Horror Stories

An Alert from the Future

As of the moment I’m writing this I’m currently a Senior employee of SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Observatory and I urge readers of this message to share it publicly as this alert concerns the future of humanity, our planet and all of space exploration.

Three weeks ago from this moment SETI intercepted a most unusual transmission. Its signal came from outer space without question. What is unusual about it is that it originated very close to Earth’s higher atmosphere, too far to be from an artificial satellite. After being decrypted it yielded a text written in English, the contents of which you are about to read. It unnerved me and all of the people who had access to it. After the team that transcribed it brought it to the attention of their superiors weeks of discussions about its nature ensued. Finally, the higher-ups of the observatory ordered the message not to be divulged, its files to be sealed and to officially disregard it as a “clever” hoax. The reasoning behind it being that the signal was aimed directly at one of our receivers and that its contents were plain English text, not alien in nature, therefore, not our object of study.

Many of my colleagues disagreed with this decision. Clever though one might be, I’ve never met anyone who had the means to transmit a hoax from so far in the upper atmosphere. The signal clearly originated from space and, though close to Earth, it is definitively from a chunk of empty space. There are no known objects in its source and the fact that it was aimed at our receiver at that precise moment makes it clear that whoever initiated this communication knew what he/she was doing and wanted us to get this message. Below is a full transcript of the received text. I urge you dear reader to consider the implications of every word very carefully.

An Alert from the Future. Notes from the 2109 Revelation Incident

Ever since the discovery of the first rogue exoplanet in 1998, OTS 44, interest of the scientific community about such objects never waned, which is why when a large rogue asteroid was detected so close to our Solar System all were keen to study it as fast as possible. The minor planet previously known as 237 Perplexity was first observed in 2052 by the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope). It received a permanent designation as a rogue exoplanet in 2061, after it was determined that its eccentric trajectory was a result of not being caught by the Sun’s gravity. It would just pass by our system in the next years and was currently on approach. The object had a size and mass comparable to the dwarf planet Eris, was beyond the orbit of Neptune, and has currently been renamed 1 Loki after the incident.

The Revelation Incident started innocently enough. In 2079 a group of scientists led by the ISA organized a mission to investigate the origin of this strange object and learn more about the Cosmos. The probe Revelation was then commissioned by the Agency and finished being built in 2088. The International Research and Exploration Ship (IRES) Tiresias was assigned to carry the probe and an unmanned space flight was chartered by the agency to deliver it to said vessel, which was, at that time, in the vicinity of Jupiter. The flight launched a year later and after two years in space the probe was successfully delivered and a new course was set for the Tiresias. This was to be the longest space mission to date, taking 18 years to reach the Perplexity, with scheduled stops along the way to study other Solar System objects until it intercepted the asteroid in its approach path beyond Neptune.

The Tiresias spacecraft was 4 years old by the time it received the probe at the Europa Moon International Space Facility. It carried a crew of five people led by Captain John Herbert Moses, an experienced astronaut. Between the scheduled stops the crew was to stay in hibernation sleep, which slowed down bodily functions. The ship reached the asteroid in august 15, 2109 and the crew were ready and able and started preparations to enter the asteroid’s orbit. Finally, august, 17, the probe was ready to be deployed. The vehicle was to carry a researcher, Jacqueline Meredith, PhD in planetary geology. Revelation made contact with the surface of 237 Perplexity at 9:15 (UTC) that day.