“Go, spill!” Rashi exclaimed, sitting down and folding her legs into the chair in a way that hurt Nick's knees just by looking at how they bent.

Nick was already regretting his decision to do this, and had spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out ways to avoid this conversation. But he knew that Rashi would be like a dog with a bone if he kept quiet now; and even if it wasn't already too late to get of this now, her excitement was contageous enough that he was starting to actually want to tell her. (How Rashi, who knew nothing about the signal yet, was showing a higher level of excitement than Nick did himself was just Rashi being her usual self)

“Rash…” he started. “Before I tell you. One! Promise that this will stay between us for now. And Two; I don’t even know what this is yet”

She kept quiet, looked back with a serious look which was completely unlike her and gave a firm nod, gesturing for Nick to continue.

“You know how I'm kind of into amateur astronomy, right?" he began, and Rashi gave a quick laugh.

"...kind of into? Nick, you are the biggest geek between here and Betelgeuse." before adding "Betelgeuse is a real place, right?"

"Well, yeah. Of course it is. Although, we usually refer to it as Alfa Orionis now. And here's a funfact for you: Did you know the name Betelgeuse is actually derived from Arabic, meaning something like the shoulders of the giant? Because it's part of Orion's shoulders... you know, the guy usually known for his belt?"

While he'd been heading off on one of his favorite tangents, he noticed Rashi's face had gotten impatient as she levelly remarked, "Nick. Eyes on the target. I know you, and you know I normally love your digressions into nerdland. But no digressions for the next five minutes, OK? Now tell me, what's going on?"

Nick, who was just about to share another funfact about how the perceived colouring of Alfa Orionis had actually changed between the first Chinese observations to the ancient Greek astronomers, blushed slightly. Noting his own blush, his brain decided to make a quick detour to consider his own recent colouring change and wondering if you could find a way to classify human complexions on a similar scale to star colours. Seeing that he was just about to get an even sterner rebuke from Rashi, he caught himself and began his explanation.

"What you don't know is, I've kind of taken it to an extreme. You know Sae and me inherited a rimside apartment lease, right? It's down just below section R, almost by the storage sections. Well. I've kind of made some... modifications" he said, with a sheepish smile.

"Modifications. Right. Go on...", Rashi responded as their order arrived. Ravished, Nick cast a hungry glance at the burger and fries, but before he could dig in she repeated "Go. On."

And he blurted out, "Well, you see. I've kind of mounted a few of my instruments on the hab wall outside the apartment", he began and Rashi motioned for him to continue with a surprisingly neutral look on her face.

"A couple of radio antennas. A small optical telescope. A laser array...", and seeing her eyes begin to widen he quickly added "...just for receiving, honestly. Of course I didn't add laser guns to my apartment!" (Although now that the thought struck him, how cool would that not be?!)

"Also, I've got the mountings ready for a new radio telescope that I've ordered from Deimos that should get here next month. Oh and...." he gulped; "I've kind of also cut through the external bulkheads and installed a polyglass observation bubble. It let's me actually see the stars with my own eyes, instead of just the instruments. It's kind of awesome."

He paused and looked up at Rashi, already feeling himself becoming defensive and ready to meet whatever criticism or admonitions she was loading up.

"That is..." she began; "simply awesome!". Nick felt his shoulders relax as she continued "I've kind of suspected something like that from some hints Sae have been dropping, and the telescope stuff is to be expected. But the polyglass bubble? That is pure awesomeness, and you are going to take me home and show me your bubble, mister!"

Rashi added a sly grin to that last part, but the innuendo flew right over Nick's head as he honed in on "Sae?! You speak to my sister?"

"Sure!", she responded. "You remember when she joined us for drinks last month? Well, when you were in the bathroom we kind of got talking, and when I told her I was doing an online degree in programming she volunteered to help out with assignments".

Well, she would do that, Nick thought. Her sister was nothing if not generous with her time, even if she was always juggling a hundred little projects. Also; being a genious level programmer was kind of just what Rashi needed to ace her degree course. It was months since the last time Nick had anything valuable to add when Rashi asked for his help. Sae was just on a different level. She would even take offence to being called a programmer, insisting that she was a computer scientist. She had tried to explain the difference to Nick a few times, and he thought he had the basics of it down, but he could not really get himself to care about lambda calculus and cellular automaton when there were real world problems some scripting could solve.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Alright astronerd!", Rashi said, shaking her head and smiling. "So. We've established that you've hacked a bunch of tools to the outside of the hab, and that you've broken both the structural integrity of the same as well as about a dozen laws and regulations. We've also established that if we all die horribly from suffocation... "

"Asphyxiation, actually." Nick murmured, but Rashi continued

"...if we all die from a horrible death as we're thrown into empty vacuum, we can blame you. And I for one, definitely plan to haunt you until the end times if that happens. Even if you were a ghost yourself! What we've not established so far, is What. Is. Going. On?!"

Nick swallowed the small bite of burger he had managed to eat while Rashi was talking, and took a swig of water while he collected his thoughts.

"Remember I said one of the tools I've added is a laser array?"

She smiled at him, "Yeah, duh! You've added space lasers to the hab. That I will not forget."

