The Fermi Paradox asks a simple question: if there is advanced life in the universe, other than humans, why have we seen no signs of it yet? Surely, the theory goes, if there are advanced aliens out there building great civilisations among the stars, there should be some evidence of it?

  Given how much older some of the stars in the galaxy are compared to our own, and given the sheer scale and scope of the universe, it seems highly unlikely that there would be no intelligent life out there, or so the thinking went. Scientists and astronomers have lost a lot of sleep over the decades due to this thorny problem.

  Occam’s Razor, however, states that the simplest solution is often the correct one, and there was, in fact, a very simple explanation to this problem.

  They were looking in the wrong direction.

  ☆ ☆ ☆

  About an hour’s drive southeast from Tokyo was a small coastal town called Kamogawa. There was nothing all that remarkable about this town, at least beyond the Sea Life Centre (which brought in regular tourist money), and the Grand Tower hotel (where said tourists generally stayed) dominating the otherwise unimposing skyline.

  It had, until recently, been a typical Japanese settlement.

  What was remarkable was the series of events that were about to unfold in this sleepy town, centring on one Meg Momozono, a twenty year old British-Japanese university student studying art and design. There was nothing all that remarkable about Meg either… yet.

  She sported a thick yet silky head of chestnut hair that had been tied back into a neat ponytail, and her skin leaned towards a deep pinkish tone inherited from her Japanese father. She wore a fairly standard outfit involving jeans, sneakers, and a loose T-shirt over which she wore a lightweight hooded jacket, as befitted the crisp but rapidly warming March temperatures. Plus a small red rucksack slung over her left shoulder.

  But unlike every other day of her life thus far, on this particular Monday morning Meg was about to meet a girl who would change her life—and the lives of everyone on Earth—forever, and in so doing she would inadvertently disprove the Fermi Paradox once and for all.

  ☆ ☆ ☆

  Jogging through the quiet streets of Kamogawa, Meg turned a corner a little too fast, waggled her arms a few times to maintain her balance as she came close to tripping over her own feet, and continued on her way.

  A few birds twittered in the skeletal cherry blossoms lining the road, and the smell of fresh bread from a nearby bakery filled Meg’s nose as her breath misted the chilly air. Soon the trees would blossom in vivid pink and white for a brief but indelible few weeks, but for now they stood in stark contrast to the otherwise springtime greenery.

  She came to a stop at a junction, glancing up at the crossing lights, currently red. Standing idly, unaware of anything much beyond how quiet everything seemed, she waited patiently for the green light. Something felt… off, strange, unusual. It was eight in the morning, it shouldn’t be this silent.

  Nearby cars had stalled. There were no obvious people walking back and forth. Even the birds had ceased their incessant chirping. And a hint of something unpleasant made her nose involuntarily wrinkle, something acrid… sulphur, perhaps? Her gaze came to rest on a young woman in a grey suit, who had collapsed on the pavement near a grey post box.

  Meg ran across. “Hey! Are you all right?”

  She crouched and gently shook the unconscious figure. Placing a finger to the woman’s neck, she checked for a pulse; steady and strong, making Meg relax a little. She dug around in her rucksack and produced her phone. Feverishly tapping the screen, she placed a call to 119, the Japanese emergency services. An unwelcome flat tone greeted her ears. No cell service? She cast about for a public phone, but in the year 2030 those had become as rare as an honest politician.

  Before she could process anything else, a roar like a volcano erupting assaulted her ears. She collapsed onto her behind, legs splayed as the ground shook beneath her. Doing her best to shield the defenceless woman on the pavement, she muttered, “What the hell was that?”

  A second later she had her answer.

  A black creature, bipedal and biomechanical in appearance—almost Giger-esque to Meg’s eyes—and as tall as a bungalow lumbered out from a side street and loped towards her. Steam escaped from fissures in its skin and an oily substance oozed from claw-like hands, splashing the asphalt and making it bubble like acid eating its way through polystyrene.

  Breath as foul as the bottom of a thousand ponds escaped its perpetually grinning maw. It appeared to sniff the air, locating via smell rather than sight, its face smooth, head elongated like one of those balloon animals Meg had loved as a child, and missing any eyes. The sheer blankness of its non-stare somehow made it more horrifying than if it had eyes.

  Meg laughed, mostly in terror, as the creature appeared to wait for the flickering and malfunctioning traffic lights to change red before crossing the road. She was rooted to the spot, unable to move despite her body’s urgent signals to run as though all the demons of Hell were chasing her. She finally managed to force herself upright, awkwardly pulling the prone woman along.

  “Now might be a good time to work, legs…” she mumbled, hoping the appendages in question would listen. They didn’t, steadfastly remaining as jelly while the monster closed the distance. Meg blinked, her heart beating faster and faster, cold chills running down her spine as she stared in abject terror at the creature towering over her, its arms raised and ready to drop—

  Closing her eyes and hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much, Meg prepared to meet her maker. However, a heavy thump made Meg jump and open her eyes. She looked up to find the monster right overhead, unmoving, held in place by a young woman with both arms outstretched in order to block the attack.

