In the autumn of 1998, when the sky was ablaze with falling stars, Suzanne and Eli Whitaker witnessed a celestial event that would haunt their lives in unimaginable ways. They stood together in their small backyard, Suzanne eight months pregnant, hand resting lightly on her belly. The meteor shower painted the dark expanse above with streaks of fire, a spectacle so extraordinary it made the air hum with something ancient, something heavy. But it was not the heavens that would deliver their fate—it was what fell to Earth in silence.

They found it at dawn, a small metallic cocoon nestled in the grass, still warm from reentry. It could have been a piece of debris, a fragment of some forgotten satellite. But Suzanne knew instinctively, even as Eli stared in disbelief, that this thing was alive. When they pried it open, an infant-like creature emerged, ethereal and still, suspended in a state of cold sleep. Its flesh was pale, translucent, and its face held features that defied immediate comprehension—shifting, unfinished.

Suzanne was the first to speak. “We can’t report this.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Eli whispered, his voice shaking. “They’ll come for it—they’ll… dissect it, study it. They’ll tear it apart.”

It was an unspoken pact, forged in that fragile moment of fear and curiosity. They would keep the alien. The government couldn’t be trusted, and neither could the world. And soon after, when Suzanne gave birth to their son, Roger, the creature stirred. Its eyes blinked open for the first time, locking onto the newborn as though it had been waiting for this arrival.

From that moment, the alien, whom they would later name Richard, began to mimic Roger in ways both innocent and disturbing. It crawled when Roger crawled, learned to walk when Roger did, and over time, its form shifted subtly, blending into something approximating human. But it was always… off. Its face hovered in that unsettling space between imitation and incompletion—the eyes too large, the skin too smooth, the smile just a fraction too wide. It was as if Richard was trying to be human but could never quite reach the finish line.

Yet, to the Whitakers, Richard was family.

---

Twenty-one years later, Richard, now an adult, stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom, examining his reflection with an intensity bordering on obsession. The lines of his face had settled into something distinctly human-like, though that strange smoothness persisted. The hairline was correct, the nose, almost right, but there was always a slight shimmer around his edges, a vague wrongness that unsettled those who looked at him for too long. Richard had tried, for so many years, to fit in. He wore the same clothes as Roger, talked in the same easy tone. But nothing changed the fact that no matter what he did, he remained an echo—an approximation of something he could never fully become.

Roger, on the other hand, was every bit the human Richard aspired to be. Charismatic, easy-going, tall and athletic, Roger moved through life with a sense of effortless belonging that Richard both admired and resented. As the brothers entered their twenties, Roger was dating constantly, finding connections with women who adored his smile, his confidence, the way he filled a room with energy. Richard, by contrast, remained isolated, stranded in his own peculiar body. Despite his best efforts, women recoiled from his gaze, his strange mannerisms. They couldn’t put their finger on it, but they felt it—an uncanny wrongness that prickled beneath the surface.

Roger noticed. He always noticed.

One evening, Roger found Richard hunched over his computer, scrolling through dating apps in frustrated silence. The glow from the screen cast harsh shadows on his face, exaggerating the already awkward angles of his jawline.

“Hey,” Roger said softly, sitting beside him. “You’ve been on those sites for months now. What’s going on?”

Richard didn’t answer at first. His pale eyes scanned through profile after profile of smiling, carefree faces, all of them worlds apart from the hollow reflection staring back at him. “They never respond. Not once.”

Roger sighed, a sympathetic frown tugging at his lips. “Maybe they just don’t… you know… get you.”

“No one gets me,” Richard muttered, his voice tinged with a bitterness he rarely allowed to surface. “It’s like they can sense it. That I’m not… real.”

For a long moment, the room was silent. Then Roger, always the problem-solver, offered what he thought was a solution: “Look, I’ve been thinking. What if we start slow? Build up your confidence a little, you know? There are ways to—uh—hire someone to give you some practice. Just a conversation or a dance, nothing more.”

Richard’s face twisted, his disgust palpable. “I don’t want to pay for someone to pretend. I want something real. I want love.”

Roger was quiet, unsure of how to respond. He had always taken love, or at least the pursuit of it, for granted. But Richard had been different from the start—his needs deeper, his isolation a constant shadow over their lives.

Still, Roger couldn’t stand to see his brother like this. “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s do something else then. We’ll go out, hit a few clubs, meet some real women. I’ll… help you.”

---

That night, they stepped into the pulsating haze of a downtown nightclub, the air thick with sweat and neon. Roger, as always, fit in immediately, his easy charm disarming the crowd, while Richard lingered on the fringes, a figure of silent observation. Roger began approaching women, introducing them to Richard, but the results were predictable—polite smiles turned to puzzled frowns, then quiet rejection.

By the fifth attempt, Roger resorted to what he had hoped he wouldn’t have to do: offering money. Whispering softly to the women, slipping bills into their hands, hoping that just a conversation would help his brother feel something like normal. But even that failed. The women backed away, some outright refusing, others turning their glances into judgmental whispers.

Richard stood alone in the corner, watching it all unfold. The flicker of his uncanny smile, stretched too thin, faded entirely. He saw what Roger could never admit aloud: he was not meant to be part of this world, not in the way he had hoped. His attempts at connection were futile. He would never experience love in the way humans did, because he wasn’t one of them. He had been shaped by them, taught by them, but he remained a hollow reflection of their lives—an echo of something he could never fully possess.

---

In the early hours of the morning, after the night had dissolved into failure, Richard stood on the balcony of their apartment, gazing out over the city. The wind was cold, brushing against his skin, though he couldn’t feel it the same way a human might. Roger joined him, quiet for once, leaning against the railing.

“I’m sorry,” Roger said, finally. “I thought I could help.”

Richard didn’t respond. He watched the distant horizon where the stars—those same stars that had brought him here—burned with the same distant indifference they always had. He realized, in that moment, that his search for love had been a futile quest for something he wasn’t entitled to. And maybe that was the lesson he had to learn.

He was here, but he didn’t belong.

And the stars—silent, eternal witnesses—seemed to agree.