Probably really late but submitting it anyways.

NEIGHBORS

I remember when they announced they had discovered microorganisms under the ice on Europa. I remember when they found traces of microfossils in a cave on Mars. To everyone’s amazement, life was common. It seemed the recipe was water, organic molecules and time. I was just a child when we found simple life on three worlds in the solar system. I wanted to be the one to discover sentient life.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, it was scientists and engineers that built us up, but this time it was the germs on Europa that taught us how to stay in stasis and how to regenerate limbs. NASA became immensely profitable, they even paid my way through college. I was the bright spark during most classes and the maverick during meetings. I rose above my peers and directed a program in direct competition with the CNSA, to develop the massless drive. Military funding and increasing pressure from Congress to beat the Chinese gave us more money and motivation than we could ever need, but it was a discovery during development that convinced us that this drive would push us into a new eon.

The frequency burst that was emitted during testing was detected strongest on Earth of course, but we also detected background noise filled with the signature EM signature of a superstring-wide wave hurtling through the universe at magnitudes faster than light.

Someone with our sentience or greater was out there.

ILLUMINATION

It was called the Illumination, the largest spacecraft ever made. It was a kilometer long ceramic structure with two ends, habitation and the drive. When I was selected as a crewmember two out of four, my heart raced as I thought about leaving Earth, but I knew this was not just once a once in a lifetime possibility, but a chance to change the Universe.

I never had a family, and the few friends I had understood what this mission meant to me. Twenty one year total even with the massless drive ITERON spinning at its fastest and pulsing at its highest frequency. We all joked that the Illumination looked like a sperm cell speeding through the universe at high speed to try to find life, but seeing the ship from only ten kilometers away in space make it look like a strand of DNA. It’s wise not to tear up in your suit since the little spheres fluid float around, but it you do cry, you must suck up the tears before they interfere.

We headed towards the most significant alien source of the EM trace signals, near the center of the Milky Way. I don’t remember drifting off to sleep but I remember the preparations, the goodbyes. I threw up in disgust, the taste in my mouth was horrible, but I was greeted by the pilot, Hargreave, with a glass of blue fluid that would set me straight, tasted minty.

ABORTION

A day’s trip away from us was the source of the signal, we had already decelerated enough to make out the object in front of us. It was a massive ship, floating debris produced a dangerous field of particles orbiting the half-intact vessel. On the side of the ship was a large name, Babel, in plain English. It frightened us. We were alone with this dark and cold graveyard in space. There was nothing around it, no stars, no moons, just a lonely wreckage.

We decided to perform a spacewalk to the craft, seeing human bodied floating among the machinery. Two people were to leave for the trip, and two were going to stay. Of course I stayed. There was no way I was going to leave, and the mission called for the two others to perform spacewalks if need be. When they were about a kilometer to the wreckage field they simply disappeared.

We thought they were dead. But they came back, about an hour later, tired, sore and without their suits, fully naked.

They didn’t talk to us at first, and we made our preparations to go back home as we were cutting our mission short. The two men only stared blankly until one muttered under his breath. I couldn’t hear it. I asked him to speak up. He just muttered louder and louder until his shouts could be heard throughout the entire ship.

“We build our tower too high and they knock it down.”