A Short Story
The Earth hung beneath them, a half-lit marble draped in cloud. The date on the station’s log was December 31st, 1999. In less than an hour, the new millennium would arrive, though up here, orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour, calendars and centuries felt oddly arbitrary.
Commander David Keller was the typically efficient and veteran astronaut, recruited into NASA after serving as a test pilot in the USAF.Square jawed, resolute and very competent with nerves of steel, held command of Hermes Station.
The crew of three’s flight engineer and its systems specialist was Dr. Maria Sanchez, born in Tijuana but raised in Dallas excelled in mathematics and computer science.
Ethan Reed, the youngest member of Hermes stations crew, had been chosen for his ability in linguistics and served as Hermes communications officer, his one flaw being an overactive imagination.
They were scheduled for a six-month stay, orbiting above a world on edge.
The world below feared the Y2K bug. Software that could not interpret the year 2000 might bring down planes, shut down power grids, collapse banks. Up here, on Hermes, their lives depended on lines of code, on automated corrections that fired thrusters, balanced oxygen, and generated power. If Y2K struck, there was no one to call.
⸻
22:47 GMT
Maria floated near the main console, tightening her grip on the straps that kept her from drifting. “We’ve run the diagnostics three times. The software patch from Houston should hold. No system is reporting anomalies.”
“Should hold.” Ethan’s voice was light, but his eyes gave away the unease. “You know how many people thought they’d patched their systems back on Earth? Banks spent billions, governments too. And yet—what if we missed something? One decimal, one forgotten line.”
Keller looked up from his log. “Then we handle it. That’s why they sent us, not machines. Stop worrying.”
But Ethan didn’t stop. His gaze drifted toward the small porthole, where Earth glowed, half in sunlight, half in shadow. “It just feels… ominous. Like we’re sitting at the end of time.”
Maria smirked. “You’re too young to be so fatalistic.”
23:02 GMT
The first odd sound came then—a faint tap-tap-tap against the hull. Not the metallic groan of thermal stress, not the gentle rattle of micrometeoroids. This was different. Rhythmic. Intentional.
Ethan’s head snapped toward the sound. “You heard that, right?”
Maria’s brow furrowed. “Yes. Maybe debris?”
Keller pushed off toward the observation dome, gripping the handles, staring into the abyss beyond the glass. The stars shimmered, motionless, eternal. Nothing moved out there—nothing visible.
“Could be expansion in the paneling,” Keller muttered, though his tone lacked conviction.
The tap-tap-tap came again, closer, like fingers drumming on metal.
⸻
23:10 GMT
The lights flickered. A brief surge, then steady again. Alarms did not sound, but Ethan’s pulse quickened.
“See? That’s it—the Y2K bug. It’s starting.”
Maria was already scanning diagnostics. “No. Power levels steady. The flicker wasn’t internal.”
“Then what was it?” Ethan asked.
Keller didn’t answer. He was still staring through the dome. Something—a shadow—seemed to move against the curve of the Earth’s light. A distortion. A smudge of darkness where no darkness should be. He blinked. It was gone.
23:21 GMT
The sound returned, louder now. Scraping, like claws dragging across the station’s skin.
Maria’s voice was tight. “There’s nothing on the radar. No debris, no docking craft. Nothing.”
“Then what’s making that sound?” Ethan’s voice cracked despite his attempt at bravado.
Keller snapped: “Both of you, focus. We check the modules one by one. No panic.”
But there was panic, simmering under the surface. Ethan couldn’t shake the feeling that something—someone—was outside.
⸻
23:30 GMT
They gathered in the central hub. Earth gleamed beneath them, cities like constellations of fire. Somewhere down there, crowds were gathering in Times Square, in London, in Tokyo, waiting to count down the seconds to a new age.
Inside Hermes, the seconds stretched long.
Maria broke the silence. “If something is out there, why can’t we see it?”
“Maybe it doesn’t want to be seen,” Ethan whispered.
Keller shot him a glare. “Enough.”
The hull shuddered suddenly—three sharp impacts, like fists hammering at a door. The console lights dimmed, then flared bright again. Systems flashed red for a fraction of a second. Life support. Navigation. Power.
Maria’s hands flew over the keys. “Nothing’s offline. But something just touched our systems.”
23:42 GMT
Through the dome, Ethan saw it.
At first, he thought it was a trick of light: a ripple against the stars, a shimmer like heat haze. But then it moved, coalescing into a shape—elongated, spindly, like smoke forming limbs. It pressed itself against the glass for a heartbeat, featureless yet intentional, before dissolving back into the void.
He gasped, stumbling backward. “It’s out there. Right outside.”
Maria turned, saw only empty space. “Ethan—”
“I’m not imagining it! It touched the dome!”
Keller’s jaw was rigid. “If it’s real, we keep our heads. If it’s not, we still keep our heads.”
But Ethan knew. The thing was real. And it wanted in.
⸻
23:50 GMT
The station groaned as though under pressure. Panels rattled. A high-pitched whine echoed through the corridors.
Maria’s eyes were locked on her console. “Something is probing the systems. It’s… rewriting code.”
“Rewriting?” Keller demanded.
“Yes. Like it’s learning. It knows how to move through the data. It’s using the Y2K reset as an entry point.”
Ethan’s voice was hoarse. “It’s not a bug. It’s a door. And we opened it.”
Outside, the tapping returned, frenzied, urgent, as if the entity was pounding with all its strength.
23:57 GMT
Keller gathered them in the central hub, the countdown looming. “Listen to me. If this thing wants in, it’s going to try when the clocks hit midnight. That’s the system reset. That’s when we’re vulnerable.”
Maria’s hands shook as she secured the emergency overrides. “We can lock down. Isolate the core.”
Ethan’s heart pounded. Midnight was seconds away. He thought of Earth, of billions celebrating, oblivious to the shadow that had come not from the future, but from the void.
⸻
23:59:45 GMT
Fifteen seconds.
The station vibrated with a deep, resonant hum. The entity’s form began to press against the hull, black smoke seeping through impossible cracks, reaching tendrils of nothingness.
Maria screamed, “It’s breaching!”
Keller shouted, “Hold it together!”
⸻
00:00:00 GMT — January 1, 2000
The clocks rolled over.
Every light on Hermes flared blinding white, then cut to black. For one breathless second, they floated in darkness, weightless in a void deeper than space itself.
Then the lights returned. Systems hummed back to life. The consoles blinked green.
But Ethan knew instantly—something had changed.
Keller and Maria turned slowly toward him. Their eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, faces expressionless.
“Welcome,” they said in unison, though their lips moved only faintly. Their voices echoed with another tone, layered, alien.
Ethan’s stomach dropped. The entity hadn’t been trying to get into the station. It had been trying to get into them.
And now it had.
Epilogue
Hermes Station continued its orbit. From Earth, Houston received the scheduled transmissions, data streams showing everything normal.
No anomalies. No malfunctions. Crew vital signs steady.
But in the quiet of orbit, in the small hours of the new millennium, something else looked out from behind human eyes.
The tapping had stopped.
The waiting had begun.
