“Alright, I emailed everything over,” I texted Amelie after sending her a document of the transcript we have so far. Hopefully, a fresh pair of eyes can get us on the right track.

“Alright boys, I vote we work on the next file!” Jake proposed with a proud voice.

“But we haven’t finished the first file,” Christian protested while finishing up his chicken.

“I’m oddly with Jake on this one,” I jump in. “The rest of the data in that ‘Endeavor’ file is too corrupt to tackle right now. Let’s work on the other files and see what’s in store. Who knows; it might add context to that first file.”

Christian considered for a moment before nodding. “What’s the next file on the drive?” he asked while turning back towards his computer.

“It’s called ‘Manifest’,” Jake answered while shoving fries into his mouth.

“The audio track on that one is weird,” I jump in while coming up next to Christian. “It has some strange binaural beats or something. It was really strange to listen to.”

“Dude, all of this has been really strange to listen to,” Christian mocked while opening up the file and putting on his headset.

I watch him listen to the file and his facial expression change from pride to confusion. After 30 seconds, I see the confusion grow. After yet another 30 seconds, I can see the questions on the tip of his tongue trying to jump off. He takes off his headset and looks at me with the same confused look.

“Yeah,” I replied, understanding what he was going through. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

He looked back at the monitor, trying to put the pieces together. “This is going to be much harder, isn’t it?” he wondered aloud.

“I haven’t looked at the other files,” I explained while going back to my computer, “but I guarantee you none of this will be easy.”

Jake listened to the file as well on his computer and I could see him mouthing the word ‘what’ over and over again. I put my headset on and opened the file.

There they are; the rhythmic beats that seem to alternate in each ear followed by the loud static hiss and low droning 30 seconds later.

“Why is it every 30 seconds?” I can hear Christian wonder aloud.

“No idea,” Jake answers. “Maybe if there’s audio in there, they’re two tracks spliced together or something.”

“We can try it,” I agree and we set out to work on the file. Whatever this Manifest file is, it has to be something.

Or so I thought.

2am. The entire day, and we have gotten nowhere. No audio filter clears up the sound, especially the hissing static. It just all sounds like rhythmic beeping of some kind in a strange pattern. The hissing segments got clearer, in the way that the static somehow became more pronounced.

Jake was able to clear the static out of the video, but it turns out the static was actually really small repeating symbols sort of like the ones we've been seeing so far.

“This one is by far the weirdest one,” Christian announces our internal agreement. “No audio, no video, just strange data.”

“I’m starting to wonder if it’s not a message,” I propose while rubbing my eyes. “Maybe we’re not supposed to find speech or anything. What if it’s encoding something?”

“Encoding what exactly?” Jake responds. “Are you thinking it’s raw data of some kind that needs to be processed?”

“I have no idea,” Christian answers. “We’ll probably have to back burner that one until we know more.”

“I agree; we can’t waste time on what we can’t process right now,” I agree while going back to my computer. “The next file is called ‘Trials’.”

“‘Trials’, huh? Maybe it will tell us what’s going on,” Jake responds wishing for some answers.

The guys gather around my computer as I open the file and turn up the speakers. The video feed itself was the same; strange symbols and static and faded shapes. However the audio was different. It was a little distorted, like a worn cassette tape, but you could still hear the feed.

It was singing.

Like a large choir singing some anthem. The melody was hypnotic, somber, but patriotic. It was a simple 8 note melodic progression. This time, it wasn’t our own voices; men, women, and children sung, calling out in this melody for all to listen.

The singing quieted down and a man’s voice, not our own, called out in a shouting voice. While distorted, we could understand him.

“My brothers and sisters,” he called out in his shouts. The previously singing voices answered with a roar. “Tonight, we achieve greatness. On this historic day, we take our place as rulers of this star. Never again shall we suffer! We shall become free, formless, and able to enact our will!”

The audience cheered in howling voices.

“Let these songs of pride sound across the heavens,” the man continued among the shouting voices. “For tonight, the song of our evolution shall ring throughout the cosmos. We shall leave our world behind and make a world of our own. A perfect heaven for all. May our golden years last into eternity. For tonight we reach out for infinity!”

The man’s announcement was met by the howling of the crowd as it devolved into the patriotic singing of earlier. Static filled the audio track with just barely audible words. I pause the track as I start putting the track into my audio software.

“It sounds like some kind of big announcement,” Jake wondered aloud while taking a drink from a fresh energy drink.

“But an announcement of what?” Christian questioned, reflecting on the words. “‘Rulers of our star’? ‘Reach out for infinity’? Again with the metaphors.”

“What confuses me is that it sounds like a raw recording,” Jake explained. “As in whoever sent this message recorded this themselves. I didn’t hear my own voice in that recording.”

“Neither did I,” I jump in while adding filters to the audio track to clear it up.

“Then why would they be speaking English?” Christian added.

