An astronaut in free fall toward a planet’s surface. Spinning wildly out of control and disoriented. His spacecraft plummets ahead; racing him toward the surface. Leaving a black trail of smoke. Ripped from his spacecraft and now tumbling through the planets lower atmosphere.
He struggled to bring his hand to his chest as he felt around for the ripcord to his chute. Finding it on his left breast, he pulled... nothing. Desperately he tried again, and again. Still nothing. Enveloped in the smoke of his spacecraft the visual through his visor was just black. He put a finger on the right side of his helmet and tried his radio, but his words; muffled, inaudible huffs as he could not catch his breath. Bullets of debris darted past his head.
Moments passed, the smoke cleared and the ground became visible. The sun sat off in the horizon but he fell toward land veiled in night. Still hundreds of kilometers from the surface. He was losing altitude rapidly. Placing his hands and legs outward in an attempt to stabilize his body; to try to control his spin. Moments of brief stability followed by spinning out of control. After a few attempts he was successful and able to hold his position. His breathing had now improved from the stability of his body. He tried his radio again.
"If anyone can hear me, please help!" He screamed, releasing his hand and in return just static. "I repeat, if anyone can hear me I need your help!" More static.
If anyone was still aboard the spacecraft they couldn’t answer his call. He watched as the ship horrifically crashed into the surface. Smoke billowing up into the sky. He knew his end was near. He tried the ripcord again, still nothing.
He closed his eyes. He could see his father playing football with him and his brother in the fallen leaves at the old cottage. His girlfriend and himself in his fathers car the night that he totaled it. He, holding his brother and mother, at his father’s funeral.
He opened his eyes; the ground now seconds away. He put his arms in front of his face just before impact-
Jake Morris, was a thirty something communications engineer whose face hadn’t seen a razor in a little over a week. He slept slouched with his face buried in his knees, toes dug deep into a leather sofa in the Communications lab in the Johnson Space Center of NASA, Houston, Texas. In his favorite old Rock Band T-shirt from the 2040’s and a pair of classic denim pants; he was a bit of a fashion outsider. It had bee a long evening. His team had been monitoring incoming transmissions and had left him exhausted.
Fellow communications engineer Angie Watt sat at an enormous console in front of large monitors on the other side of the room. The console was an SSL 8000G. It looked like a sound board that would’ve been used at the turn of the century to record the world’s biggest pop artists, which is exactly what it was designed to do. However, this board was being used to record incoming radio wave transmissions from space.
Listening intently through one headphone. She was leaning over the board. She slid the volume control fader up ever so slightly, and tilted her head into one of her headphones as if to increase the level. Her left fingers gripped a pen, tied down to a pad of paper, she would write down co-ordinates and times.
To Jakes right, with his feet on the far edge of the console, leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and eyes shut, was Shuhei Saito. A mechanical Engineer and an integral part of Jake’s team. Shu, as he was referred to, was responsible for ensuring that the equipment was maintained, if and when he wasn’t sleeping.
Too much weight distributed to the back of Shuhei’s chair and his legs slipped from the edge of the console. He had that feeling like he was falling suddenly. He quickly jolted awake and disrupted Jakes nap at the same time.
Jake saw that Shuhei had knocked his leather jacket from the edge of the console and was now lying on the floor. "Shu, what the hell man?"
Jake reached for his jacket. Shu snagged it just a second before and handed it to him.
"Sorry Jake. I must’ve passed out."
Jake looked up as Shu stretched out.
"What time is it?" Jake looked at his arm, a clear glass band rested around his wrist with digital numbers ticking across the band. The insignia said "Hamilton".
Founded by visionary CEO Billy Hart, a company to have the first ever trillion dollar evaluation. He took Hamilton Corp. up from a modest watch company, they now designed and manufactured the most cutting edge wearable technology for the home consumer. The Hamilton Band could send and receive messages, make voice calls, give a person access to there bank account, contacts, photos, music, just about everything plus it looked great!
Right now Jake was using his as a watch. It read 2:33am. "Shit! I gotta get going guys. Anything ground breaking tonight Angie?"
"Another exciting night Jake." She stated "and you’re not missing anything if you need to leave."
"Thanks." He said swinging his bomber jacket on one arm at a time, and placing a baseball cap on his head. "I’ll see you guys tomorrow night. Tess is done her shift so I was going to go get her and grab some late night eats."
"No problemo Jakey." Shu said lightheartedly. "We can hold this down for the rest of the night. Don’t keep her waiting!"