  The new arrival allowed her arms to bend slightly, letting the creature’s weight push her down by a few inches, then gathered her strength and unleashed an attack that looked to be magical in nature, a blinding purple flash followed by a shockwave. The creature was sent reeling, sailing through the air and slamming down onto the asphalt a dozen feet up the road, fortunately missing several waiting cars, their occupants as unconscious as the lady Meg was vainly attempting to protect.

  Emitting a pained growl, the monster stumbled back to its feet as the young woman strolled into the road and squared off against it, her face a picture of serenity and control.

  Now that Meg was in a position to get a better look at proceedings, the mystery girl seemed roughly of an age with her, late teens, perhaps early twenties. She was short, obviously athletic and lithe, and dressed in… Meg wasn’t certain, but it was something similar to the magical girl shows she had watched as a child.

  The outfit was black and frilly, trimmed in purple with a cute little skirt and spats worn underneath for modesty, plus black knee boots over thigh-length purple socks. A ribbon adorned the outfit at her neck, with several more around the waist and one on each boot located at the knee.

  Her hair colour was deep purple verging on black, perfectly straight and worn loose, glowing with a halo of hazy purple energy. It reached to her just below her posterior and billowed out behind her like a cape. The young woman’s skin was a deep russet with warm undertones of red and orange.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Meg’s fears melted away, to be replaced by confusion. She blinked a few times, wondering if maybe the terror was making her hallucinate.

  The girl turned to her and spoke in a high-pitched yet soft voice. “You okay over there?”

  Well, if it was a hallucination, it was a pretty convincing one. Meg called back, “I think so!”

  Apparently satisfied, the magical girl launched herself at the creature as it finally managed to clamber back upright, knocking it down a second time. She raised a hand, around which formed a black and purple ball of energy, and lobbed it at the creature. The ball expanded to the size of a small house, spherical with coruscating white lightning crawling over its pulsating surface. It dropped to the monster, pressing it into the asphalt, crushing, breaking, pulverising.

  With a wailing cry of pain and rage, the creature exploded under the pressure, splashing the nearby buildings with black viscera. The gravity ball shrunk to nothing and disappeared with an amusing ‘pop!’, like a bubble in the bathtub of the gods.

  Letting out a brief sigh of relief, the young woman nodded with an awkward smile in Meg’s direction, asked her to please avoid mentioning this little incident to anyone, and jumped into the air. A pair of glowing purple wings materialised at the rear of her waist, and she was gone, accelerating directly up into the sky.

  “What was that all about…” Meg said in a flat tone.

  Her brain had fused into a sodden lump, unable to comprehend the level of sheer craziness she had just witnessed. She glanced over to where the creature… had been, as it turned out. It was gone; no monster, no destroyed road or buildings, no black goo, as though nothing had happened. The woman resting in her lap made a vague noise and the cars in the vicinity growled back to life as their occupants awoke. They were real, at least.

  “What happened…?” the lady murmured, swaying back and forth as Meg helped her to her feet.

  “Um, I think you passed out?” Meg said. She couldn’t really tell her the world had gone absolutely insane with mass faintings and crazy monsters.

  Other people she hadn’t initially noticed around the area were coming to and standing, and several of the people in cars had lowered their windows to angrily demand answers as to why no one was moving, several of them rubbing their foreheads as though wondering why they suddenly had no memory of the last few minutes, or why they felt so irritable.

  Meg was almost as surprised as when the monster first showed itself. This was Japan, people didn’t just roll their windows down and yell, no matter how annoyed they were, it went against the ingrained culture of the country. It was the concept of public face versus private face. In public you wore the mask, you went with the flow, you were polite. Only in private, and only with those you were very close to did the real feelings come out. How very odd…

  Deciding that being somewhere else might be wise, Meg confirmed that the woman she had attempted to protect was okay, then trotted towards her university campus, her mind filled with questions she was unsure she would ever receive answers to.

  ☆ ☆ ☆

  Entering the campus grounds of her university via the imposing black metal gates, Meg strolled through as casually as she could manage, hoping her wobbly legs would hold out. She made her way around the crisp and modern buildings—all angles and curves and exciting metalwork—and headed for the cafeteria, a tall, glass-fronted structure to one side of the grounds.

  Here she grabbed a polystyrene cup of not-very-nice-at-all tea and sat at a table near the windows. Dropping her rucksack under the table, she tried to relax, sipping her drink and staring vacantly out at the university’s elderly groundskeeper as he struggled to pull a recalcitrant weed from a flower bed.

  A gentle old soul most of the time, Kurohama—or Old Man Kuro as he was known—could be an unholy terror if a student damaged any of his precious plants. Meg had had the misfortune of discovering this first-hand during her first week at the university nearly a year prior. Fortunately he was also a very forgiving person, so he had let her off with a mere week of icy cold stares whenever he saw her.

  The terror of what Meg had just experienced morning had subsided a little by now at least, her jelly-like legs regaining some of their strength. Surrounding herself with ordinary, everyday comforts like the cafeteria’s awful tea and Old Man Kuro helped, made her feel safer, more secure.

