildren were playing with it, when the answer came.

“We’d been alone for so long, your people and mine. We wanted to be friends.”

Be sure you visit some of the other writers in this month’s installment of the Storytime Blog Hop.

What They Wanted by Karen Lynn <—You are Here
Night at the Museum by Vanessa Wells
TRIBULATION Culled, eclipsed by COVID19 (A Poem) by Juneta Key
The Right Tracks by VS Stark
The Guardian of the Sandsnake’s Temple by Katharina Gerlach
The Last One by Jemma Weir
The Pooka Plays Pool by Nic Steven
The Longest Night by Sabrina Rosen
Near Success by Bill Bush
Alexa by Barbara Lund