2023
A single, piercing scream shattered the fragile silence holding the corridor captive. Instantly, the dam broke. The hallway erupted into a cacophony of overlapping, panicked voices.
“What delivery?”
“Who the fuck said that?”
“Was that... was that inside your head too?”
“Call someone! Just call the police!”
“My phone is dead. It’s completely bricked.”
“Mine isn't. Mine's just... white.”
I yanked my phone from my pocket. The screen was a blazing, uniform sheet of stark white. No notification bar, no battery icon, no lock screen no nothing. Just a cold, unnatural luminescence bright enough to make me squint.
Then:
EARTH ADMITTED
I stared at the words, paralyzed. They lingered there for several agonizing seconds—long enough for me to desperately hope that I was hallucinating, or misinterpreting a bizarre cyber attack But then, a second line materialized underneath.
WELCOME TO THE WORLDS WIDE WEB
Rory leaned in, his face completely drained of color as he stared at my glowing screen. “That’s on yours too?” he whispered, his voice sounding incredibly small. Without a word, I turned my own screen toward him.
Across the corridor, a girl began to laugh. It was a terrifying sound—too high, too thin, verging on total hysteria. Nobody joined her. The floor gave one final, low lurch beneath our feet, like a shifting tectonic plate settling into a new, permanent groove and the kinetic movement stopped. For a moment the absolute stillness returned.
The college building was still structurally sound. Some lights still worked overhead and the vending machine vibrated against the wal. The heavy Irish rain continued its rhythmic tapping against the windows at the end of the hall. Then Rory read the text aloud, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. “Administrative system? What does that even mean?”
INITIALIZING LOCAL INTERFACE PLEASE REMAIN CALM ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM ACCESS WILL BEGIN SHORTLY
In the center of the chaotic hallway, Ms. Byrne stood frozen and she looked ten years older than she had ten minutes ago, the authority completely drained from her posture. From somewhere far beyond the campus walls, a distant siren began to wail. I turned back to Rory. “What the hell does admitted mean? Admitted where?”
Rory didn’t answer immediately. He kept his eyes locked on his screen, his jaw muscles clenching so hard a vein throbbed at his temple. “Arden,” he said finally, his voice dangerously quiet. “I think we need to get the hell out of this building.” He paused, swallowing hard. “My dad’s out with the tractor today.”
“What?”
“He said he had to finish turning the upper field before the weather turned bad. If that... whatever that thing that happened, happened while he was driving down the slope...” Rory’s voice cracked. “I need to call him. Right now.” He aggressively stabbed at the screen but nothing changed. “Come on. Come on, you piece of shit, work.” The white screen stared back at him, indifferent.
Around us, dozens of students were repeating the same desperate ritual. Some pressed dead glass tightly to their ears as if physical proximity could force a dial tone. Others screamed furiously into blank displays. A guy leaning against the vending machine kept repeating, “Mum, answer, answer, please answer,” his voice cracking with a terrifying regression to childhood, even though the call had clearly never connected.
All of a sudden, the psychological agony slammed back into us. It hit faster and harder this time. Before anyone could brace themselves, half the corridor folded in two. I collapsed forward, squeezing my eyes shut and clenching my teeth so hard my jaw joints ached. The alien data stream flooded our minds once more, bypassing our ears entirely.
FIRST CONTACT SCHEDULED LOCAL TIME REMAINING: 7 EARTH DAYS REPRESENTATIVES OF XADGOR ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTORATE WILL ARRIVE TO WELCOME EARTH INTO THE WORLDS WIDE WEB PREPARE DESIGNATED LEADERS TO RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS, STATUS INFORMATION, ANDINITIAL TERMS OF ADMITTANCE
The crushing pressure receded as abruptly as it had arrived. I stayed huddled against the damp wall, my chest heaving as I gasped for air like it was my first time breathing. From the direction of the bathrooms, the wet, retching sounds of someone throwing up echoed down the hall. Rory looked over at me, his eyes wide and unblinking. “Did that just say seven days?”
I managed a weak nod.
“And did it say... Xadgor?”
“I think so.”
“How do you even spell that? X-A-D-G-O-R?”
“Why the hell does the spelling matter right now, Rory?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped, his voice spiraling. “I’m fucking panicking, Arden!”
The sheer absurdity of the statement almost made a hysterical laugh escape my throat. A final, crisp line of code appeared across every smartphone screen in the room.
COUNTDOWN TO FIRST CONTACT:
6 DAYS
23 HOURS
59 MINUTES
58 SECONDS
Cinema tricks you into believing that humanity reacts to the impossible with immediate, cinematic drama. In reality, most people just freeze. They stare blankly at the thing that just shattered their day, their year, and their entire understanding of the cosmos. They stand in the wreckage of their reality, waiting for it to explain itself, like deer caught in the headlights.
