"Starla" - Part One

 

Part One

            Ever since I was a little girl, I have always looked up at the stars. Funny, because the word ‘Star’ is literally in my name. Some people assume that I’m a good astrologer; but, I’m actually an astronomer. I work at the Georgetown University Astronomical Observatory in Washington, DC. On my weekend off hours, I do Twitch streams for gaming. FYI, I am a Pisces.

            Man, this feels like the stuff I put in my Instagram bio.

            Anywho, my life has taken a bit of a weird turn lately…well, more than ‘a bit.’

            A week after a bizarre incident on Fortnite (which is a-whole-nother story), I made a surprising discovery at the observatory. I spotted what appeared to have been an alien spacecraft floating in Earth’s orbit. While it might have looked tiny on the scope, I imagined it was way more massive up close, possibly six miles in length.

            The first thing I did after this amazing find was notify the government, specifically NASA.

            A lot of good that did – all my calls were ignored. What the heck, dude?!?!

            One of the calls I attempted, while downing cup-after-cup of mocha lattes at my local Starbucks, distracted me so much that I accidentally bumped into a woman, spilling latte all over her beautiful gray cardigan. “Oh, my gosh! I am so sorry, ma’am!” I profusely apologized, more than a few times (if I can recall).

            “No worries,” she kindly told me. She had a British accent. She had quite the tall, athletic black physique displayed in a white top, a pair of blue leggings, some hardcore black boots, and one stained cardigan.

            As I grabbed a plethora of napkins from the nearest dispenser to clean the stain off her cardigan, I was amazed to see that there wasn’t any stain. “Weird,” I muttered, analyzing the material. “Is this made from stainless steel fiber fabric?”

            “It is, actually,” the Englishwoman verified, sounding impressed. “You’re quite an intelligent young lady.”

            “Weeeelllll…” I blushed. “At least you notice.” I then sulked, “Unlike those whack jobs at NASA.”

            “You work for NASA?” The Englishwoman presumed.

            I shook my head. “I’m merely a humbled astronomer who works for Georgetown U., my alma mater.” I opened up to the kind Englishwoman – whose name was ‘Tiffany’ – about my passion for stargazing and making new discoveries. “…some so big that it’ll put me on the cover of Nat Geo!”

            I told Tiffany about my latest find – the red spacecraft currently orbiting our planet (it was probably hanging over Europe by now). “There was faint lettering that I saw on its hull,” I recounted. “I think it was a designation.”

            “What did it say?” Tiffany asked.

            “Red Dwarf,” I said. “It was in plain English, too. I mean, is that even possible? Is it one of ours? Could that be the reason why NASA isn’t returning my calls? Is this some kind of top-secret government project that they don’t want anyone finding out about?”

            I was about to burst from all these questions.

            Thankfully, Tiffany stopped me before I gave myself an aneurysm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow your role, luv! I may be able to get you the answers you’re lookin’ for. I ‘ave a friend who can arrange a meetin’ for ya.”

            Hearing this, I felt kinda skeptical. “Seriously?”

            Tiffany nodded. “It’s legit, I promise. Just throw me your digits, and I’ll give her a call. Someone from U.N.I.T. should get back at ya, first thing in the mornin’.”

            Did she just say ‘U.N.I.T.’?!?!

            As in the ‘Unified Intelligence Taskforce’? Or was it ‘United Nations Intelligence Taskforce’? Either way, you don’t drop an acronym like that and not be for real. So, of course, I happily accepted Tiff’s offer.

            Sure enough, the next morning, I got a call from U.N.I.T. to meet with a ‘General Yvette Dwonch’ at NASA headquarters. To say I was excited would be one heck of a understatement. After the call, I squealed at a pitch so high that it would make Mariah Carey jealous. I was finally going to get some recognition or some answers or both! I could already see my big smiling face on the cover of National Geographic…or Empire! Heck, a girl can dream big, can’t she?

