The Nature of the Shrill

Inspector Erwin Reynolds

United States Department of Defense

June 11, 2019

RE: The Shrill

Inspector Pierce,

As you will be meeting the consultant known as the Transient tomorrow evening, I am providing a brief ethnographic sketch of the extraterrestrial entities known as the Shrill.  Keep in mind that the Transient will refuse to answer most of your questions about her nature, as she is very protective that way. For the sake of our ongoing professional cooperation, you need to be prepared to gain her trust. To know a little of her background, and all that she will allow me to tell you, will assist you towards that goal.

The following reflects my own personal notes and thoughts, spanning more than four decades of consultation with the Transient. I have learned much about the conditions of her existence, but I am certain that there remains even more that I don’t know. You may find the Transient disorienting at first, but don’t be concerned. She has this effect on everyone. I am sure that you will find, as I have, how such divergent minds can have so much in common.

A nature that we share as conscious, sentient beings is that we are insatiably curious. The mind feeds on information like the body feeds on energy. When the information runs out, the mind gets hungry, and goes looking for more. Such is the nature of the Shrill.

The Shrill are unlike the biological forms of consciousness that we consider within the scope of human perception. Their bodies are composed of heavy elements that were forged inside of dense stars. The Shrill, as best as the Transient can describe it to me, have designed themselves to work inside the stars that we see in our night sky. They are, in a common sense, star-farmers. Their bodies feed on ever-present solar winds, and their skins, made of advanced elements that do not appear yet on our periodic charts, have the capacity to hold immense electromagnetic charges for a long period of time. In this manner, they are able to sustain life as they travel the vastness of space-time.

The Shrill appear dark, and often, scary to terrestrial eyes because their skin reflects no light. Their physical geometry enables them to take on a variety of forms, while task-utility often has them resembling insects. When they appear, they are the darkest of manifested entities marked by the complete absence of light and the deepest shadow that one might imagine. And if a terrestrial person is unfortunate enough to ever encounter a Shrill, the terror of their appearance is actually the least of that person’s concern. Due to the charged nature of Shrill bodies, the negative electromagnetic radiation causes all manner of cognitive and biological disorientation.  In fact, it is quite unhealthy for terrestrial people to even be near the Shrill. The consequences of this can wreak havoc on fragile genetic systems that have been sheltered from the harsh radiation of space. For this reason, they are shy around terrestrial people, and rarely observed.

The Shrill are intricately bound to the greatest stars in the sky as sources of life sustaining energy. Around these dense and fiery suns, the Shrill form hives. Hive communities function as homes, as playgrounds for young Shrill, and as the laboratories of elemental manufacturing for the adults.

When it comes to elemental compression inside stars, no one does it better than the Shrill, or so I am told from an admittedly biased source. They descend from a long and well-charted line of ancestral star foragers and creators. Advanced super-conduction, gravitational lenses, and Dyson Spheres are among concepts taught at a young age, to groom the best as solar master crafters.

While adult Shrill work in the stars, their young offspring swim through space in flocks and glide on the solar winds.  A favorite act of play for the young is to dive headfirst into coronal mass ejections and surf magnetic fields the way our eagles soar aloft on atmospheric thermals. The Shrill take pride in the play and experimentation of the young, because this proves necessary in shaping what kind of adults they will eventually become.

At their coming of age, young adults must forge new adult bodies inside the centers of dense neutron stars. These new bodies require they show great responsibility, as their misapplication can have negative consequences on other forms of biological organisms. Simultaneously, they are afforded new freedoms, as the physical properties of their neutron-forged skins have the capacity to warp and bend space-time geometry. With their new skins, the young adults find that they can quickly skirt the subatomic field of entanglement that composes the very fabric of the universe and move, shall I say, extremely fast.

Young adult Shrill learn the ways of their elders, alternating their time between stellar forging and seeing how deep into space they can dive. Their excursions into space-time often have them exploring distant planets and exotic biological systems of life, but always from a distance. Their very name, “The Shrill,” is not just related to the sound that terrestrial dwellers make whenever the Shrill are discovered, but also to the sound that adult Shrill make as they enter a new planetary atmosphere as their skins react to the simple composition of gases in the air. Any terrestrial dwellers that happen to be occupying the planet at that time might look up to see meteors streaking through the sky, but it is the sound of the screaming howls that they remember the most.

