Vespera had risen like it had for ages before it earlier in the day. Now it was once again setting to leave the sky black and void of light on Detriti.
Jezra sighed as she watched the faint red light filter through their window. For as long as she could remember, she had watched the rays of light play through the glass before sleep whisked her away. The orange, red, pinks and occasional yellow patterns the light would make on the wall and how they shifted, enthralled and ignited her imagination. She would stay up into the night watching the fading swirls ebb away from her vision, wishing them to be fairies or sparks of magic.
But as she grew older, that habit faded away—the patterns were no longer wondrous and magical. Nor was the setting light a herald of the mysterious darkness which could hold anything. All it meant was that another day would start and repeat the same cycle again, and again. She longed for adventure, for something new, and though Detriti had many cities across its surface, the places Vespera did not warm were inhospitable. They were places of cold nothingness, devoid of magic, no fantasy creatures hidden on an island or undiscovered continent. Nor was there a distant place like their own land in the sky. Those were tales for children of ancient times, when they knew nothing about the universe, or their place within it.
She had grown older, and in that progression of time, she learned what little there was about the universe. Old histories had nothing more to offer them than the crushing weight of sameness. It was just them, and them alone, on their planet, with a dim light rotating around it in an empty void. Just a single, incredibly ancient legend that said once there was another, dimmer light in the sky, but it had been snuffed out by the god Vespera in jealous anger, as it had inspired them to treacherously believe that, perhaps, they weren't alone, and that Vespera was not the only god. But that light had vanished in a flash one night, and since then, no other light apart from Vespera lit the sky. Even that legend itself was said to be so old as to be unbelievable. No time period or empire laid claim to it, and supposedly it was as old as they themselves were themselves, as a people.
About the only thing that ever offered new ideas and points of view was the study of science, but even that had stagnated of late, as if they had reached the limit of what they could understand. They had postulated the speed of light, the gravity of their planet, and a few other inane things. Yet, even with all those discoveries, science remained empty still, like the night sky.
Jezra turned away from the window as the last ray passed over the horizon. Time had slunk away in her reverie. As she readied her bed and turned off the light, she thought she saw something in the black sky, out her window. A flickering point of light. She checked but couldn't tell if it was a trick of the eye, or maybe a shadow of the setting light from earlier. So she rubbed her eyes and tried to spot it again.
Nothing.
So the night passed, Vespera rose and bathed the day in vermillion. Jezra worked, ate, then returned, as was her typical day to day. The thing she thought she had seen the night before, she reasoned away as a by-product of her melancholy and staring at the dusk too long. She went to sleep as Vespera set when she returned home from her job.
The night passed once again, then the day. That turned to seasons going by, then a full year had gone by. Jezra tried to take a course in the study of Vespera and the physics of light but found that it was stale and offered little more than what was already common knowledge. Vespera orbited them, gave them light, and kept their planet warm. When viewed with tinted lenses and magnifying telescopes, Vespera was a giant roiling ball of flame and plasma and naught else. She quit the course when she was mocked for even postulating that perhaps there once had been more Vesperas in the sky, that had perhaps burned out, or been consumed by Vespera.
Weeks later, as Jezra once again stared at the dusk, feeling the familiar same melancholy overtake her as the black night swelled over the sky, she sat on the edge of her bed. A deep despair washed over her at the thought that there truly was nothing else but her lonely planet and people in the universe. She started to cry as her mind struggled to find a point as to why she and her people even existed. Why they mattered at all?
Several long moments passed, as did the mood. She got up from the bed to wipe her face and saw a flicker of light from the corner of her eye. It tore a fresh sob from her as she rubbed her eye, cursing her vision would be so cruel as to play a trick like this on her again. This time, however, the flicker remained through the veil of her tears. A faint red light at the edge of what could be perceived as light, daring her to look.
But there it was, before her eyes–she couldn't believe it. As the night passed, she watched it, tried looking away from it, then back again to see if it disappeared, but remained each time. Her mind reeled from it, but eventually exhaustion got the best of her and she succumbed to sleep, her head facing the window. Her short slumber was filled with dreams of adventures and discoveries. Of distant lands across oceans, led to by a new light, heralding new things.
