You Are Not Alone

  Darrek has always dreamt of going to space and seeing aliens. Not out of some desire to be like the space marines in the games he grew up playing, or to prove Humanities potential to travel across the universe to at last see another intelligent species. Rather, his goal was rather simple.

  He wanted to tell them a very important message.

  This message that Darrek had was something his grandfather told him before he passed away in 2009. His grandfather was an astronomer, who studied the stars and believed that Aliens had to be out there. He believed it was impossible for Humans to be the only intelligent species in the vast, ever-expanding universe. Darrek’s passion for the stars was something he inherited from his grandfather; living in a house in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma, his grandfather had a perfect view of the stars with his telescope from his youth.

  When he first saw the stars, he felt wonder unlike anything he’d ever experience again—until he was an astronaut, of course. But that moment stayed with him, even long after his grandfather’s death. Alongside his will to share a message to the first alien species he saw.

  As Darrek grew, however, that wonder slipped away. The world became more bitter. His parents divorced in high school, his friend was killed overseas, and the world around him felt like it was getting worse day by day. Climate change, war, hatred to fellow men, it felt like no hope was left for humanity in his eyes.

  He tried to keep faith, as he graduated from college and became an astrophysicist, training to become an astronaut. Alongside one hundred and twenty other individuals, he’d be tasked to go on their first Interstellar voyage, to attempt to find a hospitable planet. The chance of finding life, let alone intelligent life, was low. But that chance, that .0000000000000001% chance, was what kept Darrek going through the rigorous training and studying for survival.

  It was unknown if they’d return, but Darrek had nobody to call family, let alone friends, left. He was alone, so he figured it would be fine if this was a suicide mission if there was even a chance that they found life. Going aboard the Intergalactic Atlas MK I (IA-1, as it was often abbreviated to), he watched as Earth became a distant marble in the vast void of nothingness, unbeknownst to him that he would never return.

  The IA-1 had some comradery over the years of travel, but Darrek didn’t speak much to his crewmates. He’d drink, socialize, and work with them, sure—even managing to develop one or two relationships that broke the line of platonic, but it wasn’t anything serious.

  It’d be on their third year of travel that Darrek would start his slow death—going outside to repair a panel, only for the tether to snap. Not a major problem on its own, and an easy solution with the in-built propulsion unit on his suit, were it not for a sudden impact with a rogue asteroid hurtling him into the vast emptiness of space. Within a few hours, he lost radio contact, and spent the next few hours floating through space holding onto the asteroid for dear life.

  He didn’t know why he held onto this stupid rock as he traveled through the emptiness. He was slowly starving and suffocating and could do absolutely nothing about it. He cursed whatever divine force brought him to this point—made him lose faith in the world to such a point that he’d believe in a child’s fantasy of bridging the gap between humans and aliens being the answer to solve the world’s problems. He screamed out, not caring if he lost oxygen doing so.

  Six days of hurtling through the emptiness. It felt like an eternity. At one point, he thought he had already died, and he was in some eldritch hell of floating through the black void peppered with stars. He began to wonder how many of those stars were already dead, but he was too far away to realize. He could have opened his helmet at any time… but he didn’t. He didn’t know why.

  As he floated, he could feel himself growing weaker. He couldn’t last for much longer. Before he could slip out of consciousness for likely the last time, he got a transmission to his headset. It was a language he couldn’t understand. He opened his eyes and saw it.

  A green planet, filled with super continents and giant lakes, many of which had a light pink hue to them. It was thousands of miles away, if not millions, but he saw it. He could hear speech. He found aliens.

  He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it sounded like a pickup of a sort of distress signal. Likely an automatic one his suit put out. Darrek shouted, and instead of begging for rescue, said this:

  Hey!! HEY!! Shut up!! I don’t understand you, and I doubt you can understand me, but I need you to listen. I need you to listen—this is something that has needed to be said for generations in my family, so please. Please listen.

  …Wow… ha-ha, you guys actually stopped talking.

  Well… my name is Darrek Gerritsen. I’m from Earth. I am an alien to you. And I want to give you a message you’ve probably waited years, maybe even centuries to hear—you’re not alone.

  I don’t know who you are, or what you’ve done, or who or where or what you want to be. I don’t know your life story, or if you and I would even get along. But you’re not alone.

  There’s so many of you, I bet thousands of you, if not more, who would love to know me. To know about my life, how different it is from yours, and how I can help you. But I can’t. I can’t know every single one of you, and that breaks my heart because I have wanted for years to matter to someone. To be someone that people dream of meeting and hearing that I changed their life, and hell, maybe even changed the trajectory of the world for the better. But I haven’t. And I was so scared that I never could be able to do that. I was so afraid that I’d die alone and without ever even impacting one person. But here I am, speaking to you.

  I have so much I want to say, so much I want to ask, and so much I want to hear. But I don’t have time. I don’t have the time to get to know you and get to love you. That breaks my heart. But I can’t just abandon this opportunity, so I’ll tell you something that you need to hear. You’re not alone.

  There are millions of people, both on your planet and beyond on mine, who would love to know you and help you. Millions who, if given the opportunity, would love you undyingly and unquestionably. You are loved, if not by anyone you know, then by me. You’ve given me purpose, just to see you and tell you that. I just hope I’ve given you the impact I imagined I would.

You are not alone, because I am here alongside you. Far away, but ever-present none-the-less. Please, don’t lose faith.

  Darrek’s voice became hoarse. He knew nothing they sent would be able to save him in time. He pushed a button on his suit, setting up a beacon—both for the aliens, and maybe in hopes that the IA-1 notices. He couldn’t let this go to waste.

  For minutes, as he floated, he heard nothing back. He began to think they didn’t hear his message. He didn’t care—he was content knowing that he, at last, delivered both his and his grandfather’s message. As his eyes closed for probably the last time, he heard a transmission back from the alien planet.

  “Thank you.”