JUST RELEASED: Headlines From the Starman

I uploaded this one late on Saturday afternoon, and it's a story I think is a little off-beat, even for me. I wrote it to experiment with a different style of storytelling, while playing with the idea that the press tend to exaggerate things or take them out of context, in order to sell more newspapers.

And, yes, I wrote it well before the current politics came about. Watching something similar unfold in the real was nowhere near as much fun as imagining what it might look like in a story.

Short stories, right? They're where I go to play with new ideas, new structures and new approaches to writing...and I've been writing for a while, now.

What's it About?

When a mysterious capsule is discovered and an ancient space traveler emerges, the world's press is thrown into frenzy, and when a starship answers the new arrival's call, the media interest intensifies.

How Does it Start?

For centuries he’d been there and, as far as we knew, he’d slept. The Starman. The Starman in the moon. He hadn’t been found when man first visited, and it wasn’t until humans were onto their third colony on that ancient satellite that he was unearthed.

“He’s from a starfaring nation,” the scientists had said.

Starman Travelled the Universe While Mankind Hunted Termites with Gorillas, the newspapers screamed.

People were fascinated by the discovery. The tabloids circled like hungry sharks, gobbling up every scrap of information they could find, and regurgitating it in a cloud of exaggeration.

“What are we going to do with him?” the scientists wanted to know.

“Well, you can’t dissect him.”

“We had no intention of that. We just want to know what to do with him.”

Scientists Banned from Dissecting Starman, the newspapers claimed.

People were outraged, politicians deluged with email, social media flooded with calls for protests and petitions to save the starman from death. Investigations into the ‘evil’ of science were called, and perfectly legitimate and law-abiding science projects almost ground to a halt. Scientists and politicians alike hurried to reassure the world that the starman was in no danger of being harmed. The press, they claimed, were exaggerating.

“The electronics on his pod are showing signs of activation.”

Starman Capsule Could Explode, the newspapers screamed.

Again, the politicians and scientists found themselves in alignment.

“There is no danger. The science is light-years more advanced than our own, but we have ascertained that it is not a bomb.”

Scientists Baffled by Starman Tech!

The first communications signal was picked up by an amateur radio enthusiast.

Mysterious Signal Discovered on Earth.

Who Else Seeks the Starman?

Aliens in our Midst!!

And the pod replied, sending out a cryptic series of codes, avidly monitored by alien enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists the world over.

Invasion Fleet Imminent!

Government Calls for Calm as Starman Capsule Activates.

In the end, no one came, but the starman’s pod opened anyway.

“What have you done?” he asked.

Where Can You Find It?

You can find links to this newly released, stand-alone, science-fiction, urban fantasy short story on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/mdwApE read an earlier version in A Collection of Shifters, the fourteenth volume in the C.M.'s Collections series.