The next morning she woke up, giddy, and looked at the brown sky. The light wasn't there. Disappointed, she thought perhaps Vespera was too bright for the little light to be seen. So she impatiently went through her day, excitedly looking up everything she could find about light, how it worked, and how her vision changed in lowlight, needing time to adjust.
Night crept up once again, and now Jezra was waiting. Not watching the shifting sunset, but with the window open and only a dim desk light on, with a blank piece of paper beside her. She was going to record everything she could while she could.
Jezra had not been the only one who had noticed the light. Across the planet, people slowly started to notice the new illumination, something they had never witnessed or given thought to before. A young man managed to measure the wavelength of light that it was emitting, and found it similar to Vespera's own.
As more nights passed, more people noticed, and speculation began to pop up. People who had become placcid in imagination found their minds simmering with what ifs and theories. Over a week it became the topic of all broadcasts and discussions. Most people ignored it as something that would pass, or inconsequential.
Scientists, however, were in a fervor over it. They pointed their telescopes at it, but the tinted lenses that let them view Vespera, obscured the new light. Quickly new telescopes were quickly built, ones with clear glass and shades to obscure Vespera entirely. Still they proved only marginally better than the naked eye, as the light was still only discernible as a point of light through them. They postulated that it may be a far distant thing, reflecting the light of Vespera, especially with the similar wavelengths. There were other theories, though.
Perhaps the light was the birth of a new Vespera to herald a new age for their people? Or the trickster god that appeared in the most ancient legends was real, and had played an elaborate trick on them. Others said it was a pin prick in the fabric of the night that Vespera used to shield them from untoward heavenly bodies, and the light was someone spying upon them.
Over the course of that year, many radio shows began hosting segments where anyone could say their theory on the small light, and the most popular would win a prize, with the potential for even bigger prizes when it was discovered concretely what the light source was.
More individuals began pointing whatever receivers, cameras, and recording devices they could at it. Jezra, with her note book, was the first to record that the flickering had a repeating and steady pattern of dimming then brightening, like small objects passing in front a lamp. Not enough to block it entirely, but enough to dim it. It made her mind think of Detriti revolving around Vespera. A few others had the same thoughts but for the light to be so small and faint, it would mean that the other star, if such a thing existed, was stupendously far away. However it too became one of the many theories circulating around, idle musing in a hall of chatter.
Time continued like it always did. Another year with nothing else discovered about the light. It had been named the Trickster after the old myth, and had several papers written about it in journals and news that made some impressive theories, but nothing definite. That year grew into two, then four, then more. Soon a decade had passed, and the people of Detriti grew accustomed to their new source of light and mystique. Nothing much changed in daily life overall, but more people found themselves inspired, and more fantasy and science fiction stories were written and filmed. An ember of something had been stirred in their hearts.
It was at that turning of a decade, on the eve of the night that Jezra had first seen the light. She had gone back to the class on light, though it no longer focussed on Vespera alone, but now monitored the Trickster at all times. In her free time, after work and late at night, she watched the light with a telescope and radio antenna, and wrote stories about what it could be, even branching out and imagining a night sky full of multi-coloured lights, each one orbited by their own Detriti. This night, however, would prove different to the sort she had grown used to, with the flame of a discovery that had grown to a comforting fire of inspiration.
Her radio, hooked up the skyward antenna and humming with the noise of Vespera, picked up something it hadn’t before.
A tone was coming from the Trickster. Not the random interference Vespera gave off, nor the background radio signals of the city. This had a narrow band of wavelength, and seemed muffled like someone speaking through a curtain. She recorded it for the rest of the night as she wrote her stories. Alas, she was unable to make out anything. The next morning she left the lab supervisor with a note about the tone on his desk for the morning. He was able to detect it as well, and more experienced in filtering out noise than she. He was able to extract a clearer signal, but it was not something he could decipher, so it was sent off to several peers who might be able to.
As that happened though, a breakthrough telescope was turned online, and pointed at the Trickster. This telescope didn’t use visible light but looked at the emitted heat of objects. Normally the technology was used in manufacturing or food, and never to this level of precision or size. As it turned on and oriented towards the Trickster, the operators gasped. The Trickster wasn’t just one light flickering, but rather a multitude of sources, all tightly grouped together, and moving around each other in sync. Not only that, but they were able to use the most stable, centermost one to measure the distance from Detriti to Trickster. That distance was incredibly far, but it was now known.
