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Not until that moment.

I turned the envelope over in my hands.

The postmark told me that the letter had been sent weeks earlier. I ripped it open, feeling a stab of anxiety. Small talk, pleasantries, just saying hello – that wasn’t Andrew Black. This meant that something was happening, or had happened, and I was only hearing about it now.

Inside, I found a single Polaroid picture and a small folded note.

The photograph showed a black sphere, resting on what I took to be Andrew’s desk. He’d placed a ruler next to the object, and though the Polaroid was a little fuzzy, it seemed to indicate a diameter of around ten centimetres. I struggled to make out much more, partly because it was slightly blurred, but also because the sphere was so utterly black. The most diffuse crescent moon of light touching the thing’s left side, and an equally faint shadow on the bench to its right, were all that gave it away as three-dimensional.

The object – whatever it was – looked as black as a hole.

And it bothered me.