Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

One summer long ago my family was staying with relatives in a suburb outside of Toronto. It was late night, and standing in their small backyard and looking towards the city we suddenly noticed something mysterious: a large, saucer-shaped metallic object was looming over the buildings in the distance, glinting the same orange city light that had smote out the stars I was used to. We asked each other what it was, scrutinizing it from afar. It didn’t move, didn’t appear to have lights or make sound. It just hovered. I knew what everyone was thinking: that thing looks like a UFO. And we were partly accurate, because we certainly couldn’t identify it. I was just at that age when I was trying to prove to adults what a grown up I already was by elucidating adult-like points of view on things, and at the same time subject to the wiles of my imagination. Of course there was some down-to-earth explanation, but I still waited to hear sirens, or something to indicate that other people had caught sight of this thing in the sky. The call of the fantastic sent an eerie shiver down my spine. What would tomorrow look like, I tried to imagine, if this was the night of first contact?