            I showed up at NASA HQ, smelling like thirty different bath bombs. O.K., so maybe I did go a little overboard with my hygienic provisions. But, can you blame me? This was the most important meeting of my life. I didn’t want to go into it smelling like I worked at GameStop. Then again, I dressed like a worked at Hot Topic with my purple hair and punkish attire (black leather jacket, white t-shirt, red plaid miniskirt, and black boots). It could be the reason why I got so many stares walking up in their crib.

            Things took a turn when the high-ranking general I expected to meet wasn’t a woman but a man (not unless ‘Yvette’ was a codename or something). And not just any man – this was the typical ‘seasoned veteran’ general…a dude who had long been retired from active duty, being somewhere in his 60s or 70s. He was a hardened African-American gentleman with a no-nonsense type of face, framed by his salt-and-peppered hair and mustache.

            “Miss…Becker?” He regarded me with a great deal of disdain, looking up and down at me from head to toe.

            I felt like I was talking to my grandfather, who himself was a war veteran. “Y-Yes, sir,” I quivered and gulped. “Are you…General Dwonch?”

            The gruff veteran scoffed. “Hardly. My name is General Louis Holden.”

            “Oh!” I exclaimed. I offered him a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Gener—”

            “I have to be perfectly honest with you, Miss Becker,” he interrupted me. “When I saw you here in the lobby, I assumed you were one of those wokies with your TikToks and Instagrams.”

            Wokies?! What the heck are those?!

            I tried not to be offended. I mean, I do have an Instagram.

            Instead, I kept my focus on the reason I was there. “General Holden, the Red Dwarf…the spacecraft that I discovered on the…”

            “Yes, yes,” he interrupted me again. “I was briefed by Dwonch on it.”

            There was a long pause. “And…?” I pressed him to continue.

            “And?” He parroted me in a cocktail of confusion and aggravation.

            Frankly, if there was anyone who was getting confused and aggravated, it was me. “What’re you gonna do about it?”

            “Nothing,” he blatantly replied.

            “Nothing?!” Now I was the one parroting. “Aren’t your people, at the very least, gonna ascertain if the spacecraft is an extraterrestrial threat? In case you haven’t noticed, Earth seems to be a magnet for alien invasions over the past century.”

            “Miss Becker, my ‘people’ – whoever you think they are – have the situation well-contained. Now, I would kindly encourage you to go back home and keep vlogging about makeup tutorials or whatever young ladies your age are doing over the Internet these days. Leave the world-saving to us professionals. Understood?”

            Those condescending words he left me with had me absolutely fuming.

            When I did get back home, I took my frustrations out on a session of Mortal Kombat, devastating one online opponent after another with unrelenting combos and a variety of fatalities to finish them off with. After a while, I noticed my Twitch chat calling out my aggressive gameplay and how silent I had been during the live stream.

            “I’m sorry, ya’ll,” I told them after my eighth match. Pausing the game, I queried my viewers and fans, “Lemme ask you all something. Ya’ll know those alien events you’ve seen on the news over the last couple of decades? The ones that’ve happened in the UK specifically?”

            The chat blew up with various responses.

            Someone had seen a flying pirate ship and tiny green goblins causing mischief and kidnapping babies.

            Someone else claimed that people had gotten dusted like Thanos.

            And these two particular events happened within the last two years.

            I was relieved to know that I was not alone on these occurrences. “Thanks, ya’ll,” I told them. “I was beginning to think that I was going crazy. I mean, get this – last night, I found…” I was just about to tell them about the Red Dwarf, when I noticed that someone in the chat had mentioned it already.

            I paused the stream long enough to send a private message to the viewer.

            They responded, “It’s me, Star. It’s Tiff. Can you come to the Starbucks where we met the other day? The discovery is much bigger than you realized.”

            I froze at my computer for the longest time.

            Just who was Tiffany? And why does she have such an interest in me…and this Red Dwarf?