Writing in the Sky

Part I: The Writing

It appeared all of a sudden as a streak in the sky. No one paid it any attention. It must be some millionaire needing to get to the other side of the country for a polo match and had to take a jet, some passerby would whisper in their own mind. Then another appeared, then another. Someone is skywriting some message, a romantic hoped as they noticed. But when the sun sank into the horizon, the streaks shone brighter than ever.

The lights that shone in the sky seemed to weave itself into a visible pattern. That particular section of the world that was privy to its first appearance took careful note of each streak melting through the obsidian night like blood through a cloth. Some took the phenomenon as an omen. Others marveled in yet another unknown beckoning to be known by mankind. But all asked the same question: Why is this writing in the sky here?

All kinds of eyes stared at the lines appearing that night: old eyes, young eyes, curious eyes, concerned eyes, eyes filled with hope, and eyes filled with despair. The pews of local places of worship were uncharacteristically filled that night. Scientists took out their cameras and telescopes and observed with unwavering skepticism. However, only the cynical ones got television time.

“What we are looking at here seems to be unusually organized though I am not prepared to say it’s a form of extraterrestrial intelligence,” one of them said.

“Each individual streak seems to be rather common,” one of the more optimist ones said, “But what’s so amazing is the apparent symmetry. It’s the entire pattern that baffles the scientific community.”

“It’s like a tapestry,” a young girl commented, “I don’t care why it’s there. It looks pretty.”

“And like a tapestry, the pattern is beautiful, but ultimately when each thread is unraveled what I’ve found so far is profoundly uninteresting,” muttered the so-called experts.

“God is trying to tell us something,” preached a last minute addition to the local congregation.

“Why would God tell us like this?” asked a scared mother of three.

Media scrambled all over the ground to stake a piece of the sky and sell it through the television. But as their equipment was set up and ready to shoot its message at the speed of light to an orbiting satellite it bounced back down to earth in short bursts of noise and static. Not a single live telecast came in clear. In that one slice of the planet that the writing in the sky hovered over there was a little boy in a little house in a small town that nobody knew about before that day.

Nick Friedman and his father Carl had the television on in the background to fill the silence of a mother that was noticeably missing from the dinner table. Carl was quiet, thoughtful man whose life consisted of two parts: his family and his work. He prides in his biggest success in life being that he successfully separate the two. Apart from being a genius, Nick was just a regular eight-year-old boy. The pulses and bursts of static interrupted their usual programming and caused them to leave the table. Carl looked to the sky. Nick was drawn to the flashes on the television screen.

“Dad, do we have paper?” Nick asked.

“On the desk in my office, son,” Carl answered.

“Pencil?”

“Also on the desk,” Carl seemed enthralled at the vastness and the mystery of it all. “Do you think that writing up there has to do with this mess on the television?” He chuckled to himself at the thought.

“Actually, dad,” Nick replied, “it does.”

“And how would you know that, Nick?”

“The pulses and bursts of static are coming in a very specific pattern,” Nick is writing furiously, his eyes fixated on the blinking screen, “It’s some sort of code.”

“Like Morse Code?”

“More like--,” Nick’s eyes widened as he looked through his scattered notes on the floor, “I’ve got it!”

“Son? What have you got?”

“I’ve cracked the code! There’s a message!”

Part II: The Message

Carl Friedman woke up the next morning noticing a peculiarity about the silence in the house. It had always been silent in the mornings, but this morning had a particular type of silence that was quieter than all other silent mornings prior to the incident in the sky. His daily ritual dragged his sleepy body into the kitchen to make breakfast for Nick and himself. Without even giving it a second thought, Carl turned the television on; a morning ritual that started to pacify the loss of the good morning kisses of his wife, Eleanor.