"Not lasers like that... whatever. The laser array is a receiver array. Which basically means it's a bunch of pretty neat titanium sapphire mirrors that work together to intercept and clean up incoming laser light, and passes it through an special filter to make the light into information bits. A bit is like a ..."

"Dummy. I know what a bit is", Rashi interjected.

"Well, ok. Of course you do. Well, the laser array - simply put - receives information that is transmitted using a laser. It just so happens that nearly all communications between here and Earth is carried by high frequency radio waves, which are routed around using a small army of nodes that are scattered through the inner solar system. These days we've filled up much of the space between Mercury and out to Jupiter with these routing nodes. Since the discoveries on Ganymede, we've needed much more bandwidth to...". Seeing her expression, Nick cut another very interesting digression short with a small sigh.

"Anyway. Laser communication is mostly used experimentally, except for one .. well, two big exceptions. First; whilst VISION uses radio for command and control signals, it sends the high resolution observational data back using a laser. Secondly; The Pegasus is equipped to both receive and transmit laser based communications. Since she will be travelling way past the routing nodes, radio based communications become increasingly error prone. It is also possible to increase the bandwidth a lot with the laser."

"So, why haven't we replaced the radio wave based communications already? Sounds like we could get away with less space junk and get better service...?" Rashi asked.

"One simple reason.", Nick answered. "With radio waves, you can transmit across a large volume of space at the same time. It doesn't matter if the relay node has moved a few thousands kilometres - it will still be able to pick up the waves." he took another quick sip of the water, and continued

"With laser beams you have, well, beams. They are much more narrow, and you need to be very precise when you point them at something if you want to transmit any data. With in-system communications, we'd need some very precise engineering to maintain the proper angle on the laser equipment. While we could certainly do that, the cost becomes prohibitive very quickly as we have to not just produce, but maintain thousands of nodes. At some point, the task becomes - you could say - sisyphean" he added, with a smile as he referred to their employer.

"Yes, daaad. So, why would The Pegasus use lasers?"

"Because, as they travel further out-system, the angle that they need to maintain to transmit back to a receiving station in orbit becomes more manageable. It's also much simpler to maintain a synchronized two-node setup than keeping hundreds of them synched. With two nodes they can maintain a mutual synch where they continuously update each other of where they will be the next millisecond. That is much harder to do with thousands of nodes!".

"OK, I get it". Rash said. "Now, will you get to why you have one of these laser array thingy's? Presumably, you haven't hacked into The Pegasus to make your apartment the main relay for the mission humankind has waited decades for?"

He smiled. "Not quite, but I've got the next best thing. As you know, the Board of Directors have assigned the hab an orbit around Enceladus for the next seven years. And Enceladus just happens to be where The Pegasus mission control is located! If my theory is correct; somewhere between Uranus and Neptune, the angle on the laser communication between The Pegasus and mission control will be ideal for this hab to capture the signals returning from Peggy!". He was getting excited now, completely forgetting about his now-cold burger.

"Peggy?", Rashi asked drily. "Humankinds greatest achievement since the pyramids and pizza, and you are calling the space ship.... Peggy?"

Nick coughed, and murmured. "Well, yeah.". Speaking up, he added "I kind of feel like I know her, you know. I've followed her development since I was three years old, and ... well. Sometimes I kind of have internal dialogues with her". He was surprised that he wasn't embarrassed to share that with Rashi, but then, this was such a fundamental concept of his existence. He could hardly perceive that anyone would have thoughts not dominated by the spacecraft and the upcoming mission.

"Knock, knock", Rashi said and bumped Nick's arm with her hand. "Still there? Since this conversation started, we've established that you're a dangerous and destructive weirdo, who talks to imaginary space ships in his head. How about getting to the point?"

"Peggy isn't imaginary!" he responded "She's real. Just.. the version in my head. I guess. You could say is kind of imaginary. But she's just like the real...", catching her eyes, he shifted tack "So. This morning, the weirdest thing happened....."

As he finished summarizing the day's events, Rashi went quiet. He didn't know what to expect. Laughter? Derision? Confusion? This discovery was important to him. He had a definite sense that it was also important on a grander scale, even if he hadn't worked out what it was yet.

A quick query to his mind base showed that some of the datamining scripts were about to complete, and he really wanted to get back home to investigate the findings.

But he also really wanted to know what Rashi thought. (When had her opinion become so important to him?)

He didn't need her confirmation that this was both weird and wonderful, but even so he could feel himself starting to deflate at hear continued silence.

He was about to make an excuse, get up and head home; when she looked him directly into the eyes. As she spoke, a shiver ran down his spine.

"This... is big, Nick.". It was like her personality had side stepped. It was still her, but the happy, bubbly, sometimes silly girl had been replaced by someone else. Someone else that was still Rashi, but as if from a parallell Universe where Rashi was calm, considered and serious.

After a few more moments, she continued;

"So. Based on what you've told me, and what I know, we have three facts:

a) You are receiving structured data from a laser beam

b) The antenna is pointed at outer space

c) As far as we know, there is no human activity between here and...

well. Betelgeuse..."

Nick silently added; "...and Alfa Orionis is actually on the other side of the sky right now. "

Rashi almost looked afraid as she spoke out loud the thought that had been hovering in Nick's brain since the signal had first appeared. "That leaves only... something that is not human."