In the frigid, uncharted expanse of the Kuiper Belt, where the Sun is but a distant pinprick in an endless void, Ian Baird stands alone—a solitary caretaker of a deep-space radio telescope array, tasked with listening for whispers of alien life. But the darkness here is more than just the absence of light; it’s a living, breathing entity that claws at the edges of his sanity. Haunted by the monsters of his own mind and the siren call of a forbidden stimulant, Ian uncovers a signal—a haunting, otherworldly music that could herald first contact or unravel his grip on reality. In Monsters in the Dark by Torn MacAlester, the vastness of space becomes a crucible where science, fear, and the unknown collide, forcing Ian to confront the shadows within and beyond the stars.
Monsters in the Dark by Torn MacAlester
Monsters in the Dark By Torn MacAlester “Mister Baird,” said the Director at the inquiry. “There is a famous quote from the twentieth century. It states: ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ We have exactly that situation.” Ian noticed the shifted honorific. Officials had referred to him as Candidate Baird in all discussions up to that point, indicating that he had been a candidate for a doctorate. During the inquiry, the subtle shift suggested they had already decided about the signal. It had been the contention of several of the Saturn Science Council that Ian had failed to provide evidence of […]
This is a short story that was written to meet the qualifications of a Case 1 First Contact as presented in:
Case I of First Contact, an Article by Torn MacAlester
This article is the first follow-on to a series on first contact. First Contact: An Article By Torn MacAlester First contact is one of the mainstay themes of science fiction. In fact, it would not surprise me if it was the most common theme in all science fiction. To the scientist in me, I’d like to understand many of the aspects of first contact and figure out what the most likely case of contact would be. Thus, I undertook this analysis to estimate what I might do for my world building for my stories. First off, in science fiction, […]