  She tugged her hair down from its ponytail and shook it out, letting the mass of chestnut settle around her shoulders. Massaging her scalp a few times, hoping this might settle her aching brain down, she tied her hair back up and went back to nursing her awful tea; it seemed to be a fundamental law of the universe, like magnetism or gravity, that the tea at any institution, no matter whether public or private, and regardless of said institution’s level of prestige, always tasted like lukewarm dishwater.

  An hour slipped past as several cups of terrible tea slipped down. Meg often left home an hour early in order to wander the streets and take some fresh air before a morning lecture. But after the events of this morning, perhaps there was something to be said for lying in…

  As she was about to head to her first lecture of the day, a voice stayed her.

  “Mornin’.”

  Meg looked up to see the good friend who was taking the same art and design course as her. She waved and pulled out a chair beside her. “Morning, Asuka.”

  “Rare to see you looking this pasty, Megu-chan,” Asuka said. Due to the limited number of phonetic sounds available in the Japanese language, most of Meg’s friends pronounced her name as ‘Megu’, as this was the closest approximation possible. Asuka sat in the proffered chair and leaned back, idly toying with strands of her long black hair.

  Meg hadn’t realised she looked quite as white as she apparently did. She waved a hand in hopes of setting her friend’s mind at ease. “Just had a bit of a scare this morning, turned out to be nothing, though.”

  Asuka’s face split into a grin. “There’s few problems in life that can’t be solved by painting them.”

  “I’m not sure I’d want to paint that thing…” Meg muttered, a vision of the hulking magma golem floating briefly before her eyes. She found H R Giger’s works disturbing and fascinating in equal measure, but the idea of something similar to his creations actually existing…

  “Something bad, was it?” Asuka said, interrupting her friend’s train of thought. “Think of it like this: painting it cuts it down to size, right? Puts it in your control. Makes it less scary.”

  “That’s… an interesting way to deal with problems,” Meg said, pausing with her cup halfway to her lips.

  “I’ve had problems in life, same as anyone.” Asuka shrugged. “Always found that painting the worries away worked really well.”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever thought to try that. Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Any time. Speaking of which, time we were at class.” Asuka stood and made her way around the various shiny wooden tables and to the exit.

  Meg grabbed her rucksack and followed. An hour-long lecture was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now, but she also figured it might take her mind off less pleasant problems.

  Studying art and design at Momohime Academy of the Arts, Meg enjoyed virtually every aspect of her university life. Lectures were interesting and informative (if sometimes a bit dry), practical classes and the various projects were always hugely fun and enlivening, and she had a several great friends. All in all, she figured she couldn’t be anywhere better right now.

  Exiting the cafeteria, they darted around the lawn, giving Old Man Kuro a greeting on the way past, and made their way towards the main academy building. Situated dead centre in the campus grounds, this building had resulted in Meg’s jaw hitting the floor upon first seeing it in person; pictures online or in the official materials she had received didn’t do it justice.

  A central structure towered over them, all glossy black glass and metals. Fronting this was an arched fa?ade, constructed from shiny silver metals and inlaid with many windows, including the entrance doors and foyer. And to either side of this enormous structure, two wings similar to the cafeteria’s design with tall colonnaded glass frontages curving slightly forward to create a shallow crescent shape, three storeys high.

  Jogging through the elegant and immaculately manicured gardens at the front of the building, they entered and strolled through to their lecture room in the right wing.

  Asuka paused before the black door into the room. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine!” Meg said with a forced smile. “Come on, we can’t be late.” She grasped her friend’s hand and tugged her inside the room. Sliding along one of the concentric rows of seats—sloping down to the front of the room, naturally—she dropped into the one closest the windows at the side of the room.

  Asuka plopped down next to her and resumed fiddling with her hair, an unconscious habit of hers. “He’s talking some more about self-portraits today, right?”

  Meg had been idly staring out of the window at the nearby trees, but came back to reality with a start. “Eh? Oh… yeah.”

  The ‘he’ in question was their lecturer for this morning, one Hiroko Sanada, known as Sanada-sensei to the students. Meg liked him, he was young and enthusiastic, and could put even relatively dry subjects across with a degree of fervour she found it easy to relate to; her father had similar zeal in his own fields of interest and expertise.

  “I’ve never really been all that into self-portrait,” Asuka added, apropos of nothing much.

  “Feels a bit narcissistic, doesn’t it?” Meg laughed.

  “I suppose it’s no different to selfie culture? Though it takes a bit more skill!”

  “Hah, yeah.” Meg had never got into the craze of snapping pictures of herself at every opportunity, though she also understood she was very much in the minority. Social media had thankfully been dying a slow and painful death over the last decade, but plenty of people were still obsessed with their smartphones.

  Other students in the room fidgeted and talked in hushed tones, a few stragglers turning up just as the bell chimed, and soon Sanada entered the room to begin their lecture. Meg therefore settled back into her seat, clicked a length of lead out of her mechanical pencil, and did her best to focus.