"K, thanks." Jake replied throwing a canvas satchel over his shoulder (a classic look that he thinks will never go out of style) he headed for the door. "Bye Angie." He said to her as the glass doors opened automatically, to no reply as she had her head tilted into her headphones again. Jake proceeded through the exit.
Sliding closed Shu’s attention is turned to the couch he walks over and falls across the full length.
"You’re not going back to sleep!" Angie commanded Shu sternly. She held the headphones up in the air with her back still turned to him as if to signal "your turn". "I’m on break."
Shu peeled himself up from the leather and stomped over to Angie. "Thanks, so much." He said in an accidentally cynical sounding tone while taking the headphones from her hand.
"Would you like anything?" she asked.
"Coffee?" He answered with a question.
"Alright, I will return in fifteen." She said and slipped through the sliding doors.
Shu settled in and snapped both headphones over his ears.
Outside of the space center Jake walked through the main parking lot toward his car. He approached a stark black car with the Hamilton insignia on the front. He considered himself a "Hamilton Man." It’s a sleek two person, sports vehicle, with low mileage and only a few years old. His car was something he clearly took pride in. Opening the driver’s door he slung his bag across the front to the passenger seat and got in. Looking at his band he noticed a "missed call" notification flashing across the glass. It was from his girlfriend Tess.
"Shit." He said, to no one, started his car and drove away.
Angie came back into the lab with two cups of coffee to find Shu had moved to the couch and was sleeping again. "You’ve gotta be kidding." She said to herself as she set her coffee down on the console. She placed Shu’s on the table beside the couch and went back to listening to the radio waves.
She placed the headphones on, she immediately stopped and leaned in again. A unique frequency had been coming through. This wasn’t anything new; they had to rule out frequencies caused by earth interference all the time. Planes, satellites, cell towers, weather can all cause interference with their receivers. She started to record the numbers. It started again. Short bursts interspersed with long dashes, she noticed a pattern.
"Shu, are you awake?" Angie asked, but he was out hard. "Shu wake up!" She through a small notepad at him, abruptly interrupting his sluber. He scrambled to sit up on the couch. He rubbed his eyes. "What, what, what?" He was confused.
"Get over here."
He rose to his feet and made his way to the console.
"K, what’s up?" He asked.
"Listen." Angie insisted handing him a set of headphones. "Turn on the printer."
Shu reached over to a machine that was likely a hundred years old and flipped the power on. It started printing out the waveforms. Bursts and dashes of the sound they were listening to coming to life on long sheets of paper.
Jake pulled up outside the country bar where Tess worked. She had been waiting, leaning against a brick wall in her uniform; plaid shirt with cut-off jean shorts. The neon sign hanging over her head, had been turned off for the night. It had a large set of bull horns above words that read "The Bull Horn".
She glanced up as Jake approached in his car. "Hey Babe!" he said as she opened the passenger side door. "How was your shift?"
"I’m starving!" She replied. Looking at her glass band she read through the messages she missed while working that night.
"Any studying tomorrow or you want to grab some food?" he asked.
"I’ve got some work but I just want a burger so bad." She said, which was odd as she never wanted burgers.
"Lets’ go." He said and they pulled away from The Bull Horn.
A few minutes into the drive and Tess was still preoccupied by her band. Reading messages and looking at pics. Jake would glance over periodically trying to quietly gain her attention. Stopped at a light he leaned in almost placing himself between her and her wrist.
"Sorry, Jake. I just haven’t been able to talk to my sister all night and she’s dealing with some rough shit right now. I’ll be done in a minute and we can have a good night." She said pushing his face out of her line of sight.
"Alright babe." He said as the light turned green.
A few minutes later they arrived at a late night diner "Al’s Diner". Breakfast or dinner till 4am every day. Jake parked the car and the two headed to the front doors. They seated themselves in a booth near a window. Looking around the décor was primarily made up of movie posters from the 20’s and 30’s. It was retro, cool and lame all at the same time.
A waiter came over and handed them menus but Jake already knew what he wanted and declined. Tess looked over the menu.
"What are you getting Jake?" she asked.
"The usual." He said and followed it up in his best commercial voice. "Fries smothered in ranch dressing, simulated bacon and wash it down with a high-fructose, corn syrup based, carbonated beverage."
Tess wasn’t amused, she was hungry.
"You getting that burger you wanted?"
"I don’t really feel for a burger, I might just get a salad." She replied.
