In the Fullness of Time - Part Ten

  This is part of a short story I wrote using my solo RPG, Spooky Action at a Distance. This was generated using an earlier version of the game, so the results of the rolls might not line up to the version available now. However I still think this is a neat example of the kinds of stories that can be told with this game.  

Session 9

Roll Result: 12 - The new information changes humanity

Notes from Envoy Burgess’ Personal Journal

They had to say something I guess. I wouldn’t have used the words “hostage”, or “kidnapped”, or even “prisoners of war” like some of the American channels were spewing. It didn’t take long to identify some of the people floating in Earth’s atmosphere. Each of them had been reported missing since the alien had moved. More appeared as my satellite snapped photos. From what we could tell the people weren’t dead, in fact they seemed to be in perfectly good condition given they should have died from thirst or exposure. But that doesn’t really matter anymore does it? It’s the principle of the thing.

Russia, China, India, and now the United states have all made public declarations basically condemning the alien and threatening it with force unless it turns the people over. Rachel feeds me a little bit of info every once in a while. She disappeared shortly after we saw the reconnaissance photos of people suspended in the air. She’s been secreted off to some UN facility where they are brainstorming a way to kill this thing. 

My job was basically over. They kept me around for a few days to organize data from the satellite, but I could tell how folks saw me like some bad luck charm. It had started when I had disappeared, and only got worse after we saw all those people floating in the sky. It’s like they think I’m a co-conspirator, like I’m siding with the enemy. I had heard of other folks the alien had displaced being treated similarly, getting harassed with questions and demands, like they had a special way of talking with it. 

We all got the alien’s last message at once. A little voice in our heads, loud and strange, like walking into your home and knowing somehow that a stranger had been there. I was teaching some young Russians how to work the solar observer with an interpreter when it happened. We all just stopped and looked at each other. We knew, we knew it had happened to each of us. I got a text from Rachel a few minutes later asking if I heard it too, if I was alright. Soon after the alien disappeared, just vanished into the air like a wisp of cloud. The people were still there, still floating in the skies above Russia, Japan, China, and India. Thousands of them. A grim reminder of the alien’s last words to all of humanity.

“I’m full.”