The only words she has for this world are the ones harvested from the real Anastasia Miller. The only vocabulary she can use is the one she’s stolen. Learning the rest of the patterns of this planet will take longer, assuming she’s allowed the time. So many invasions fail right here, with defenseless seedlings meeting the species they have come to study, being recognized, being destroyed.

Caroline barks laughter through her tears as she drops to her knees and takes the child who is not her daughter into her arms.

“You be an alien if you want to, baby,” she says. “As long as you come home.”

The police will comb the woods again, this time looking for a kidnapper, someone who would steal a little girl only to return her, disoriented but unharmed, to her home.

Anastasia’s kidnapper does not exist, and will never be found.

Neither will Anastasia.

7.

This was a story. It can’t hurt you anymore.

But you needed to understand before I could tell you what happened after.

Root

Then came the night of the first falling star.

—H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

Humanity is sort of a mess, I guess, but I think we’re doing okay. We’re pretty cool. I like us.

—Stasia Miller

When discussing the paucity of life in our local universe, the question of hostile invasion always seems to arise immediately after noting how quiet it is among the stars. Are we isolated because something—some great, predatory force—is using the space around us as a hunting ground, picking off our neighbors before they have the chance to find us? If so, do we have a responsibility to reach the stars as quickly as possible, in order to join this ancient, life-threatening fight? Or should we, as a species, agree to keep our heads down and our skies closed, hoping to avoid the notice of something great enough to silence civilizations?

The probability of alien life is high enough that we must question its apparent absence. The probability of any specific trait appearing in that alien life is, in contrast, vanishingly small. When we finally do meet our neighbors, it is no more likely that they will come as a conquering horde than it is that they will come in peace and plenty, intending to uplift humanity to join them among the stars.

In short, when it comes to what we can expect to find out there, it makes as much sense to flip a coin as it does to make guesses. We can’t change the nature of our neighbors either way.

—from The Fermi Paradox and the Milky Way, by Anthony Vornholt, originally published 2030.