"But I thought you wanted- never mind." He laughed. "Anyway, I think I should go see Charlie tomorrow. Go get my money."
"Yeah, I wouldn’t hold my breath." She said and took a brief pause. "You need to call your mom is what you need to do. If you ever want to get that money from your brother, tell her and she’ll make him."
"Then I would have to talk to my mom." He grimaced "I’m not really in a place to want to talk to her right now. I’ll just go see him first thing in the morning and take care of it."
Jakes band alerted him to a message coming in from Shu.
"Who’s that?" Tess asked.
"It’s Shu." He continued to read the message. "Umm something big is happening. Hate to do this but I need to go."
"Don’t leave me here." She looked disappointed "At least drop me off on the way. I’ve got to get some sleep. I don’t feel like going in with you and wasting my night again."
"Ok, let’s get it to go." Jake signaled the waiter.
Jake ran into the Communications Lab to find Shu and Angie both wearing headphones. They were deep in papers being spit out of a machine tracking the radio wave forms of the frequencies. Shu looked back at Jake took off his headphones and handed them over.
"Dude, this is amazing. It’s been non-stop for nearly two hours. As soon as we determined a pattern I sent you that message." Shu said.
Jake had no expectations as he placed the headphones over his ears. To the unassuming the sounds might seem like nothing, but to three science nerds this was the most exciting day of their lives.
"A distinct pattern..." Jake paused. He looked to Shu. "Origin?"
"It’s coming in from a targeted source in Proxima Centauri." Shu explained. "In short bursts and long dashes similar to that of Morse code. If you can’t already tell." Shu had already been attempting to resolve the perceived message referencing Morse.
Jake took his headphones off. "Is this what we think it is?" he asked the other two.
"It’s so much more." Angie piped in.
"Can we determine if this is a response to the 2036 Reach Mission?" Jake asked.
In 2036 NASA targeted dozens of the closest star systems that had what they considered the ideal habitable planets. Ones that were located in their star’s "Goldilocks Zone". The messages were simple and should be simple to interpret. Following a blue print set out using Morse code intelligent life should have a good chance of interpreting the information and should the technology be in place, send out a response. The original message was simple "Hello. We are Earth, we are peaceful." It was dubbed Operation Reach.
"Is it Morse?" Jake asked.
"I’ve been translating through an augmented version of Morse." Shu started "There is a distinct pattern, and logic to the incoming transmission. It’s like they took the Morse message we sent and adapted it for themselves. Possibly an improvement on what we used."
"What have you made out from the message?" Jake inquired.
"The co-ordinates place it in Proxima Centauri." Shu said "I think I’ve got it sort of figured out. It appears to be saying-"
"We hear you, we hear you!" Angie cut in. "Isn’t this amazing! Listen again, it’s incredible!"
Jake was clearly excited but checked his emotions quickly. Reserved, he listened with one ear again and then turned to the other two.
"Who else knows about this right now?" He asked. "There are people who don’t need to know yet."
"Just us three right now." Shu said.
"I don’t think I want too many others knowing just yet. I don’t want this in the wrong person’s hands right now." Angie and Shu understood implicitly what that meant. The Chief of the Astronauts Office, Helen Garrison was the last person Jake wanted finding out about this. Until they had all of the information and everything was in his department’s control. "Let’s discuss this in the morning with Carson, and we can figure out what to do with this information."
Carson was a veteran in the department. His father was part of the team that sent the 2036 message he would surely want to know. He was extremely intelligent, and the only person Jake ever felt compelled to answer to.
After about two and a half hours the transmission ended. Everyone set their headphones down, jaws dropped.
"Wow!" Angie said.
"Let’s get this contained." Jake looked at the papers and supporting documents. "This was an ordinary, uneventful evening in the Communication Lab."
"Ha ha!" Shu laughed. "Got it" he immediately started cleaning up the room.
"We can talk about this with Carson tomorrow and figure out our plan." An alert on Jakes Band went off. "I’ve gotta answer this, Good job today guys."
He turned around and swiped his band to answer a call.
"Kind of early isn’t it babe?" It was nearly six am. He looked up at Angie and Shu with their shit eating grins and his face turned white. "I’m on my way. No, I can get there."
He swiped his band again to disconnect. He just stared blankly at his wrist. Not really focused on anything.
"Everything ok?" Angie asked.
"No." he stated. "It’s my brother, Charlie. I gotta go."
He walked through the sliding doors and out of the building.
Angie and Shu just