That distance was incredibly far, but it was a known thing and inflamed people to think of ways to potentially get closer. Yet, they didn’t know what spanned the distance between them and the Trickster, an empty vacuum of nothingness, perhaps their atmosphere extended much higher than they thought, or was there some kind of matter they couldn’t detect containing their atmosphere apart from gravity?
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The telescope sight, and radio signal both kicked up whirlwinds of intrigue and theories again. Wild speculations of aliens, or fantasy creatures abounded, yet now they didn’t seem so wild. Even respected
scientists, politicians and such began to speculate about the exotic explanations.
Within the year people were trying to fly higher and higher. Records were set but soon a limit was imposed, along with a theory. There was no air between them and the Trickster. The atmosphere held to Detriti like a mother holding a blanket over her children. It could be possible to get to the Trickster, but something that pushed itself with its own mass would be needed rather than a plane, a rocket most likely. Plans were drafted but no person had the funds to do it on their own.
Plenty tried but couldn't get their small rockets past the atmosphere, and out of the gravity well. The few scientific societies that gazed skyward came together and pooled their resources. They didn't immediately start building though.
The conglomerate hired mechanic and engineers, then posed the issue to them. How do we get there, do we have to burn fuel the entire way there, and so on. Months passed, and then the remainder of the year, but eventually they made a plan. Perhaps, like the atmosphere, gravity had a limit as well? It made a certain sense to them, as well as the others. After all, if gravity didn't have a limit, surely Vespera would have swallowed them all by now, or drawn Detriti into itself.
With that, they began performing experiments to determine where the limit of Detriti's gravity was. Small uncrewed tests were launched, experiments done; a rough distance was soon found. But all of this took time, three years had passed as the now unified group made their experiments and updated their plans. Minor discoveries were made, sold, and passed into other fields to fund the tests.
The signal still had yet to be decoded, as it was too scrambled by distance and Vespera's interference to understand. Segments seemed to be out of order or missing, erased along with interference. So plans for the first satellite ever designed were drafted, based on the theory for their rocket. It would make a proof of concept, and if it worked, the lack of atmosphere would mean the satellite could get a clearer signal from the Trickster. The blueprints were made, a name for the launch system created, and one chosen for the satellite. It had been named for its simple moniker, Listener, the rocket system that carried it was called the Orbital Assist System.
There was the issue of building the Listener and the O.A.S. It would take three years to build the area to facilitate the launch, then another year to complete and test the associated systems and protocols. Many feared that the Trickster may fade from view before then, or something would halt their plans, interference from the government, religious protests, lack of funding, or numerous other things.
Those fears passed as did time.
Jezra had managed to get a position helping plot the journey of the rocket, and spent her free time with others theorizing about what it would take to get to the Trickster. It was, from what they could tell, life times of travel away by their fastest estimates. She had a secret hope that maybe the signal held secrets to physics they hadn't even dreamed of, ways to crack open the dark shell that encased their sun and planet, and open them up to a place filled with twinkling lights. Perhaps even a way to get to the Trickster. She still wrote, always inspired by what she had taken to calling her deceitful muse, what she had disbelieved had been real those many nights ago.
The construction of the OAS and Listener progressed. Another year passed, and more people felt the lure of the new light ignite their minds, while others lost interest in the new normal fixture in the sky. Thrill seekers tried their luck flying planes as high as they could with the pretense of wanting to get closer to the Trickster. One did set a record, and got a few moment's worth of signal uncorrupted by interference.
That snippet was scrutinized by every institution that was equipped for it, and even ones not. Eventually a pattern was deciphered based on the pure sample and the corrupted, repeated signal. A single word was believed to be said, in a strange dialect with an odd lilting voice. It couldn’t yet be translated, but the sound file was made public regardless. Those few moments of sound fueled the progress of engineers and workers though, spurring them to meet and beat deadline after deadline. Soon, what had felt like only days to them had passed, but truly months had passed. The date for launch loomed ever closer, and the entire team felt the last few weeks and days that separated them slow down from the furious speed of diligent work, to that of time passing while inspected with intense anticipation.