We all froze in place as we processed the question. If the recording is raw and from wherever this message came from and they’re from another world, they would not be speaking English, much less in such a patriotic speech to their own people. Just who are these messengers?

I finish adding the filters and start the play position where we paused the video and hit my spacebar. We hear the tail end of the speech and the singing once more, this time a little muffled out due to the filters. Then came the static.

“They lied to us,” a voice in the static called out. My voice. “They said the suffering would end. It did not. They made a world just for us to suffer. We were enslaved by the very people meant to help us. We fought back, but what could we do? We only wanted peace; why must we suffer like this?”

The words faded into something different. Muffled…crying? Crying, before it faded into static and never came back. We just sat and stared at my monitor, not saying a word, as the audio track continued with static until it stopped once at the end of the file.

Ding

I get a text message and when I look at it, it’s from Amelie.

Do you have a minute so I can call you? She asks in it. I answer by calling her first. Within one ring, she answers.

“I guess you never changed; always the nocturnal,” she greeted me.

“Not really,” I reply, my voice flat as I try to process this message. “I take it you got somewhere?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t easy,” she began. I put her on speaker for all of us to hear. “There were a lot of metaphors that I’m not getting but it kind of sounds like sailors or travelers who were misled or something. Like they were told to go somewhere but ended up somewhere completely different.”

A perfect heaven for all.

They lied to us. They made a world just for us to suffer.

The pieces were slowly coming together. Her explanation made sense with what we had just uncovered. We were all thinking the same thing but none of us wanted to say it.

“Thank you,” I respond with a sheepish voice.

“Are you guys going to tell me what this is about?” Amelie asked.

A part of me really wanted to tell her everything, but I decided against it. She was more valuable as an unbiased opinion more than anything and if this gets more weird, we would need that.

“We’re working on a secret project,” I explained to her. “We’ll tell you more, but later once we flesh out the details. We’re still too early.”

“Taking on side projects are you?” she asked me in a teasing voice. “At least try and get some sleep, okay? I don’t need to go through sophomore finals week again with you.”

Oh yeah, the one where I had to complete 3 different projects in 2 days and prepare for finals because I was sick most of the year. She has a point; working yourself to death isn’t healthy.

“I’ll do my best,” I assure her. “Thanks for looking into that. I’ll let you know when we need your opinion again.”

I hang up the phone and turn around to face the guys. We can only stare at each other, trying to find some explanation. The explanation right in front of our faces made sense, but was so surreal that it can’t be true.

“Who was it that said we didn’t have enough proof that this came from space?” Jake jumped in accusingly.

“To be fair, we still don’t know for certain that it came from space,” I added, trying my best to keep this explanation on earth. “For example, if it came from space, these aliens speak perfect English in that recording.”

“It wasn’t like the other recordings so it wasn’t translated,” Christian thought aloud while getting up and pacing the small study. “Or at least would’ve had to have been translated during the recording or prior to adding it to the message.”

Jake thought about the possibility for a moment. “That would imply whoever made the message knew that the ones receiving it speak English. That’s pretty hard to believe.”

“I agree with Jake on this one,” I add while looking at the other files. “That’s a stretch of possibility all to make the space hypothesis fit. But we also can’t explain the other recordings that seem to auto-translate somehow while sounding like us.”

Christian thought about it and nodded. “You guys are right. At the very least, we don’t know how some of the recordings, presumably made by the ones who sent the message, seem to translate to suit the listener and sound like them too all the while none of us having any recollection of making such a recording.”

Christian’s right. We don’t even know the basics of that weird trait of the message. If we don’t know that, we can’t hypothesize how this recording contained English. It’s very possible that it was translated for us but since we don’t understand that mechanism, we can’t say for certain.

I save the project and close it down, considering getting some sleep due to the late hour.

“There is one more thing to explain,” I add and head back to the NAS machine containing the corrupted drive with the ominous ‘it has begun’ message still displayed on its screen. “Why this? This segment of the data seems out of place. Is it a warning?”

I hit a key on the keyboard and the text fades into the usual array of sounds, static, and symbols before returning back to the original text once again.

“So far, we haven’t found the data that makes the screen,” Christian explained. “I’m curious as to where it’s coming from, but we know precious little.”

Christian came over and hit the keyboard as well and the display went through the usual cycle before returning to ‘it has begun’.

I decided to have a go again and hit the enter key on the keyboard. The symbols danced across the screen once more, as it always does.

But it didn’t stop.

We watched on as we went past the 10 second mark and the symbols continued across the screen, the static now joined by a strange beeping like tone. The tone sounded sort of similar to what we heard on the Manifest track. I continued to hit random keys but nothing changed.

Suddenly, the screen went black with a small white cursor at the top left hand corner. This was beyond strange and not something I would have expected.

The screen changed once more.

We felt our hearts sink as we saw the white cursor change into text.

//: Can you hear me? :\

//: -> _

Just what the hell is going on?