I wasn’t searching for aliens.
All I ever wanted was to watch the stars—those patient, burning witnesses to time. From the terrace of my house, with a modest telescope and two phones, I sometimes sat from 10 p.m. to dawn, tracking constellations, waiting for glimpses of Saturn’s rings or Jupiter’s moons. I especially timed my sessions to 4 a.m., when Zeta Reticuli would rise, faint but present in the southern sky.
But it wasn’t 4 a.m. that night. It was 11.
The sky was still and heavy. Stars hung motionless like pinholes in a velvet sheet. I had just begun observing when I saw something odd—a small white dot moving slowly, not blinking like a plane, not darting like a satellite. It was subtle, a mere shimmer. Then another appeared beside it. Then three more, until they formed a distinct V-shape, like migrating birds but completely silent.
I removed my eye from the telescope. They were still visible to the naked eye—strange, steady, almost watching back. I quickly attached my phone to the telescope, fumbling with the clamps and lens, but when I looked again, they were gone. Vanished from the viewfinder. I scanned, zoomed, recalibrated. Nothing.
A chill passed through me—not from fear, but from absence.
Frustrated, I lay back on the mat I'd placed on the terrace, letting the stars pass above like a slow river. Sleep crept in.
Then I smelled it—sharp, acrid, unmistakable. Ammonia. My head throbbed instantly, as if pressure was building behind my eyes. I jolted awake and stared at the jackfruit tree that stood just outside my home. Floating above it was something impossible.
A triangular object, hovering just above the branches. It had soft, dim blue lights along its edges. No sound. No wind. It wasn’t large—about the length of a bicycle—but it didn’t belong here.
I froze. My mind screamed for logic, for science, but all I could do was watch. My second phone was nearby. I grabbed it and opened the camera app. The screen flickered—then the object vanished before I could hit record.
Gone. Like a thought forgotten mid-sentence.
I turned on my torchlight and swept it across the terrace, behind the walls, up at the sky. Nothing. I searched for another twenty minutes. It never returned.
I ran downstairs and locked the door behind me.
That night, I scoured the internet. I searched for triangle-shaped drones. Military tests. Hoaxes. Black projects. But nothing matched. No device I could find moved so silently or glowed that way. Google had no answers.
Since then, I haven’t returned to my terrace at night.
What I saw, I cannot prove. I have no photos. No footage. No sound recording. But I carry the memory, heavy and bright. Some might call it a hallucination. Others, a dream. But it happened. I know it did.
And I believe now—though I never dared before—that something does visit us. Something from out there. Maybe even from Zeta Reticuli. Maybe the Greys, as people call them. Maybe they pass through space like we cross streets. Maybe they only reveal themselves to those who sit quietly enough to notice.
I wasn’t searching for aliens.
But maybe, just maybe, they were searching for someone like me.
