This post was inspired by today's 5-minute writing prompt in the Freewriters Community - 16 January 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2619: space vessel
Enjoy !
It hardly had a mention in the news. Not at first.
Just another asteroid drifting in from outer space, traversing our solar system and then drifting out again. A couple of scientific publications and websites mentioned it, and the mild novelty of something passing by that originated from some other place, far from our star.
Then, as it passed the plane of the ecliptic, it did something that put it in every headline, every news broadcast, every YouTube and TikTok channel.
It changed course.
Asteroids aren't supposed to do that.
It could only mean one thing; the asteroid was, in fact, a space vessel. Cunningly crafted by some unknown race to look like an innocuous object unless it needed to change course.
When it did this, it was beyond Jupiter's orbit. The nations of mankind are focused on satellites spinning around Earth gathering data, providing GPS locations, spying on each other.
None of them has a space craft of any kind just sitting on a launch pad that can hurl itself into the outer Solar System to arrive only a few days later. We just don't have that kind of technology. Or maybe we do, but no-one wants to pay for it.
Whatever the cause, the asteroid that was a space vessel carried on it's merry way. We'd never find out who built it or why, and never know why it chose our star's realm to change course.
But we now knew one thing with certainty. We were not alone.