It’s very bright out. Blinds are drawn closed, letting little specks of yellow sunlight glisten and shimmer through. It’s August. The hottest month of the year it seems for Adeline and just her luck; the air conditioner broke down and she hasn’t slept for days due to the heat.
Adeline looks at the dinner laying on her floor – chicken and potatoes, with gravy – from where she is, sitting on the edge of her bed. She can barely muster up enough energy to consume it.
Her room is messy. Things are strewn all over the floor, leaving one little pathway to walk through the room from the door to the bed. She’s not a hoarder, no. Adeline is just a little bit messy when it comes to cleaning.
Suddenly, Adeline’s eyes dart to her bedroom wall. The little specks of sunlight start to morph into something more. Long lines become a giant web.
It’s almost like someone is drawing with the light; a message. Adeline is too scared to move and watches the disembodied artist continue to draw along her wall.
What happens next surprises Adeline; imprinted images begin to move, beside the web. There are three images: a cat, a bird and a wizard with an old time camera – the one with the sheet that covers you underneath.
The cat begins to run as the bird above follows, soaring high. The wizard is making movies.
Adeline thinks for a second. It’s all making sense. The meaning of these messages are almost being downloaded to her brain. She sits in silence taking it all in.
Adeline has a thought. How can she record this? “Shoot, it’s in the basement where the repairman is,” she says to herself about her digital camera. “It might disappear if I leave the room.” She grabs a nearby exercise book and a pen, trying not to let her eyes leave the wall.
Quickly, she sketches out what is on the wall. By the time she is done, new images start to appear.
There is a wooden dock with a stationary fishing rod anchoring something in the ocean. There is a person standing at the edge of the dock. Soon a triangular structure appears, similar to the Eifel Tower. Soon a bear appears, then other animals on the dock behind the person. Soon a bunch of people appear on the outside of the structure and begin to climb it, trying to remove things from it, or trying to remove someone.
“We’re stronger if everyone is in their right position,” says Adeline aloud.
The beings on the dock are aliens Adeline gets told. And she’s one too; a humanoid alien. All this information is a lot for Adeline to take in and fully understand at the moment.
“You’re watching me from above? I’m the cat?” says Adeline, hoping they, whoever they are, can hear her. She can hear the answer “Yes” in her head.
The images disappear again and new ones emerge. This time it’s all newscasts but there’s no sound. Adeline tries to watch them and believes they are speaking about her. It’s literally like her future life flashed before her eyes. The broadcasts switched so quick she could not keep up. She spotted a wedding and even a funeral.
Adeline shutters. The funeral was the final broadcast. Was that her own death? No one answers her thoughts.
The broadcast images vanish, only leaving the web. Soon “they” begin to explain the web to her.
The web is a representation of her life. Soon dots appear sporadically over the web. The dots are where she ends up if she takes that path in life, but all the lines lead to the same place. Some lines are longer. “Which path do I choose?” Adeline questions. No answer.
The real question is, what is the final dot? What is Adeline’s destiny? Will she be a famous screenwriter like she had dreamed about for years? Only time will tell.
The drawings made out of sunlight disappear from her wall. Adeline reads over in her notebook what just transpired, trying to make sense of it all.
“I can’t believe I’m an alien,” Adeline says to herself aloud. She catches her reflection in her dresser mirror and recoils. She’s lisping, her face is different and her teeth are more visible. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep and eating, or maybe it’s because she morphed into her true alien self.
Adeline wonders to herself if she’s been “eating sunlight” like a plant, or an actual alien. She read on the internet that some people claim they can live on light alone.
“No that’s stupid…” she thinks to herself. She hides the notebook under her bed, walks through the small pathway in her room to the door and heads downstairs to watch a movie.
Her family just got satellite so it’s movies twenty-four seven.
No one seems to be in the living room when Adeline arrives downstairs. She flicks on the TV and navigates to a movie that has an interesting description on the satellite’s guide channel.
This movie stars an actor that Adeline doesn’t care much for – Dominque Van Tonder, but she decides to watch it anyways.
“His face…” Adeline thinks to herself. “It looks weird just like mine right now; he must be an alien too.”
Intrigued, she watches the movie intensely for any other signs. No one else has a changed face.