The morning of the launch Jezra prepared a fresh notebook for herself. She didn’t want any prior scribbles to marr the first page of this one. She had a feeling that it would be a momentous event, and the time following would need every unit of space in that notebook to fill. A half filled one just wouldn’t do. She packed it away after marking the day at the top of the first page, with the title “Launch of the Listener” When she arrived at the command center, the area for those not directly involved with the launch was fit to burst.
As she shoved her way through the crowd to a spot with a decent view of the launch pad video. Chatter inside the room was dense, and Jezra struggled to hear the countdown, but she shouldn't have worried. As the first syllable was uttered, the room went quiet. As the countdown went on, no one breathed. Creaks in the floor garnished harsh looks as others shifted their weight, the half cycle felt like an age.
Then the engines ignited.
As one they exhaled as the rocket cleared the gantry, then other breaths were taken, held, then slowly released as it climbed. So much could still go wrong. They didn't know exactly for certain if it would function beyond the atmosphere, or if it would even make it past without a malfunction. They watched with dry eyes as the altimeter began to edge into the red zone. The LOAS was now the highest traveling thing ever built, and it kept going. The pressure readouts had been steadily dropping as the altitude rose, until they reached null pressure.
And the second phase began. The screen went dark as the cameras on the ground could no longer make out details, and the broadcast was transitioning to the onboard cameras. It took only a moment of black nothingness, then a foreseen yet still unexpected thing was shown.
The boosters were gently drifting away from the main body, and below was Detriti. Its red and brown shades punctuated by yellow beads and blue oceans curved beneath the rocket, with Vespera on the horizon, lining it with gold laced light. Gasps and exclamations of wonder sprouted in the silent room. Jezra was transfixed like the rest as the last few minutes of the operation passed, and the slow dance of releasing the Listener began and finished.
Then it was over.
The rocket was finished, and began to de-orbit. The video feed cut off and everyone congratulated each other on a job well down. Jezra had only written a single line down in her notebook. A simple statement of anticipation and then the awe of seeing Detriti from above.
Several hours later, after the first tests of the Listener's systems, she still only had that one line written. She sat at her desk with a window to the side as dusk fell. Doodles of the scenery and continents from above, the curve of the planet lit by Vespera, were scrawled in amateurish skill over the pages. A radio playing music wasn't noticed by her until it stopped and was interrupted by a news bulletin. The Listener was operational and was receiving a steady band of signals from the Trickster. The team in charge of cleaning and decrypting the signal estimated a few weeks to months to decode it. Jezra smiled, and reached for another notebook.
Again, time seemed to blaze by like paper in a bonfire. The usual hubbub came and quieted. The efforts to decode the signal were going strong, but not without false starts. The Listener identified not one repeated broadcast, but several distinct ones, and even more layered on different wavelengths above and below what had been deemed the main message. Soon the first month had passed since launch, with no progress other than the full length of the message's voice, in that ethereal, lilting tone.
Jezra had gotten a copy of it, and listened to it daily. Not to decode it, but to imagine who or what was saying those words. Was the message a question, a statement? Maybe even a warning or declaration of war. Was the speaker still alive or long since dust? She swam through the thoughts and filled pages with her musings and ideas for stories. Maybe even one of them was right.
She churned out theories, fantasies and stories while she helped prepare the next big project. A telescope to be paired with the Listener satellite. It was also unimaginatively named, dubbed the Looker. It was planned to be able to see what the Trickster actually was. To determine if the flickering light was reflected from Vespera, or another source itself.
Another month passed, but this one had a gift with it. The signal had been decoded into two speakers on the main wavelength. The team had begun to create an algorithm to test translations faster than by hand. They published a statement with the breakthrough, and estimated having something intelligible by the end of the year. Right when the Looker was slated to begin construction. The other ground based telescope had been keeping a steady watch on the Trickster, and had been exploring what they could see with different wavelengths of light.
What they could see was confirmed to be reflected light from Vespera. What they didn't expect was that when they tried infrared wavelengths, the void of space lit up with pinpricks of faint heat not from Trickster, but from everywhere else. This information was confusing. The team decided to withhold the findings in case it was an error. That did not stop them from extrapolating a theory about the background heat. Perhaps there were more stars so incredibly distant that the light was too faint to be detected.
