The rope crashed into Earth on a Monday afternoon, catching our entire planet off guard.

The government swopped in, trying to assume control and make sense of the situation, but nobody had any answers.

The rope itself was thick, no larger than the type used for climbing exercises, but it extended up into the sky.

NASA tried to locate the origin, but the rope just kept going out into space, they couldn’t trace where it may have come from.

The first person to grab the rope did so as a joke. He was a guard for the landing site, deciding one day to tug on it, to “see what would happen”. Immediately after his palms grasped the rope, he flew upwards, as if he was on a vertical zipline. He kept sailing up and up, finally exiting our field of vision, and later our atmosphere.

We never got in contact with him again.

The second person to grab the rope did so for an exploratory mission. He was given a backpack, a space suit, rations, and communication devices, and was told to explain as much detail as he could before we lost contact with him. He knew it was a suicide mission, but couldn’t resist his own curiosity.

We kept contact for five days. There was debate over how fast he was actually going, as he passed Mars within the first three hours, but the fact that he was alive, conscious, and cognitive suggested he couldn’t possibly be going as fast as indicated. He described stars and the dark vastness of space, and an incredible feeling of unease.

On the fifth day, he described seeing the darkness come towards him. His last recorded words were “—mouth is so big, it could swallow a planet!”

Whatever creature had killed him must have severed the rope, because two days after, it fell back down the Earth. The total distance of the rope he had traveled would have placed him just before Pluto, yet it had only been five days.

On the sixth day, a ship came to Earth, it’s door only openable from the inside. We aren’t sure who they are or what they are, if they know what the creature that destroyed the rope is, if they think that we destroyed the rope as an act of war. We don’t know if they created the rope, or just sent it to us, or if they were involved at all.

All we know is the door is opening, and we have no idea what they want.