free-for-all story #3 : Are you talking to me?
It’s time for another free-for-all story! The rules are the same as before. For those who are new to this, here’s a summary :
* Anyone can participate, even if this is your first time to the site.
* Read what’s already been written, then you can write whatever you want, except don’t use any profanity or vulgarity or “adult” situations.
* You can write from one sentence to a couple of paragraphs, but don’t go longer than that.
* If two people write at about the same time, the first one posted will be kept if there’s continuity problems. (Sorry, but that’s the only fair way. You can save your comment in another text editor and refresh the page to see if anyone has added a comment since you started writing.)
* You are not allowed to write in back-to-back comments, even with a different alias; let everyone get a chance to add their piece. After someone else writes, you can write again.
That’s it. Now let’s get started. And, oh yeah, have fun. 🙂
*****
It was just after midnight at the extraterrestrial monitoring facility, and George had his feet propped up on his desk and was dozing off, dreaming of Krispy Kreme glazed donuts, when suddenly the sound of static in his headphones startled him. He looked at the monitor and couldn’t believe what he saw — there was an unknown signal coming from outer space. Normally there’s a few unidentified signals per month that get picked up, but they’re quickly dismissed as coming from Earth. But this signal was unlike anything he had ever witnessed. He yelled for his manager to get in there, then he verified that the signal was being recorded.
The transmission lasted about 5 minutes and had some obvious patterns, but they didn’t know what it meant. The computer couldn’t pinpoint the source, except that it was definitely from outside Earth’s orbit. A group of experts immediately began trying to decrypt the message, and they suspected…