Prologue: Scientific Discovery

Well, I certainly hope that father is having fun with his fellow astronomers cause god knows that we're certainly not! Especially since there's only two of us here to do almost all of his analytical leg work and number crunching. Though its not like this was that big of a surprise to me, he did this with every group of grad students that he worked with and now it was his sons turn to suffer. His son who has his sandy blonde hair and blue green eyes, pale skin, and like his father can be described as monstrously tall, who takes after him in so many other ways that it makes me want to cry sometimes.

Although I have to wonder if he's doing this out of some twisted sense of equality or if he somehow enjoys doing this to grad students. I mean, I am his son and I am confused with him often enough so it can't be that he's going especially hard on me. Unless he doesn't like my personality or attitude, cause if that's the case then anything goes with him.

"Have you found anything yet Dylan?" The other half of this grad student partnership called out from across the room forcing me out of my thoughts.

"No, nothing yet, Zoe. Or at least nothing solid enough to warrant another look," I replied from my work station where I had been trying to do the work of both my father and myself.

"Oh! Well if your not too busy than maybe you could help me figure out what it is I'm looking at right now," Zoe suggested. I turned my head to see if I could solve her trouble without leaving my work area, but those hopes were dashed when I saw the expression that marred the flawlessly feminine features of her face mirrored that of a child who didn't understand their math homework.

"It looks like it could be a planet or moon comparable to earth in shape and climate at the very least, but let's just take a closer look to see if it can support life and to make sure," I said after wheeling my office chair over to her work station and taking a look at her monitor.

"What are you sure?!" My blonde colleague asked in shock as she looked at her screen from over my shoulder.

"Given what we're looking at right now I think I ought to be the one asking you that question. But this is still good work Zoe!" I replied as turned my head to look up at her now stunned but still gorgeous petite hourglass figure.

"But it didn't look like that a second ago." Zoe pouted in surprise and disbelief.

"Well, what did it look like than?" I asked now genuinely curious as to what she might have seen.

"Well it kind of looked like a super nova only it was a lot dimmer and you could still see that it was a planet or moon of some kind." Zoe elaborated causing me to shoot her an incredulous 'Oh, really' look.

"Look Dylan if you don't believe me than just rewind the footage a little bit and you can see for yourself that I'm not lying." Zoe said while crossing her arms over her chest telling me that she wasn't suggesting, or asking but was instead demanding.

"Alright I'll rewind the damn footage, but I want it on record that what you just described to me is by definition impossible. God...what is that?!"

"So, who do you think I should call on this?" Zoe asked playfully.

"Uh I'll let you figure out a short list, but for now I think it would be safer to just call everyone." I said with boisterous excitement as I frantically rushed back to my station to see if this anomaly had done anything else that could be considered abnormal like say make noise. To do this I had to quickly reset the long range microphone array to its new set of coordinates, then I'd have to set the array to record the audio of those particular coordinates while doing an all frequencies scan of the audio we had and what we had yet to receive.

"Uh Dylan, do you know where your dad is?" Zoe asked cautiously from across the room.

"If I remember correctly he said he was going to the vending machine for some snacks."

"But that was over an hour ago, and I've tried his cell phone and it went straight to voice mail!" Zoe exclaimed nervously and I was about to voice my 'concern' on the matter but the thought quickly died in my throat when the equipment started going crazy, like the cliched kind that's done in almost every movie in existence with the flickering of lights and monitors alike, not to mention the crackling sounds of electric currents so strong it was breaking glass all around us. Then there was the heat, the only way I can describe this is to say it was like being cooked inside of an oven; if the oven were somehow able to generate near volcanic levels of heat and make every last hair on your body stand on end at the same time. The next and possibly last thing either of us see are pairs of blinding pink and blue lights that crashed into the two of us from all sides.