The bursts of static were gone, but something more troublesome was on the screen. It was then that Carl realized the source of the peculiar silence can be traced to Nick’s empty room. Nick had runaway to what appeared to be the airport. Like vultures swooping down a fresh carcass, the media had descended upon the little boy who claimed to have extracted a message from the writing in the sky. Some made him out to be a prophet, others the messiah. When asked where he was going, he uttered a single word, “Spain.” Carl raced out of the front door, jumped into the car, and sped towards the airport to retrieve his runaway child.

“Why Spain?” the reporters asked. To Nick, the press was a gigantic monster with multiple eyes that flash and click, teeth made of tape recorders and many tongues made of microphones. And yet, he thought to himself, he could not find any sign of coherent intelligence in the beast.

“Is it a message from God?”

“Are they aliens?”

“Are you making all this up for attention?”

“Where are your parents?”

A deafening screech all at once halted the press’ questions and answered the last one. Carl ran out of his car, his eyes saturated with a look of both concern and anger. He stomped towards the boy who stood their innocently, almost waiting for his father.

“What are you thinking, Nick?” Carl asked firmly as he grabbed his son and embraced him.

“We have to go to Spain, Dad.”

“Son, we can’t afford to go to Spain.”

“Actually, sir,” a man in uniform interjected, “our airline is willing to send you and your son to Spain for free. I don’t know what that writing in the sky is, but if it says you have to be on the other side of the world, then I’m willing to take you there. My superiors tell me that this trip is entirely all-expenses paid.”

“Carl,” Carl’s boss emerged from the media monster, “Take the boy. You don’t have to come into work today, or any other day for that matter. The truth is all those lines in the sky have me a little scared. And if God is saying that Nick has to go to Spain, you have to.”

Similar pleas to listen to Nick moaned from the crowd as incoherent babble. The voices of the crowd scared Nick who clung to his father’s pant leg with his tiny hands. Nick’s teachers, Carl’s co workers, news reporters, and even the local police looked upon the boy with an awkward reverence. Carl knelt by his son and held him in his hands.

“Son, why Spain?”

“The message,” Nick said as he pulled out his notes from his small backpack. “It says we have to be there in a few hours to deliver this message to Zoe de Vega.” Carl unfolded the piece of paper and saw a series of zeroes and ones scribbled with a dull pencil.

“Who is Zoe de Vega? Why us?”

“I had a dream, Dad,” Nick said with tears in his eyes, “Mommy told me I should do this. She said I didn’t have to, but I want to.”

Carl had never heard Nick talk about Eleanor since she had passed a year before. The very word “mommy” welled his eyes with tears, but he held them back when he recalled the presence of the crowd.

“Okay, Nick,” Carl replied, “We’ll go. For mom.”

Part III: Zoe de Vega

When they arrived to the front porch of Zoe de Vega, a weeping woman met them at the door. The news of the writing in the sky had reached all over the world. Evidently, word of the Friedmans’ arrival fell upon the de Vega doorstep long before they actually did. The weeping woman introduced herself in broken English as the aunt of Zoe de Vega. Zoe’s father was busy at work and had not at that time, heard of the writing in the sky on the other side of the world. Her mother had passed away exactly one year before that day.

The soft light of the sun warmed the quaint rooms of the house. Aroma of fresh bread wafted in from the kitchen. Nick took out the folded piece of paper and politely asked in broken Spanish if Zoe was home. She took the two to the master bedroom and in the bed was a frail looking fifteen year old girl with the most beautiful smile on her face. Chemotherapy had ravaged the flowing blond hair that once grazed Zoe’s shoulders on a breezy summer day. A tube connected her arm to a large I.V. bag hanging at her bedside.

On the bed next to Zoe was a framed picture of a much healthier herself with her mother, both with smiles that would melt the most cynical of hearts. Nick curled his lips at the corner and curiously looked at the physician’s clipboard on the dresser.

“Dad, what does this say?” Nick asked offering the clipboard to his father.

“Nick, that’s not nice, put that back.”

