The Message

He spent a week preparing the transmission.

He did not tell his mother what he was planning, not because he was hiding it but because he wanted to do it right first and explain after. He used his grandfather's calculations as a starting point and checked them against everything he knew, correcting for the eighteen months that had passed since his grandfather had transmitted, recalculating the position of the source relative to the Earth's current position in its orbit.

He decided what to send.

His grandfather had sent the prime numbers, which said we understand mathematics. Nico thought about what to add. Something that said something different. Something that said something about what it was like to be here, receiving a signal, trying to reach back across an incomprehensible distance.

He settled on the Fibonacci sequence, which was the pattern that appeared in shells and flowers and galaxies, the pattern that showed up everywhere in nature as if the universe had a preferred way of growing. It was not just mathematics. It was mathematics that described the shape of things.

He also added one thing of his own. At the end of the sequence he transmitted a simple repeating pulse, seven beats, evenly spaced. Not a code. Just a heartbeat. Just the most basic way he could think of to say: something is here, something is alive, something is listening.

He transmitted on a clear Thursday night in November, the observatory cold and dark around him except for the glow of the equipment. The transmission took four minutes and twenty seconds. He watched the signal leave on the monitor, climbing out through the atmosphere and into the dark.

It would take forty-six years to arrive.

He would be fifty-seven years old if it ever got a reply. His mother would be very old. The observatory might not even still be standing.

None of that felt sad to him. It felt serious in a good way, the way things feel when they are part of something larger than yourself.

He wrote everything up in his green notebook, every calculation and every decision and the exact time and frequency of the transmission. He wrote a note at the end that was addressed to whoever came next, the way his grandfather's letter had been addressed to him.

He put the note inside the back cover of the green notebook and put the notebook on the shelf next to the twelve others.

Then he went downstairs and knocked on his mother's door and told her everything.

She listened without interrupting, which she was good at. When he finished she was quiet for a moment.

"You transmitted without asking me," she said.

"Yes," he said. "I am sorry about that part."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Your grandfather would have done exactly the same thing," she said. It did not sound entirely like a criticism.

"I know," Nico said. "I found his letter."

She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them they were slightly bright. "He never told me," she said quietly.

"He was waiting to see if anything happened," Nico said. "I think he ran out of time."

She nodded slowly. She looked past him at the ceiling, which was the direction of the observatory above them.

"Forty-six years," she said.

"For the signal to arrive," Nico said. "And then however long for a reply. If there is one."

"There might not be," she said.

"There might not be," he agreed. "But Grandpa thought there might. And I think there might. And now we have both said so." He paused. "That feels like something."

His mother looked at him for a long time. Then she stood up and put her arm around his shoulders and they stood together in the small warm office with the dark sky outside the window and Sector Nine somewhere above them, quiet and distant and full of whatever it was full of.

The signal was still up there, pulsing away in the dark. It had been pulsing for at least eighteen months that they knew of. It might have been pulsing for much longer than that. Long before his grandfather noticed it, long before anyone with a receiver was in a position to hear it.

Short short long short long long short.

And now, somewhere in the frequency ranges of deep space, heading outward at the speed of light, there was an answer.

***The End***