The countdown offered no explanations. It just kept ticking. Ms. Byrne was the first to break the paralysis. “Everyone,” she announced, attempting to project over the ambient dread. No one listened. The students remained locked in their digital trances. She took a sharp breath and tried again, much louder. “Everyone! Listen to me!”
That worked. Dozens of frightened faces snapped up, suddenly starved for authority, deeply grateful for anyone willing to issue orders. “We are evacuating the building,” she instructed, her voice tight but structured. “Move calmly. Grab your bags if they are within arm's reach, but do not re-enter any classrooms. Stay away from the windows.”
A student near the front raised a trembling hand. “Should we call the guards? Emergency services?”
“If you can get a signal through, yes,” Ms. Byrne replied. “But I imagine they are... slightly occupied.” Her voice fractured slightly on the final syllable. As if on cue, the alien interface vanished from our screens. My phone flashed straight back to my lock screen, looking so mundane it made my head spin. There was even a stupid notification from a food delivery app offering me ten percent off a lunch combo. That would have been great 2 hours ago.
The digital world arrived like a tidal wave and the internet reconnected with a furious, overlapping flood of data. Notifications stacked on top of one another in an endless scroll. Hyperactive group chats. Urgent news alerts. Standard college administration emails. Missed calls from family. Social media videos were already duplicating and spreading faster than human psychology could comprehend.
Rory’s phone suddenly vibrated with an incoming call. He swiped the screen so violently he nearly sent the device clattering across the linoleum.
“Dad?”
The color instantly drained from his cheeks.
“Dad, are you okay? Where are you right now?”
I couldn't make out the tinny voice on the other end of the line, but Rory closed his eyes, his shoulders dropping as he leaned his head heavily back against the wall.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m still at the college. No, I don’t know what it is. Everyone got it here. Literally everyone. Did the tractor--? Right. Okay. Listen to me, don’t drive. Just don’t drive anywhere, alright?”
He paused, listening intently to the frantic voice in his ear.
“No, I’m coming home. Dad, I’m coming home right now.”
He cut the call and let out a long, shuddering exhale.
“He’s alive,” Rory said.
“Good.”
“He thought the tractor was taking off into the sky.”
“Did it?”
“No. He panicked and rammed it into a cattle gate.”
“That’s less good.”
“It’s a hell of a lot better than outer space.”
I gave a tight nod. There was absolutely no arguing with that logic.
We fell into step with the rest of the migrating crowd, pushing toward the exit. The campus had fundamentally transformed in the way familiar places do after something happens. It was the same concrete floors. The same student union posters. The same lingering smell of acrylic paint and burnt espresso wafting from the art studios. Yet, everyone walked differently now. Tiptoeing. Necks stiff. People kept glancing anxiously at their phones, up at the ceiling tiles, out toward the sky, and sideways at each other.
The very architecture of the building had become object of suspicion.
Outside, the heavy rain had dissolved into a thick, suffocating grey mist. Students clustered across the concrete plaza in erratic groups, their voices pitched entirely too loud. Some were weeping openly. Others were frantically livestreaming the grey sky. A guy with a skateboard balanced precariously on a low concrete retaining wall, screaming to anyone who would listen that this was a coordinated government psyop—Project Blue Beam—until a passing student told him to shut his mouth.
The wail of emergency sirens was rising from every direction now, echoing through the streets.
A university staff member in a neon high-vis vest stood near the main gates, mindlessly repeating, “Please clear the entrance, keep moving,” over and over with the dead-eyed, robotic determination of a man whose job description had just become completely obsolete.
Rory checked his screen again, his thumb flying over the glass.
“My dad says every single station is broadcasting it.He said the Prime Minister is supposed to give an emergency address to the nation.”
“Already?”
“Apparently every government on the planet is preparing statements.”
The sheer scope of it hit me like a physical blow, tightening the knot in my stomach. I opened a mainstream news application. The front page was a battlefield of text, headlines actively rewriting themselves in real-time as journalists scrambled to keep pace with a breaking reality.
GLOBAL COMMUNICATION EVENT AFFECTS BILLIONS
UNKNOWN MESSAGE APPEARS ON DEVICES WORLDWIDE
GOVERNMENTS URGE CALM AFTER “EARTH ADMITTED” TRANSMISSION
COUNTDOWN TO FIRST CONTACT APPEARS ON PHONES
POWER OUTAGES CONTINUE ACROSS EUROPE
RELIGIOUS LEADERS CALL FOR PRAYER
MARKETS HALTED
AIRPORTS SUSPEND FLIGHTS
Chapter discussion