{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Audius","provider_url":"https://audius.co","title":"WHEN THEY SAW US by Justin Empire • Audius","description":"WHEN THEY SAW US\nImagine discovering a doorway to another world.\n\nNot a distant planet. Not another galaxy. A world existing impossibly close to our own, hidden beyond a portal that humanity never knew existed.\n\nWhen a small group of explorers steps through, they expect the greatest scientific discovery in history.\n\nInstead, they find a civilisation.\n\nThe world beyond the portal is breathtaking — vast cities beneath strange skies, unfamiliar landscapes and a society that appears remarkably advanced. At first, the explorers believe they have found an entirely separate branch of intelligent life.\n\nThen they are discovered.\n\nTheir presence becomes the biggest story on the planet. The inhabitants watch television coverage of the strange visitors from another world.\n\nAnd then something inexplicable happens.\n\nAcross cities, villages and distant settlements, people stop moving.\n\nOne by one, they freeze where they stand.\n\nSome collapse. Others remain perfectly upright, motionless as statues. Within minutes, enormous parts of the population have become completely unresponsive.\n\nThe explorers are horrified.\n\nThey haven't attacked anyone.\n\nThey haven't released a weapon.\n\nThey haven't even spoken to most of the people who have been affected.\n\nSo why did seeing them cause this?\n\nAs panic spreads, the humans become trapped in a desperate race against time. The civilisation they came to study is collapsing around them, and the only people who may be able to save it are the very beings whose faces appeared on the television screens.\n\nBut the deeper they investigate, the stranger the mystery becomes.\n\nAncient records suggest that this world may have encountered humanity before.\n\nThe inhabitants know things they shouldn't know.\n\nSymbols resembling human history appear in places that pre-date civilisation on Earth.\n\nAnd somewhere beneath the surface of this extraordinary world is evidence of a connection between the two species that could change everything the explorers believe about where humanity came from — and why this world was hidden from us.\n\nNow the explorers must find a way to awaken the people they've inadvertently turned to stone before it is too late.\n\nBut there is one question they cannot escape:\n\nWhat did the inhabitants see when they looked at humanity?\n\nBecause whatever caused them to freeze wasn't fear.\n\nIt was recognition.\n\nWHEN THEY SAW US\n\nSome worlds are separated by distance. Others are separated by a secret.","html":"","width":500,"height":480,"thumbnail_url":"https://v.monophonic.digital/content/baeaaaiqsede3jb7bdoauqtbx5o6eu4tfsok7qklvkvofgc3p3vpg5oilrvhqw/480x480.jpg","thumbnail_width":480,"thumbnail_height":480,"author_name":"Justin Empire","author_url":"https://audius.co/kissinginlove","cache_age":3600}