“It’s okay Mr. Friedman,” explained Zoe, “It says ‘acute lymphoblastic leukemia,’ Nick.”

“You don’t have hair…” Nick observed.

“Nick!” Carl reprimanded his son.

“It reminds me of mommy.”

“My wife, Nick’s mother, passed away from cancer sometime ago,” Carl apologetically explained. “Zoe, you speak English exceptionally well.”

“Thank you, Mr. Friedman,” Zoe was as gracious as royalty, “Some members of the press called the house and let my aunt know what was going on. We’re usually so cut off from the rest of the world especially since I’ve gotten ill. I believe, Nick, you have something for me?”

Carl smiled at the exchange of two innocent souls conversing, literally, about messages from the heavens. He stood close to his son and admired the picture of Zoe and her mother. Nick took out the folded piece of paper and showed it to precocious teenager. Zoe took the paper and saw only the following pattern:

01001110 01101111 00100000 01101111 01101100 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 00100000 01101101 01100001 01100100 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101101 01100001 00101110 00100000 01000101 01101110 00100000 01110001 01110101 01101001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100101 01110011 01110100 01100001 01110010 01100001 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 01100100 01100001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110010 01110100 01100101 01110011 00101110

“What’s all this?” Zoe asked.

“Nick, you’re going to have to explain what all that means. Even I don’t know what it is,” Carl explained to the young genius, “You’ll have to excuse him. He’s gifted but doesn’t realize how much smarter he is than everyone else sometimes.”

“I think it’s in Spanish,” Nick said as he took out another piece of paper, “I used my computer to translate it to letters and this is what I got.” He handed over the piece of paper to Zoe who wept upon reading the words. The note translated to:

No olvide que su madre le ama. En quince días estará por todas partes.

“That sounds beautiful,” remarked Carl, “Do you mind if I ask you what it means?”

“It means,” the weepy aunt answered, “Don't forget that your mother loves you. In fifteen days it will be all over.”

Cryptic though the message may have been, Carl took out his phone to look at the picture he took of the writing in the sky. He knew there was something oddly familiar about the picture of Zoe’s mother. In the picture, Zoe’s mother was wearing a beautiful dress with an elaborate pattern, the very same pattern that melted into the blue sky over the Friedman household.

Part IV: The Fifteenth Day

When word had gotten around as to what the actual message was, the people and subsequently the media had lost immediate interest in the boy genius, Nick Friedman. In those fifteen days that past, Carl wondered what the message meant. What exactly will be all over?

On the fifteenth day, the writing in the sky had melted into the blue atmosphere as quietly as it had arrived. There were some spectators that recorded the event, but the rest of the world had labeled it trite and had moved onto the next sensationalized story. The supposed faithful had abandoned their quest to convert the masses in preparation for the apocalypse. They had reverted back into their mundane lives of waking up, going to work, returning to sleep, and repeat. The media monster had broken up into its constituent parts. Without ominous patterns appearing in the sky, the press had to go back and creating something else to be afraid of.

“The writings in the sky,” reported a local anchorwoman, “turned out to predict the disappearance of the writing in the sky. Sorry, folks, no Armageddon quite yet.”

“God may not have been in the writing,” exclaimed a televangelist, “but we must remain vigilant! We must keep our eyes open and our hearts pure when inevitable doom is upon us!”

“I’m not sure what to think,” a passerby replied to a journalist, “First it’s there, then it’s not. I guess the only thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t a miracle.”

An electronic chime emanated from the Friedman’s computer. Nick walks over to check the incoming email, which happens to be from Zoe. He called his father over who read the news and welcomed it with a smile. With the magnificent irony of it, Carl couldn’t help but smile at the screen. While the rest of the world looked to the skies for a miracle, the real miracle was an unconditional connection between parent and child. According to the email, the doctors had no explanation for what happened. But Zoe’s cancer had gone into complete remission. She plans to visit Nick and Carl with the rest of her family as soon as they could.