Moonflies

By Nick Sheppard

The flies arrived in long white tubes, looking something like a PVC pipe with a stopper at each end. Each tube was smooth and unmarked, about twenty centimetres in diameter, about a metre and a half tall, and hung vertically in the air as if suspended from the sky by an invisible thread. One landed in the park opposite the office.

Tim from Accounts saw it first. By the time the tube had lowered itself to the ground, Tim had gathered half the office at the window with him. “Are they flies?” he asked.

“Why would anyone dump a tube full of flies into a park?” asked Kyle from Maintenance.

“They came from space, I saw it on the news,” said Rachel from Marketing.

“Why would anyone dump a tube full of flies from space into a park?”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Sheppard
• Release date: Mar 28, 2020

Nick Sheppard

Nick Sheppard is an academic and software developer living in Wollongong, Australia. He has published academic research in information security; short fiction in AntipodeanSF and SciPhiJournal; and non-fiction in Aurealis and Cockatrice.

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Moonflies

Nick Sheppard

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Copyright 2020 Nicholas Paul Sheppard

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Preamble

Moonflies

About the Author

Moonflies

The flies arrived in long white tubes, looking something like a PVC pipe with a stopper at each end. Each tube was smooth and unmarked, about twenty centimetres in diameter, about a metre and a half tall, and hung vertically in the air as if suspended from the sky by an invisible thread.

One landed in the park opposite the office. Tim from Accounts saw it first, while it was still a few dozen metres above the grass. By the time the tube had lowered itself to the ground, Tim had gathered half the office at the window with him.

The tube paused a few centimetres above the grass, used some unseen mechanism to bore a neat hole in the soil, then inserted its bottom end into the hole so that the tube stood upright. Nothing further happened for just long enough for the crowd to wonder if the tube was going to do anything at all. But an opening appeared in the top of the tube, and out came a swarm of small black flying things.

Are they flies? Tim asked the crowd.

They look a bit larger than anything I've seen, said Justin from Engineering. But I'm not a fly-spotter.

No one owned up to being a fly-spotter, and no more suggestions were forthcoming.

Why would anyone dump a tube full of flies into a park? asked Kyle from Maintenance.

They came from space, I saw it on the news, said Rachel from Marketing.

"Why would anyone dump