“We have been monitoring your planet for quite some time,” the alien gestured. Its complex array of finger digits flowed from one shape to the next, captured by the device on the table and translated into written text and audio. The voice was soft and feminine, though the alien was anything but. “For a long time we have mapped your progress. And then, suddenly, everything stopped.”

The collection of two hundred and eighty seven delegates conferred in their booths, digitally suggesting and nominating a speaker, alongside a selection of questions. Dr Minori was agreed by a wide margin. “Why were you monitoring us?” he asked, looking at his pad instead of the alien.

“You are a loud planet. Lots of signal, noise. We know it to be art, communication, war, but others may not. They may see it as a trail. We foster life and culture. Others do not. We have tried to protect you.”

“Thank you for that,” he said. Though he could not understand the movements, the translator managed to put across the appropriate level of gratitude. “So why have you chosen now to reach out to us?”

A pause. Over seven hundred official translators watched the live feed, scrawling notes and interpretations down. The alien unfolded its arms to respond, the thin banded limbs curling like a spider, though so much more. “When everything ceased we assumed that you had been consumed by a natural or societal event – a common occurrence amongst child civilisations. However, recently, we detected activity from this planet once more…” Even without the translator, the interpreters and delegates could pick up the hesitation in the alien’s gestures.

Minori smiled. “And it came all at once?”

“Yes.”

“And then normal transmission?”

Another hesitation. “A larger load, but yes.”

More digital suggestions. Minori swiped them away and rested his chin on his clasped hands. “If I may ask a further question – how has your civilisation been since that initial transmission?”

Every scientist, theorist, armchair expert and curious mind leaned forward in that moment, inching towards the edge of their seats for this answer, collectively holding their breath.

The alien considered its gestures, the rows of eyes blinking in unison. Then, slowly, “The universe seems to have paused. Our planetary systems are no longer moving around their stars. Our bodies no longer age. It has been twenty cycles since we last had to regenerate.”

The written translation included parenthesis that read; one cycle is the equivalent of four Earth years. Regeneration is the equivalent of sleep.

Minori took off his glasses. “My new friend, I haven’t slept in four hundred years.”

—

It took time to explain to the Visitors exactly what had happened – though time was increasingly hard to gauge. To give context to the event, the Visitors had to attend approximated months of culture lessons and history. They already had a database of modern history from the signals they had collected when depolluting the vacuum of space – though, as their first delegation had admitted, it was mostly noise. The human strategic council had scholars, theologians and magi explain deep rooted traditions of human culture, and how that interwove with mythology and the prospect of magic.

The Visitor delegation followed these explanations in silence.

On December tenth, twenty-twenty-one, the Morris family left their home in Pitlochry, Scotland, to have an overnight stay at a family friend’s estate. Young Owen Morris, in a state of panicked excitement, left behind the advent calendar that his uncle had gifted him. That night, whilst the people around them carried on with their Christmas traditions, Owen was left out. His advent calendar door remained unopened, the chocolate inside unconsumed.

And, for the first time, the world missed a day.

Most people didn’t realise it. The strange repetition of going through another Friday was shrugged off as a collective déjà vu. No one had really noticed that the sun hadn’t set, that their day hadn’t truly ended or even begun. Though panic spread into the streets when dusk arrived with a crash, and the stars streaked through the sky as lines instead of specks, and the sun rose once more swinging above their heads like a careening football, and down to the opposite horizon again. The sky settled, the clouds and stars returning to their placid amble across the sky, all while the world screamed in terror.

Owen had arrived home and, as a special treat, he was allowed to open two calendar doors at once.

***

Minori and the original alien delegate, who had dubbed themselves First, arrived at a café together. Despite the cold they sat outside under the perpetual afternoon sun. They had just finished another lesson on superstitions and fantasy, and First felt they needed sustenance. -What happened to the uncle who gifted the boy the magic?- First signed.

“He disappeared,” Minori said. As he spoke his hands moved in complex gestures, a poor imitation of the alien’s but enough to help. First and other Visitors had begun chirruping tones to accentuate their communication with humans. “We have some of our best magicians attempting to recreate the enchantment, however they say it needs time to percolate and manifest. As you know, time is something we have an abundance of, yet none at all.”

A woman walked by, hand resting idly on her swollen, pregnant belly, feet squeezed into shining party shoes. She entered the bar next door to the café, a chorus of cheers and chirrups welcoming her. Both First and Minori watched her.

“More protests are being organised” First signed, knowing what Minori was thinking. “More of my kind have arrived to add to their numbers.” They took a delicate nibble of their protein cake. “More species will arrive when they discover this is the heart of it all.”

“Maybe, but they’ll still be in the minority. Most people thrive on the idea of immortality, on the productivity and experience it can offer.”

“It may turn violent.”

Minori finished his tea. “As we have discovered, violence and war lose almost all of their appeal when you can’t really hurt or kill the other person.”

First blinked. “There are worse fates than death.”

Minori looked back to the bar that the pregnant woman had entered. He thought of the hospitals filled with the infirm that would never perish, and who would never heal, of the millions of children who were now a thousand years old. He thought of the people who were sleeping when the advent calendar was taken, locked deep inside an impenetrable vault so another door could not be opened.  He thought of himself, injecting a vial of morphine into his arm every approximate day to dull the sharp pain of his failing kidneys. “Some sacrifices need to be made for immortality, old friend.”

“Immortality” First repeated. Minori couldn’t help but notice that the signs were very similar to the signs for “unnatural” and “desecrate”.

Without signing anything further, First unfolded their arms and placed a pad on the table between them. “It is speeding up” they singed, accompanied by a low chirrup.

The pad showed a mobius strip, looping round and over itself, dotted with a glittering of galaxies. Somewhere in there was Earth, and from that point two lines made their way outward on opposite directions of the mobius strip. The shock wave. The same shock wave that had enveloped Firsts own planet. The same shock wave that was gradually consuming the known universe, setting it in amber.

It had progressed since the last time Minori saw it. It was barely a hairs breadth of a difference, but on a cosmic scale… Minori didn’t speak.

“We can only theorise. What happens when two waves meet each other? They crash together, cancelling out each others momentum. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this bubble pops. Maybe the magic runs out.” They imitate a human shrug. “Even when the waves meet whatever ripple will have to make its way back here. Maybe the lack of time will protect us. Either way, we will see the end coming long before it does.”

Minori noticed that the end was also similar to immortality. He returned to the pad, looking at the speed estimations, recognising some script and figures, planning to look then up later. “How much time do you think we have?”

First signed a smile before taking another nibble of their cake. “All the time in the universe. And yet, none of it.”