It started with the usual: headlines written by someone far too excited at NASA.
“Interstellar object incoming!”
“Comet to graze past Jupiter!”
“Absolutely no need to panic, probably!”
For a while, it was all a bit vague. The telescopes couldn’t get a clear shot. Even the space bofs were muttering things like “not sure” and “bit weird, this one.”
So naturally, the internet did its thing. Aliens, time travellers, biblical omens, you name it, someone had a conspiracy theory about it. Meanwhile, the sensible folk of Consett carried on with their shopping.
But then came the press conference:
“Significant disruption expected.
Mountains may be shaved.
Tides may go rogue.
Don’t go on your holidays to Florida.”
And right enough, Easter weekend arrived with an added surprise: A massive, red rock blotted out a chunk of the sky.
It hung there all day, bigger than anything I’d ever seen before. Like Mars had popped round for a nosey.
Everyone was out in the street, in garden chairs, cuppas in hand, wearing those dodgy paper glasses they gave away with the Chronicle. Even old Mick from number 14, who doesn’t usually believe in anything that doesn’t come with a meat raffle.
And then… well, it got dark. Like proper dark. For hours.
Some people stayed in their houses and bricked it. Others saw it as the perfect chance to loot a few crates. Nature didn’t take kindly either; birds stopped singing, the dog refused to go out, and my hydrangeas gave up entirely.
When it finally passed, we saw where it had come from. A giant chunk of a planet with craters, cliffs, dried-up riverbeds. But most shocking? The cities.
Clear as day. Towers, buildings, streets, all laid out like they’d been planned by someone with a ruler and a flair for dramatic design. Alien cities, frozen in ruin, drifting through our sky like a ghost estate from another galaxy.
And then it was gone. Vanished, with its secrets, into the blackness.
Some say they saw lights flicker in the buildings. I say that sounds like nonsense. But then again, I never believed I’d watch a whole planet go over Consett on a bank holiday either.
Submission by John Hunter — a local sci-fi fictional tale written by a local Consett Magazine reader.
