In 1977AD, while unaware at the time, humanity received its first message from the stars. Dubbed the 'Wow' signal, for its strikingly high intensity and narrow band against the background noise of space.

While not entirely sure of its exact location, it was found within some globular star cluster in the Sagittarius constellation, some many thousands of light years from Earth. Despite several attempts by SETI and other stargazing agencies to find the signal once again, it remained elusive and unfound. Over the decades, the Wow signal became an irrelevant blip that was given little attention by astronomers.

That was, until decades later, it was found again. At thirty three minutes past three in the morning, Astronomer Jane Wilson discovered in 2024 what became known as ‘Wow2' in the Aquila region of the sky. While the signal had seemed to have moved, examination of the band and intensity showed it to be identical to Wow'77. In 2025 SETI's budget tripled, and Dr Wilson with her team of astronomers, linguists, mathematicians and psychologists began to probe Wow2 for any proof of intelligent origin. While the world went on with itself, it silently held its breath, waiting anxiously for Wilson and her team to either confirm or deny humanity's loneliness in the universe.

On new year’s day 2027, Wilson et al published. While her team were unsuccessful in teasing out any communicatory information from Wow2, they concluded it could have in no way come from a known natural cosmic phenomenon. Finally, Wilson's team compared Wow2 with Wow'77, finding it blue shifted somewhat. Not only had it moved, whatever transmitted it was accelerating away from the centre of the galaxy and toward Earth.

The world welcomed the findings, becoming whipped up in an optimistic frenzy that there was some other prescience in space. Space agencies were given money and attention not seen since the Apollo days. Dozens of messages were beamed in all directions sending information about themselves, Earth, and the Wow signals themselves,

While Jane enjoyed her own newfound fame in the public eye for her apparent discovery of aliens, the scientific community was still sceptical.

'Two signals that contained no communicable information does not an alien make.' They would say. Constantly they would scrutinise why they showed up in two vastly different places in the sky; how the distances between the two signals were thousands of light years apart and couldn't be sent by the same civilisation in such a short time frame of a few decades.

The naysayers continued to argue for years after the discovery of Wow2 until 2031, when another signal was found in a completely different part of the sky. Again, the signal was found to be blue shifted. Again, the signal said nothing but was still the unmistakable 'Wow' seen twice before. Before the year was out, three more Wow's were found.

Despite Six identical signals, humanity was no closer to identifying their origins or message. The optimism of Wow2 started to slowly fade and became replaced with a growing unease behind the signals.

They were appearing all across the sky, and with exponentially increasing frequency. Conspiracy fanatics ran with it as far as they could, seeing it as the coming rapture, with others suggesting an oncoming alien invasion. They accused everyone from the UN to the Pope concealing information about the true nature of the signals.

While world leaders would never officially show their own unease, with each passing signal detection, the world Space Agencies received more and more money, and contingency plans were quietly drawn up.

As the years went by, Wow's became almost commonplace, invisibly scattering themselves across the night sky, still always blue shifted. They were like lightning; short lived and never found in the same place twice. It was that one-time nature that unnerved Wilson. If they were messages from aliens, why only the one? Why were they all the same, unchanged across the galaxy? There was something else that unnerved her. Since their discovery, they have only been found further and further away from the galactic core, spreading outward from the constellation of Sagittarius. Eventually, she thought, they would reach us out here. It would only be a matter of time before Alpha Centauri next door got one, and then what?

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She knew other teams were working on the Wow signals, and she'd heard frightening rumours from the better funded researchers. Stories of the faintest stars simply vanishing from the telescopes. Stories of government agents hushing up their findings and reassigning them once they found out too much.

Still, Wilson worked tirelessly with her team in an effort to tease anything out of the dozens of Wow's they had found. After several years of trying, Wilson was set to give up, until the 4th of November 2033.

In the region of space near Cygnus, another Wow signal was detected, only this one was different. Immediately preceding the Wow, the X-Ray radiation from the Cygnus X-1 black hole was supplemented with high intensity microwave stutters for 92 seconds before abruptly ending. Following that came the predictable Wow signal, though distorted from X-1's gravitational lens.

At last, Wilson had something, and her team began examining the microwave bursts. Had she found these when they found Wow2, she would have been filled with a powerful and optimistic enthusiasm of making contact with something other than our own, but now that was gone and instead there was a deep feeling of ominous dread in what such a message might actually contain. She had hoped it would give some insight to the increasingly concerning Wow signals, though at the same time she feared knowing. Knowing, but being unable to do anything in the face of some cosmic phenomena far larger than any person could even begin to surmount.

 Teasing information out of the microwave bursts was long, and almost as fruitless as trying to understand the Wow signals. Even working with the other teams, it took months to even understand what they were looking at, in which time so many Wow's were pinging Earth's radio telescopes that astronomers stopped caring.

By 2036 it had been cracked, and humanity had finally become able to understand a message from the stars. Wilson wished she had never read it.

Between the binary and the basic maths and attempts at diagrams showing where they were in the galaxy, the message screamed one thing over and over: RUN.

It showed an crude swirling diagram of what was obviously meant to be the Milky Way, with dark and stretching lines connected with dots corresponding with previous Wow detections with what could be described as arrows pointing in every direction away from the galactic core.

Humanity's first hello contained no greeting, no welcome, no sharing of technology and no optimism. It was a bleak and desperate warning to flee, from a civilisation that barely got it out before being snuffed out themselves by whatever Wow could be.

Quietly, and without public acknowledgement, Earth's telescopes turned and, broadcasting on the widest band that allowed, a message into outer space to anyone who would hear it to run. To run in a way humanity couldn't even begin to try. Wilson admired the nobility in trying to warn anyone else, but knew there was nothing that could be done.

NASA could tease its fanciful interstellar concept ships. Huge craft that would fly on solar winds and scoop interstellar hydrogen for fuel. Despite their postulating, Wilson knew there was nothing humanity could do but wait for Wow to come to them.

Cygnus was some seven thousand light years away, but that meant nothing. Wilson knew that whatever Wow was, it was superluminal. It would arrive soon. No one could hide it now, as the stars started to disappear from the sky. Whole constellations disappearing, being blotted out, one star at a time. What use is being an astronomer, when there was nothing left in the sky to look at?

Jane found herself atop of Greenwich hill, near the old observatory that was so inspiring in her youth. She thought of the world barely half a decade ago, how eager humanity was to meet whatever sent Wow, eager to find a friend in the vastness of space.

Now though, she sat alone underneath a starless sky wondering if she would even see the sun one last time. Alpha Centauri was gone, she knew they were next. After earth was snuffed out, it would move out to the Perseus arm and then whatever was left of the Milky Way.

On morning of the 13th of October, the sun didn't rise. Wow had arrived, and took all of humanity with it.