The Signal

Last week, the US government announced that they had received contact from extraterrestrial beings. The President paraded the decoded signal on every TV channel that had an adult audience. Mayhem ensued. The signal was considered mankind’s first real step towards intergalactic relations. I never thought it’d be taken this seriously when I sent it out after my graduation.

The American government must have first heard about it about a year ago. That was when I calculated the signal to return to earth. At the time, nothing came of it- not even in the crazy alien believers’ news. I figured that my experiment didn’t work. I won’t be a bore with detail of how I mapped out the signal’s journey or what exactly the signal was, but it was supposed to reach back to earth looking like it had travelled many lightyears.

It turns out the American government had kept the signal a secret for the whole year. The amount of time that must have been spent decoding and validating it made me proud. I was careful enough to make it look legit but I expected someone to notice the meme I weaved in. Granted, the meme was an aged reference to something sixteen years ago when I launched the signal. But still…

I would have come forward to settle everyone down but I feared for my life. It was a joke made by my younger self. The government had already spent billions to develop a signal they could use to respond to my fictional aliens. They were sending billions into the bin 😬. It wasn’t my fault though. If NASA hadn’t banned me from ever being employed there, I would’ve said something sooner.