The Long-Term Effects of Auroral Kilometric Radiation on the Earth’s Population
by Matt Betts
The Scientists announced that the Earth screams.
Its cries created high over the planet by particles and magnetic fields.
The nerve-wracking sound—a clatter of whistles and clicks
more powerful than we mere humans could ever generate.
Some suggest that anyone listening out in the stars could hear
since the noise shoots out into space as a concentrated beam.
How funny would it be if, instead of green-skinned bug-eyed aliens
landing at our doorstep to greet us and shower us with technology,
Mars and Jupiter start inching toward us year by year, emitting signals
of their own, translatable by The Scientists only as menace or concern?
Copyright © 2009, Matt Betts
Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
Matt Betts is a former radio personality whose fiction and poetry appears in various online and print publications, including Weird Tales, Kaleidotrope, A Thousand Faces and the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology.