"Hello! Could I say something to the aliens?"

There was a child at his door. A blonde, bespectacled, tiny human being was at Arthur's door, wearing the standard surgeon's mask to act as a barrier against the grainy air.Arthur had just taken his off.

"Pardon me?" Arthur finally replied. He forgot to hold his breath, and ended up hacking on the air itself. Shit, he thought as he fought for control over his lungs ,I can actually taste the carbon.

"Mr Kirkland! Are you alright- excuse me-," Arthur could feel the child grab his arm and pull him into his house. The child was strong for his age, or he maybe was just weak from the coughing as the child forced him in a chair and wandered off somewhere in his house. Arthur, in between hacking his lungs out, managed to shoot an outraged look at the child's back.

"Oi! What are you-"

"Mr Kirkland! Here, drink this!" A glass of water, filled up to a fifth of the glass was thrusted in his view. Arthur,not wanting to refuse a kind gesture from a child (even though the kid practically invaded his house), threw the water down, forcing the contaminants into his stomach.

It took a while for him to reach speaking ability, and while he was forcing air into him in wheezing breaths, the child took his chance to talk whilst rubbing his back.

"I'm ALFRED F.JONES, and since me and everyone is going to die soon, could I please,please,please,please use your machine to send a message to the aliens?"

Arthur was an astrobiologist. So stretching his mind to the limits was something he had to do on the daily basis. From figuring out how life could evolve using different chemistry rules to reading disturbing alien suggestion from wannabe sci-fi writers, he has been disturbed,puzzled, and stupefied more times than he can count.

But hearing a ten year old casually using the death of everyone as justification to send a message to aliens pushed his head to another dimension.

"Alfred,"he started cautiously. How does one try to reassure a child that his nightmares are false? He could take advantage of the naive trust that children have in adults and lie. Place a blanket over his head as a paper shield.

"You're not going to die. I'm not going to die and I'm sure whatever's happening on the news is one big exaggeration. Now, I'm going to take you home -"

"The clock is ten seconds to midnight. We choke on air instead of breathing it in. I've never seen a blue sky, and I've never seen the stars- I've always wanted to see the stars," Alfred added wistfully.

Alfred's words stirred something unpleasant in Arthur. Although Alfred never spoke a malicious word, there was something that accused Arthur's generation of doing nothing more than ranting on Tumblr while they were in power.

"Please let me use your machine, sir. Don't let me die without saying hello."

"You're literally asking to spend millions to talk to hypothetical aliens,"

Arthur swore profusely as his head made hard contact with the shelve above his desk. He glared at his husband, cautiously rubbing his throbbing head.

"You scared me ,you frog!"

Francis Bonnefoy looked annoyingly perfectly put together as he observed Arthur in a tattered dressing robe, hair sticking up in a frazzled mess, and surrounded by countless of papers and books worth their weight in gold.

"Isn't Chun-Yan's team suppose to handle the mechanical side?" Francis asked, picking up a diagram of gibberish in bemusement.

"Put that down! She is, I'm just going over her designs,"

"All this effort just to talk to hypothetical aliens that will never reach us,"sighed Francis. This was the fourth night he had to sleep alone.

"They are not hypothetical! Statistically, given the size of the universe and the number of planets in habitable zones-"

Francis realized his mistake. Scientific jargon vomit time- sleep deprived version instead of the drunk version. He could only place the blankest of expressions to demonstrate his lack of comprehension as Arthur's voice rose to a shrill pitch in his passionate rant.

"-analysing program will allow a quick translation for human languages-"

"Arthur, Arthur,mon amour, I understand, it's very important and exciting but please," Francis reached a hand to smooth Arthur's wayward hair downwards before cupped his cheek.

"Look after yourself"

Arthur frowned at him, muttered a defeated "Frog" and collapsed in Francis's arms, resting his head on his shoulder. As he closed his eyes, he murmured:

"I just...would like to say... Hello...we're not alone."