Alien Who Came for Christmas

The Start

By: Wolfgang Ausserbauer

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Randy Roberts awakened to the soft hum of the Erebus—a sound he had grown so accustomed to that silence would have been more alarming. But something else had pulled him from sleep.
A glow. A faint, cold glow from the workstation across the cabin. He blinked at the chronometer—03:30 AM. Ship’s night cycle. Everyone asleep. Nothing scheduled. Nothing expected.
He sat up slowly, rubbing the fatigue from his eyes. The workstation screen was on, though he distinctly remembered shutting it down before bed. No alerts. No messages. Just a blank field and a single blinking cursor. Blink. Blink. Blink.
That tiny pulse of light felt like a tap on the backside of his eyeball and made his shoulder twitch.
Randy swung his legs over the bed and crossed the room. The cursor continued its steady rhythm, as if waiting for him to acknowledge it.
“Monika?” he muttered. “If this is one of your late-night diagnostics—” No response. “Astraeus, the name for Erebus’s AI?” he tried, invoking the ship’s AI.
However, all he got was silence. Then the cursor moved. One letter.Then another. Then a complete sentence.
I know the ship is sentient. Randy froze with that thought in his mind.
The words were typed with precision—no glitch, no error, no random keystrokes.
He swallowed. “Astraeus… is that you?”
The cursor blinked. Then typed again. Not exactly.
Randy’s pulse quickened. “Then who—?” The ship.
He stared at the words, feeling the temperature in the room drop a degree.
The Erebus had always been advanced—experimental, adaptive, built with alien-derived architecture Fabienne Fabray had acquired through channels Randy never fully understood. But sentient?
Before he could respond, the screen shifted.
A list appeared, one name at a time, as if the ship were reciting a memory.
Randy Roberts — Captain, Fabienne Fabray — Estate Owner, Monika — First Mate, Commander Rilke — Commander, Lieutenant Voss — Second in Command, Halden — Engineer, DocWolf — Fabienne’s House Guest, Wayne — Engine Specialist
Randy frowned. “Why list them?” The cursor paused. Then:
Because they must know. “Know what?” The answer came immediately. The mission.
Randy felt a chill. “What mission? We’re between assignments.”--- “Not anymore,” Monika said.
The workstation flickered, and a new window opened—an image, grainy and distorted, as if transmitted from a great distance or through interference.
A starfield. A nebula. A structure. No—not a structure. A shape. OrganicColossal. Dormant.
Randy leaned closer. “What am I looking at?”
The ship answered. A signal. Older than humanity.older than the Pleiadians. Older than anything we have recorded.
Randy’s breath caught. “Where is it coming from?”
The cursor blinked once. Then typed: Inside the void.
Randy’s heart skipped. “The void? That’s impossible. Nothing comes out of— there.” “It is calling us.”
Randy stepped back. “Why us?” The answer chilled him.
Because we are the only ship that can hear it.
The workstation dimmed, then brightened again.
“Wake the crew. The mission has already begun.” Randy said.
The screen went black.
The hum of the Erebus deepened—ot mechanical, not artificial, but almost like a heartbeat.
Randy stood alone in the dim cabin, the weight of the unknown pressing against him.
Whatever this mission was… it wasn’t one he had chosen.
It was one that had chosen them.