BECOME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR
By: Priyosi Sarkar
Priyosi Sarkar is a speculative fiction writer from West Bengal, India, writing sci-fi and myth-inspired stories that explore power, identity, and the future. Her work spans multiple platforms and languages, including Hindi and Bengali.
For two hundred years, humanity listened to the silence of space.
We built machines to hear what human ears never could. Giant observatories rose from deserts, mountains, and oceans, all pointed toward the dark. We listened for patterns, for voices, for proof that the universe was not as empty as it seemed.
But nothing ever answered.
No signals.
No voices.
No sign that anything else was out there.
For two centuries, the universe remained silent.
Eventually, people stopped expecting an answer.
The search became routine. Scientists monitored frequencies, recorded static, archived silence. Most believed that if life existed beyond Earth, it was too far away,or too different,to ever reach us.
Then, on a quiet night in 2189, the silence ended.
It began at the Helios Deep Space Observatory. At 02:14 AM, every monitor in the control room lit up at once. A signal had appeared. It was clean. Structured. Artificial.
Not random noise.
Not cosmic interference.
A transmission.
Within minutes, the observatory was in chaos. Signals like this had been studied in theory for generations, but no one expected to witness one.
The source was impossible to identify. It had no clear origin point, only that it came from deep space, far beyond any known human satellite, station, or probe.
By sunrise, every major scientific network on Earth was watching. The message repeated continuously.
A sequence.
A pattern.
A language.
For sixteen hours, the world waited while linguists, physicists, and AI systems worked to decode it.
Cities paused. News channels stopped broadcasting anything else. Billions waited for the first true message from beyond Earth.
At 6:42 PM, the transmission was translated.
The room fell silent as the words appeared across the main screen.
One sentence.
Short. Clear. Impossible.
“You took longer than expected.”
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Around the world, millions stared at their screens in disbelief. The sentence was simple. But its meaning was devastating.
It did not sound like a greeting.
It sounded like recognition.
Not, "Who are you?"
Not, "We found you."
Not, "Hello."
It sounded like they had been waiting.
Watching.
Expecting humanity to arrive at this moment. As the world struggled to process what it meant, the signal changed. A second line began to appear.
Slower this time.
Letter by letter.
The room held its breath.
And then the next sentence completed:
“Begin again.”
