A Conspiracy of Ravens
an excerpt

I had barely written three sentences when, “Download complete,” Schala informed me. “Would you like to view it now?”

“Sure,” I said. The screen went black for a second, then was replaced by a newscaster sitting behind a desk.

“As a historic gesture of friendship and trust between human and Niilar, the president and three others were invited to tour the Niilar spaceship currently orbiting Earth. One of our top GlobeNews reporters was part of that team, and captured the whole of the president’s visit with the aliens on camera.

I watched avidly, my eyes glued to the screen as the president and the others border the Niilar shuttle. I was amazed that instead of being filled with computer panels and other equipment, the Niilar shuttle was bare, with only couches and harnesses to hold people in place.

The Niilar ship was equally sparse. Their technology must be so far above our own, I thought in awe as I watched the video. The Niilar medic apparently only needed a device the size of a Notepad to give the humans a full scan, and the actual medical bay was even more amazing. This was another room I expected would house a lot of equipment, but all there was were some tables and slanted places on the walls which apparently served the Niilar as beds.

The next snippet of film showed the engines. At least, that’s what the Niilar acting as translator said they were. But they were nothing like any kind of engines seen on Earth. I didn’t know what I expected, but this cavern of glowing crystal wasn’t it. It was a chamber longer than it was wide, criss-crossed in many places by great stalactites, and the Niilar explained that the living quarters of the ship rotated around this core. It was mind-boggling that the ship was apparently powered by a very large cave.

There was a montage of the Niilar living space, the dining area (I guess it’d be called a galley because it was on a ship) and recreation facilities, a lounge area and a gymnasium. There was one room I noted as being particularly interesting, a room designed specifically to be relaxing, dim with soothing light patterns playing across the walls.

The last room, however, was probably the most amazing of all, yet sadly there wasn’t much shown of it. This was the ship’s bridge and control centre, so the Niilar said, but I had a hard time believing it. There was only one Niilar standing in the centre of the room, and once again no equipment or computers were in evidence. Being inside this room looked like nothing so much as how I imagined standing inside a diamond would be like. It was impossible to say how big the room was because of the refractive quality of the walls.

The newscast ended then with shots of the president and company disembarking from the Niilar shuttle. What an amazing trip that must have been, I thought, as the screen faded to black once again.