The purpose of their excursions is multifold.  The exploration of uncharted regions of space leads to the discovery of new stars, and the expansion of new hives. In addition to this, the social interactions between young adult Shrill promote the bonding of Shrill individuals and the reproduction of the hive. Now, there is no need to get into the finer details of Shrill reproduction, but the actual union of individuals for the purposes of enriching the hive is quite a lovely notion.

Two pair-bonded Shrill steal away to an isolated star, typically one not too hot (the Earth’s Sun is an ideal type of star), and within their own private space fuse together and become one entity. This entity, forever fused, becomes the nucleus of the next hive, as reproductively viable slivers peel away over time and drift among the solar winds. The constant stream of the solar winds produces a charge strong enough to bestow the young Shrill slivers with life. Once charged, the neophyte Shrill swim into the star to build their young bodies.

The elders, aged and matured in the harshest solar conditions, build space-folding tools beyond the event horizon of weak black holes. These tools allow the hives to travel across galaxies and between universal planes. Groups of elders join together and share energy reserves when they are not forging tools. They commune together and exchange cosmological knowledge and discuss the latest trends in the solar winds.  They remain at the ready to assist the young in their travels and impart the wisdom of the ages. This is why they are the center of the hive, and the nucleus of Shrill society.  The Shrill elders shape the stars for their own kind, branching out in multiplying hives, farming the great suns and learning, with an ever-increasing sense of wonder, about how marvelous the universe is.

Although the Shrill are physically alien to most forms of biological life, they are not immune to the effects of entropy. They age and die like the rest of us. The heavy elements that constitute their bodies eventually decay and break apart. This process of flaking takes many eons, until the cohesive mass of a Shrill body reaches a critical threshold and collapses into asmall black sphere.

Having seen one of these skeletons myself, I can attest to their attraction. They betray a darkness that is alien to the human eye. These Xenoskins possess unique electromagnetic and Einstein-Rosen properties of field entanglement, but the Transient is highly protective of hers’, and she won’t let me, or anyone else interested in scientific research, near it.  

There are other beings in and about this planet that want these spheres and appear to be waiting for the right time to seize them. In order to keep the skeletons of their sacred loved ones out of the hands of others, the Xenoskins are best cast into the centers of black holes to be decomposed by immense gravitational pressures.

For decades, top officials in my department wondered why Earth was so attractive to extraterrestrial life. The lunar missions of the nineteen-sixties confirmed for us, as the Transient grudgingly admitted, that there was a Shrill Hive on the far hemisphere of the moon, and that it was there because of her.

You may, at this point, have growing concerns about the implications of this letter, but for now, put those aside. You will find, as I have, that the nature of these “star people” is consistent with beautiful, if mysterious and sometimes terrifying, qualities. At their core, however, they mean us no harm, and remain among the great explorers and learners of our shared universe. They are always foreigners, outsiders, aliens, and for good reason.

Their passive observation of our planet is neither a threat nor an official focus of U.S. interests. For the last four decades, however, they has been a supreme focus of mine. Now, as you will be replacing me, I am preparing you to take on this interest.

What civilization of sentient life would not benefit from the knowledge that the Shrill have to offer? Certainly what the Shrill can offer might benefit humanity on Earth — but at what cost? In the course of this work, I have shared many conversations with my friend the Transient, and learned of her story, and more importantly, why the Shrill are watching her.

In the course of your work with the Transient, you too will find her to be of vital interest toward striking a balance of seemingly factional interests. She is immensely loyal to those that she trusts, which is why, to execute your job successfully, you must gain, and maintain, her trust. The importance of this cannot be underestimated, and it is what compels me to write this letter.

You have entered this new role with exceptional qualifications, but these have not prepared you for what you will soon undertake. Per the security conditions of your employment contract, tonight is your first assignment. You will have a matter of minutes to gain the Transient’s trust. If you fail at this assignment then, frankly, you will only further delay my retirement, and I cannot let that happen.

This is a word of warning. However, as I have selected you over a variety of highly qualified applicants specifically for your capacity to relate to people, I have the fullest confidence in your abilities.

See you tomorrow night.

Erwin