Where The Clouds Are

Fireflies Above Kingston

The sky above Kingston shimmered like a sheet of obsidian sprinkled with electric stars. But tonight, something was different. The "fireflies" were back.

Zoey Jones stood barefoot on the roof of her grandmother's old house in August Town, the cool night breeze tangling her long braids as she stared skyward. Around her, the soft hum of the town blended with the rustling banana trees and distant laughter from the market road. But Zoey wasn't listening-she was calculating.

"Twelve seconds between bursts," she muttered, tapping her worn-out wrist module. "Pattern repeating every one-point-two minutes. That's not random."

Beside her, a small spherical drone-her invention, Candlebug-hovered silently, recording the lights in the sky. What the locals had called "fireflies" for the past three months were not insects at all. They were too high, too synchronized, and too fast.

Zoey, just seventeen and already a student at UWI's experimental robotics lab, had been tracking the phenomenon since it began. The first time she saw them, flickering like celestial Morse code over Blue Mountains, she thought it was a satellite glitch. The second time, she'd recorded their angles. By the fifth, she was sure-these weren't human.

"Zoom in, Candlebug," she whispered.

The drone's lens adjusted. Through its feed, Zoey saw the lights refract in patterns that danced like flames-orange, teal, violet-swirling across the upper atmosphere. But behind the beauty, the fireflies formed grids, moved with purpose.

A frequency pulse echoed from her wrist module-low, rhythmic, familiar. She tapped through the readings and froze.

"No way... it's responding."

Zoey dropped to her knees, fingers flying across the holo-keyboard projected from her module. The lights were transmitting on a frequency nearly identical to the signal used by the now-defunct Deep Space Relay that collapsed during the 2037 storm season.