The Bonnybridge Blip
250 Words
For decades, Bonnybridge has been famous for UFO sightings, though skeptical Constable Angus McBride has yet to see anything he can’t explain. His daughter Mairi is just as certain that nothing extraordinary will ever happen in their little Scottish town.
Then a mysterious radar blip and a black monolith appears in a field.
UFO fanatics, gullible tourists, opportunistic townsfolk and government officials descend on Bonnybridge, each determined to explain, exploit or control it. Among the newcomers is Ewan, a quiet young stranger who befriends Mairi and gradually falls for her. What no one knows is that Ewan and two other seemingly ordinary visitors are extraterrestrial observers. The monolith is theirs, deliberately placed in Bonnybridge as an experiment. Humanity’s intelligence has already been established. The question is whether a species driven by fear, greed and suspicion is ready to encounter something it cannot understand.
The evidence is hardly encouraging.
But through Mairi, Ewan begins noticing something the experiment was never designed to measure: hospitality. When government officials attempt to seize the monolith, the squabbling people of Bonnybridge unexpectedly unite to protect it. They don’t know what it is or where it came from. It arrived in their town, and that makes it their guest.
The experiment ends. The monolith, Ewan and his team vanish.
Only then does Mairi realize the most extraordinary thing to arrive in Bonnybridge wasn’t the monolith at all. It was Ewan. And just when she believes she has lost him, she turns to find him standing beside her.