Shadows from the Void

De: Darlene Zagata

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Before the Silence

The transmission traveled for three million years.

It moved through the void between galaxies, a whisper of electromagnetic energy so faint that no instrument designed by human hands should have detected it. Yet on a Tuesday morning in March, buried within the cosmic background radiation that bathes Earth in the universe's primordial glow, Dr. Mara Ellion's monitoring station in the New Mexico desert picked up something impossible.

A pattern. Repeating. Regular.

Like a heartbeat.

She ran the data through every filter she knew, convinced it was interference—a glitch, terrestrial noise, the echo of some satellite's dying gasp. But the signal persisted, growing stronger with each pass. It pulsed with a rhythm that suggested deliberation, intelligence, intention.

Mara saved the file at 4:47 AM and titled it Anomaly_031724.wav. She planned to review it after sunrise, after coffee, after sleep.

She never got the chance.

At 4:48 AM, every star in the sky flickered and died.

Seven seconds of absolute darkness blanketed the world. Seven seconds where satellites tumbled blind through orbit, where GPS systems failed, where the International Space Station's crew floated in a void so complete they questioned whether reality itself had ceased.

Then the stars returned.

But humanity was no longer alone.

Across six continents, in cities and deserts and frozen tundra, they stood—hooded figures with no visible faces, eyes burning like distant red stars. Motionless. Silent. Watching.

The world's governments called emergency sessions. The media coined a thousand names. Religious leaders proclaimed the end times. Scientists demanded rational explanations.

But in her desert station, surrounded by equipment still crackling with residual interference, Mara Ellion stared at her screen and knew the truth that would take the world weeks to accept:

We didn't discover the signal.

The signal discovered us.

And something had answered.