by David Mogolov
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/BMWX1P
Tourists atop the Arc de Triomphe were the first to see the light, which appeared for about ten seconds, on June 8, 2015. A Belgian schoolteacher took the clearest photo, the one that ran worldwide in the early days before the truth was known. Arguments were heated: was the light coming up from the ground, or down from the sky? Television news shows brought on experts of all stripes: astronomers, retired generals, priests, physicists, cultists, politicians, filmmakers, pilots, shamans, hosts of paranormal investigation shows on History Channel. All were asked the same question: What was the conical light that hung over the 15th Arrondissement?
Near the light, it had been hard to distinguish from the regular sky. A reporter at the Volontaires Metro station said that at ground level the change was minor, as if someone had turned a dimmer from 75% to 100%, or as if a moderately cloudy sky had suddenly cleared, or as if a mild hangover were lifted, replaced by a blissful sobriety, or as if a struggled-over simile fell into place quite suddenly and a spark of joy and accomplishment swept over the mind of the writer. He was unsure what best to compare it to, it turned out.
For several days, the world debated, but with nothing in the way of new evidence, all but fanatic conspiracy theorists moved on.
On June 15th, the light returned, but this time it transmitted an image:
Benedict Cumberbatch. Perhaps, the skeptics thought, this is a message from aliens, after all.
The actor’s representatives expressed bafflement. Mr. Cumberbatch, they said, had no involvement in the phenomenon, and was in fact in Vancouver, British Columbia, shooting a reboot of Hotel for Dogs.
Reddit went wild. A subreddit devoted itself to a geographic analysis of the routines of everybody associated with Cumberbatch, per his IMDB records. Over the course of their work, they outed a second unit director, doxxed a head of catering, lead to the wrongful arrest of Cumberbatch’s dogwalker, and for reasons nobody quite understands, sent feces-tainted chocolate-dipped strawberries to a publicist for the graphic novelization of Atonement.
After a week or so with no breaks in the case, the world’s news representatives returned to their focus on sharks. Until:
An advertisement for Coca-Cola lit the sky for 20 seconds.
That night, French rioters burnt a Coke bottling plant to the ground. Coca-Cola denied any role in the projection upon the Paris skyline.
Over the days that followed, a succession of images appeared in the sky over the 15th Arrondissement, none lasting more than 15 seconds.
A scrappy dog in a cone color and t-shirt. Everybody loved this.
A Disney parks Mac and Cheese bread cone. Fewer people loved this. Disney denied all involvement.
A Sno-Kone. Nobody knew quite why. Again, no claim of sponsorship.
A simple sugar cone. Parisians appreciated the simplicity.
Inexplicably, The Dress. Clearly blue and black.
The world was no closer to an explanation. National and international task forces had been set up in the 15th, waiting the lights, trying to detect a source, to lay blame for the interruption of the Paris skyline all summer.
On July 28th, it came to an end. A loud buzzing came over the city, and suddenly the light flickered back into place.
In rapid succession, all the non-Cumberbatch imagery repeated and vanished. The dog, everybody’s favorite lingered for a moment.
And then the empty beam hung for ten minutes, followed by the final vision delivered to Paris—and to the world—that summer:
Cumberbatch.
He appeared, flickered and then rapidly intensified, a brightness emerging from his confident gaze, a flash, almost nuclear, bathing the City of Light in a glow that frightened them to their cores. They were sure that this, finally, was the end of civilization. The aliens or the terrorists, for whatever reason, had chosen a talented, peculiarly handsome British actor as the means by which France would meet its end.
Life went on in Paris. Nobody ever determined the source of the lights.
Hotel for Dogs was completed, moved across Canada to shoot in Montreal , as it had been re-imagined by the producers as Hôtel pour Chiens: Caniches à Paris. Cumberbatch won Best Actor.
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David Mogolov put this site together. He’s a writer, comedian, and monologist who tweets at @davidmogolov. Get in touch if you want to be involved at Out of Stock.