Eclipsed

Like everything else in my life, it was my father’s fault that I saw them. And, as usual, I was doing the opposite of what he told me.

You have to know my father to understand. He’s one of the world’s top astronomers studying eclipses of the Sun. Whenever a total eclipse occurs, he’s there, observing, explaining, being on TV -- talking easily, looking good, being the goddamned expert.

Me, I’m probably his biggest disappointment. I’m not an expert on anything, except maybe the feeling that I can’t measure up. I get tongue-tied talking in any group. You see, Mom died when I was nine; we were both devastated, but we weren’t good at talking about it. My father never remarried; he’s mostly married to his work, and to the books he keeps writing.

I shouldn’t complain, because those books make a lot of money and let us live in a nice house with nice things. He’s got a bookcase with every edition of his books, in all the languages they’ve been translated into. There they are every day, a constant reminder of all that I haven’t amounted to.

I’ve tried my hand at lots of things. College, when I was old enough, but after two years of struggling, we called it quits and accepted that I wasn’t college material. My father got me various jobs at his university, but I didn’t last very long in any of them. I did therapy for a while, and we established that I’m not dumb; what I lack is confidence and persistence. So, I didn’t stick with therapy long, either. I started a couple of relationships with guys, but none of them lasted more than a month.

These days, I volunteer, taking care of the animals at the local shelter. I can have a better relationship with the puppies than I can with most people.

Anyway, it was at the most recent eclipse, standing in an open field with a light dusting of snow, that I made my discovery. He takes me on eclipse trips in nice settings, thinking he’s doing me a favor. I don’t say anything, because I like some of those trips, and there’s not much else in my life.

During the minutes when the eclipse was total and the Moon covered the Sun, everyone was finally able to look at the Sun without protective equipment, just like my father had told them. So, just to be different, I decided to look in the opposite direction. What I saw seemed like some kind of equipment malfunction, a shimmering scene, as if a curtain had parted briefly in some other realm.

My father’s recorded voice was calling out the time – a trick he learned long ago, so his will be the voice everyone records, and he can do other things. What I saw became visible 15 seconds after the total eclipse began, and flashed out of sight about 45 seconds later.

Still, that was enough to show me a window, in a big room, in some ship, or in another dimension, for all I know. There, crammed together, were alien creatures of many shapes and sizes. Some had blue or purple skin that I could see clearly, while others wore pressure suits. Some resembled birds and reptiles, while others had really weird shapes – at least their suits did. And they were all looking intently in the direction of our eclipsed Sun.

Later, I wondered -- did galactic tourists usually come to see our eclipses – but without us being aware of it. Were the Sun and the Moon putting on a show, not just for Earth eclipse addicts, but for visitors from elsewhere – another star system, another time, another universe. Hey, with an astronomer for a father, I’ve seen plenty of science-fiction movies and shows; my imagination didn’t lack for possibilities.

My father said some astronomer did a paper years ago where he calculated that an eclipse where a moon exactly covers the Sun doesn’t happen on any other planet in our solar system. Moons either look bigger or smaller than the Sun, but none look exactly the same size. So maybe the exact cover-up is rare in other star-systems too.

Which would explain why alien tourists might want to take a look – to see the Sun’s hazy atmosphere and the fiery eruptions on its surface become visible. Since I was young, I’ve heard my father say that there was nothing else like that sight. Maybe a bunch of advanced aliens agreed with him.

But they didn’t want to let us see them. Maybe they’re forbidden to show themselves, like the Prime Directive on Star Trek. So, I guess they have some cloaking technology – they’re with us, but not visible. Except that this one time, in one small section, the cloaking failed and showed me – ME, of all people -- what was happening. And only because I was looking in the opposite direction from the eclipse, just for spite.

You might think that I can’t prove any of this, but I grabbed my phone and took pictures.

If I’m right, it means that my father could be more famous than even he believes. He could be the eclipse expert on a hundred, a thousand worlds! All of them inhabited by different kinds of aliens, sending tourists to our eclipses. Tourists who’ve traveled through space, or time, or – what are they called? – wormholes, to view the one place in the Galaxy where a moon exactly blots out a star.

But for the first time in a long time, I’ve reached an independent decision. If I told my father and gave him the photo, it could be the scientific discovery of the century – maybe of all time. He’d get all the credit, of course.

But this way, it’s my secret, my discovery, just for me! No, I won’t hand over those pictures -- I’ll be damned if I give him the satisfaction!