Dear Friend,
I saw you when you passed. You didn’t see me, but I saw you floating inside your craft, anti-gravity, like a floating wisp of dandelion seed, but more deliberate than that.
I haven’t seen a passer-by for a few thousand years. Not since that flying saucer shot by too fast for me to recollect quite what it looked like. I think it was round, and I’m no longer sure of the color. But it zoomed off at an otherworldly speed and disappeared before I could even think to get my camera. I’ve recorded it here in my logbook as “a flying saucer? Not sure. Might have been red. Might have been purple.”
But that was the last time I saw anything. I might have missed a comet or two, of course. That’s a possibility. Sometimes, in the long hours of a space-day, I’ll convince myself that I’ve seen something. Sometimes, that southwestern star looks a little bigger, a little brighter. But it’s hard to tell. I go back and look at old film to see if things have changed. But the film itself has collected a few layers of dust. The photos on the walls of my station are beginning to crack around the edges.
Your craft looked brand-new. I remember it was a strange shape, an oblong oval made out of metal painted a bright color, but no color I’ve ever seen before. And through a square-shaped window, I saw you. You were floating upwards, kicking your legs to gain leverage so that you could reach the top shelf. You must have turned on the radio, because then you started dancing while you floated.
It looked fun. I wish I could have heard the music.
And despite the fact that you were in the middle of nowhere, and that the only things surrounding you were a few stars and my desolate little station hanging suspended in space, you didn’t seem to mind. You didn’t even notice how alone you were. You didn’t notice me. I waved — stupid, I know — and I shot a flare in your direction, but it fizzled out halfway. The burnt-out remains of the flare blended into the black space around it until it was swallowed up by the vacuum of nothingness.
I haven’t lost all hope. There might be a rift in space-time, you never know. And then I’ll be able to record something in this logbook of mine. And then maybe I’ll see you again, because the rift will have transported us back to the moment when I saw you.
Regards,
A Friend