Winner (February 2026) "The Artist and the Alien" (Part 1)

“Twenty cents?” His eyes widen. “You paid for this? You know it’s in the public domain, don’t you?”

“No, no. 20th century. I’m guessing you don’t call it that on your end of the Atlantic.”

“Not familiar with the term, no,” he says. “So, it’s all public domain?”

“Every note of it. Play something current, and they autodetect it and hit you up for royalty micropayments, unless you use a streaming service. I don’t want to—I like having total control of my music. Anyway, what’s wrong with The Beatles?”

“Absolutely nothing whatsoever. Just curious. Do you have any Bowie in your library? Most of his career was in the 20th century.”

“Have any what?”

He puts a hand to his chest. “Oh! Christophina! This must be rectified. The road to Neo Wave cannot be trod upon without David Bowie laying the concrete. How do we go about this?”

“They won’t let you send sound files with StarMail. But if you have Kalliope, you can set up a sequence for me, and I can temporarily divert the stream to it. Just send me the link.”

“I will be right back.” He promptly vanishes.

Turns out that “right back” takes a bit of a while. I’m nearly finished with the store rearrangement by the time he returns.

“I’ve got it!” he says. “Let me send it to you.” His gaze grows distant and his hands gesture wildly.

I open my StarMail, get the link from it, and update the jukebox stream.

“I’ll be outside,” Xenix says. “There are three songs in the sequence. I’ll be back in when they’re done.”

I sit down on the floor in physical reality and start the sequence in the virtual. The first song starts with echoey acoustic guitar, far-off snare drum, and a flat voice calling out to a Major Tom. When the harmony kicks in, I realize just how old this song is. The melody sits on my right shoulder and the harmony on the left. It’s the sort of thing I love in public domain stuff, songs that enable you to make out each track clearly so you can dissect them. The music has a drifting weightlessness to it that matches the story the song tells of an astronaut who launches into space and decides to stay there. If I ever make enough money that I can get spaced whenever I want, I’m definitely going to give this song another listen.

The second one also starts with echoey acoustic guitar, but is soon grounded by a bass guitar and becomes more evocative of being up late at night while listening to music. To a radio. That picks up transmissions from space. The chorus has a string section that makes it almost a hymn. It makes me want to believe in benevolent beings from outer space who drop by to tell us not to fuck up this wonderful world we have.

The last song startles me, because I’ve heard the first three notes sampled for a plunderphonic song. It’s a synthesizer of some kind, with a tone that sonically marks the song as newer than the other two. A sighing voice, just barely recognizable as the voice that sang those songs, reacts to bad news and then startles me again by invoking the name of Major Tom, who is now an addict of some kind and possibly dead. The music gives me the feeling of being at the bottom of the ocean, right next to Major Tom as he begs to come down from whatever high he’s on. I savor every last note as it fades into silence with a playground chant.

I open my eyes—I’d closed them somewhere in the middle of the first song—and see Xenix hovering in the doorway.

“Do you need a moment?” he asks. “You’re very, very still.”

“No, I’m fine. I liked that a lot. Especially the last one—what was it called?’”

“‘Ashes to Ashes.’ The middle one was ‘Starman’ and the first one was ‘Space Oddity.’”

“A tribute to my residence?”

“Hadn’t even thought of that. It’s a space theme, yes, but I wasn’t thinking about where you live. I was only thinking about the wallpaper.” He gestures at the wall.

“You know, you haven’t told me where you are. I told you where I was; it’s only fair.”

“I’m in London.”

“Canada or England?” I ask.

“Oh, England,” he says, “The United Kingdom. The center point of a dead empire.”

“How is it down there?”

“Cold and dreary,” he admits. “But the lights look sort of romantic in the fog. It’s fine.”

“It never gets cold here unless there’s refrigeration involved,” I say. “Nor does it get hot. Not Earth hot at any rate. It’s perfectly temperature controlled. It gets a bit boring.”

“Believe me, I wouldn’t mind a bit of that boredom right now. Does it ever rain?”

“No. Water comes from the ground up. Bots hover and spritz the trees sometimes.”

“Sign me up,” he says. “When’s the next flight?”

“Flights to and from are booked out about a month in advance. Plus, you need a medical examination to make sure you’re fit for space. So if you want to come up, you’d better book a flight now and be ready to wait.”

A slight smile appears on his face. “I’ll take that under consideration.”

He sounds almost serious, but he has to be kidding. I can’t imagine anyone coming all that way just to meet me.

About the Author

Sara Shay lives with bipolar disorder in a city that didn’t exist until 2005. She writes the way others drink and smoke—as a compulsive habit that eases the pain of daily living. Her first novel, Christophina’s Wings, is available at Amazon, Apple Books, and her own website.

Social Media: On Bluesky as @wonderbink.bsky.social and Mastodon as @wonderbink@sunny.garden.

Website: sarashay.com