A Reply

UPDATE: This story was chosen by the folks at the Literary Lab to be in their new Genre Wars compendium! Ha! Take that, Writer’s Digest!

This is a short story I wrote for the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Contest. It’s real short, as in only 1100 words, but I like it. It’s about the signal sent from the Arecibo Telescope way back in the 70′s…and then we get a reply…

Here’s a snippet from the first half of the story:

A Reply

November 16^th, 1974

Russell leaned back in his chair. The control panel before him hummed and the green screen blinked: SENT.

Dr. Drake and his staff danced around, slapping each other on the back, laughing. Russell heard the cork pop on a bottle of champagne. They had just sent the signal and he was both elated and oddly depressed. Maybe it was not depression; maybe it was simple jealousy.

They had sent the signal from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to the globular cluster, M13.  Russell himself had pressed the actual button to send it.  While he was the youngest of the entire group at twenty-eight, he was probably the most hopeless romantic of them all.

Dr. Drake, Carl Sagan and others had crafted the message to the galaxy.  It consisted of 1679 binary digits transmitted at 2380 MHz.  The signal had lasted 1679 seconds.  It included the digits one through ten, the atomic numbers of certain elements, a graphic figure of man, and the human population of earth. It also included the graphic of earth’s solar system, and the physical diameter of Arecibo, the transmitting dish. To Russell, the message was clear to the rest of the galaxy. It said, “We’re humans, we’re here, and we want to make friends.”

And that’s what probably depressed him the most.

The M13 globular cluster was some 25,000 light years away, and even by the time the message got to the cluster, it would have shifted to a new location. Russell wanted to aim the message toward where the cluster would be when it arrived, in 25,000 years.

He shook his head. 25,000 years was a ridiculous amount of time.  And that was only the half of it. It would take another 25,000 years for the signal to return, if indeed the beings who lived near the M13 globular cluster gave a response at the speed of light. His bones would be dust by then. The entire society of mankind would be different.  They may have conquered space flight by then.  There might not even be an earth! But the thought of his planet being gone only disturbed him a little. What really stirred his anger was that someone else would receive that reply in 50,000 years.

As the party continued around him, Russell stood from his chair, taking some congratulatory slaps on the back, and walked out into the evening air.  It was still warm and muggy. In Puerto Rico, November was not cool like back home in Michigan.  The muted sounds of the celebrations inside the command center contrasted the sharp chirping of the crickets in the bushes around him.

Russell stared up into the sky where the M13 cluster resided.  He knew the signal was invisible to his naked eye, but he pretended as if he could see it. He silently sent his own message toward the M13 cluster, hoping that when the reply came, it would be received with fanfare and that maybe someone would remember his name.  He shook his head and looked toward the earth. No one would remember his name in 50,000 years. No one would remember anyone’s name from 1974.