Alas they would never be able to know for certain. It would take millions of years for a rocket to reach those zones of heat, and by then it would be as cold as everything else. The best they could do is wait for the Looker to be completed to get more data and a higher definition of the background infrared radiation they saw. The work on that satellite was progressing slowly however, as a group of confused and frightened people had made rumblings in the government about the sanctity of space. An old saying about the sky belonging to Vespera alone made the core of the argument, and construction had been halted to alleviate any concerns the group had.
The launch was delayed for a year due to this, but that did not mean nothing had happened. The team analyzing the signal had translated the opening statement with what they said was a ninety percent accuracy. They had set a date for a release to the public, and hadn't shared the audio with any other research teams. Jezra had seen one of the team shortly after the announcement, and his face looked hollow. She didn't have to wait long however. The audio was released during the upcoming holiday. Jezra sat with her colleagues at the cafeteria while they had the viewer waiting. They chatted about what it said, while Jezra sat with a pit in her stomachs about the face the analyst had on when she saw him.
The viewer crackled as the analyst team lead spoke, and warned that the message may disturb some people, then he faded to blue as a flat audio signal replaced him on the screen. A voice deep with gravitas then spoke.
"We are sorry, but you are alone at the end of time. The universe is undergoing heat death as we record this message, but the humans assure us this message will reach you before your planet succumbs to it."
The room erupted in denials, and nay sayings. Jezra had reflexively clasped her arms to her chest, but the voice kept going.
"As the last people to ever grace this universe with your presence, we didn't wish for you to live without knowledge of what was before or going to happen. Nor did we wish to make you despondent. That is why we of the remaining species that declined ascending, have made a gift for you. We have accumulated all our knowledge and history into a flotilla of vessels, and set them in a fleet to rendezvous with your world."
The collected scientists had quieted, but many had their hands clenched tightly, a few with inky tears in their eyes. Jezra herself wanted to rage at the words, for daring to confirm her darkest fear. Yet the voice continued, uncaring for their distress.
"We—I know this might not reach you. It might be destroyed by an undetectable cloud of [Untranslatable] on the way to you. You might not even evolve sapience in time to hear this message."
The voice choked up as the speaker took a moment, "Nonetheless, we had to try something. Thinking about you sitting in your lonely world surrounded by the corpses of the universe is too much to bear. No one should ever be subjected to that. So we made a way to possibly give you a sky full of stars, like what we have."
What had been a wavering tone grew in steadiness as the speaker continued, "We found a way to convert all the matter in the universe down to a single point. A reset button for everything, and a way to survive it. The issue is that it will only cover one system. It might not even work."
"If you are there, and able to understand me, you should begin to see the fleet expand to encompass your system. The process to renew the universe will take time, and it won't start unless it receives a signal from your world."
"We never used this for ourselves as no one wanted to deprive you of your time in the sun, and we aren't even sure how long it will take to renew everything. The process could pass in a blink of an eye for you, or it could take the rest of your existence to happen. I am sorry we're leaving this on your lap."
The voice paused again, with more audio of rapid breaths than the rustling of cloth.
"I am one of the last of my race, which is why I was chosen to be the voice in the darkness that you hear. There are many more who have recorded their stories and placed them in vessels along this one. The humans, ancient as they are, decided to use a relic of their own as their message. A probe from when they began to explore the universe. I have asked them to allow it to be the one that broadcasts this message."
And the message ended. The researcher that had started the recording came back as did the video feed. He spoke at length about the ramifications of this message, and what it meant for them as a world. That they were alone, but were never the only people to have existed. The distinction that was made for them and the choices they were now presented with.
Did they trust the message? Would they renew the universe or let it die cold with themselves as the last lords over a universal cemetery. Whatever they decided, they had time to decide though. The message had been clear that they would have decades, maybe even a century to decide.
Every single person in the room was watching the screen, even after it went dark. Jezra was miles away in her mind. She knew there wouldn't be a decision made soon, but she knew what her choice was, and what she thought the right choice was. She remembered when she was a child on the cusp of changing to an adult, and the realization then that there was no adventure left to be had. No undiscovered lands, or magic in the world. Well now at the end of time and the known universe, the voices of the dead called out with hope for the last survivors.
Jezra would write, and try to instill that wanderlust of a child back into her world, and convince as many as she could to activate the Alien system and begin everything again. Maybe they would survive the process, maybe not. It would be worth it regardless.