Catherine, Kuba, and Lena explore an abandoned observatory and find a computer that seems to be answering a signal from space.
Summer had turned the edge of town into a place of long shadows and humming insects, and that was exactly why Catherine, Kuba, and Lena chose it. Beyond the last streetlamp, where the road gave way to the forest, stood the old observatory: a stone tower with cracked windows, a rusted dome, and a reputation for strange sounds after dark.
The adults said it was empty. The children thought that made it interesting.
They waited until afternoon light had thinned to gold, then slipped inside through a tilted side window with torches, a packet of biscuits, and Lena's notebook tucked under her arm. Dust swirled in the beam of their lights. The air smelled of damp paper, old metal, and something else, something sharp and warm, like a machine that had just been switched off.
In the middle of the main room stood a computer so large it looked as if it had been built for a spaceship instead of a school. On the desk beside it lay a notebook covered in rows of strange symbols, numbers, and marks that looked almost like a code.
Catherine bent over the pages, frowning. Kuba reached for the keyboard, but before his fingers touched it, the screen flashed to life.
A burst of crackling filled the room. Short and long pulses stuttered from the speakers, steady as a heartbeat. Lena froze. "That isn't static," she whispered. "It's a message."
Catherine began copying the symbols as fast as she could. Kuba leaned closer, watching lines of zeros and ones race across the screen. Then the machine gave a sudden warning beep, red letters flaring across the display:
WARNING: TRANSFER COMING.
Blue light spilled from the ceiling. The floor gave a low shudder under their feet. Somewhere deep inside the observatory, something began to answer.