The Transmission
Short fiction
It was a dreary night in November when we first made contact, with the wind howling outside the radio observatory as we huddled around the receiver, straining to decipher meaning in the pattern of clicks and tones that echoed faintly through the static.
For months we had been monitoring signals from a newly discovered exoplanet, hoping for some indication of alien life, and now, at long last, our patience was rewarded, an intelligence from across the stars was trying to communicate with us! With trembling hands, our linguist fine-tuned the dials, boosting the gain to tease out nuances in the alien speech.
At first it was but a series of grunts and growls, guttural tones that reminded me of some feral beast, but under the linguist’s skilled interpretation, patterns emerged — there was a logic, a cadence that hinted at higher thought. Through many long and tedious nights we worked to establish meanings for the strange vocabulary of this being from beyond our world.
It was an arduous process, hampered by our limited frame of reference. When one has never encountered the mind of another species, how does one even begin to bridge the gap? But eventually, painstakingly, we constructed a basic language for interaction. The time had come to make first contact!
With great excitement and no small amount of trepidation, we transmitted our greeting to the stars. A simple message of peace and welcome, extending the hand of friendship across the vast cosmic gulf that separated our kinds. Breathless, we awaited the reply.
It came as a guttural snarl that turned my blood cold. The alien speech was violent, animalistic in the extreme. Our linguist turned pale as he translated mentions of slaughter, of the joy of rending flesh from bone. There was a cruelty, a sadism in this being that was utterly inhuman.
As further communications impressed upon us the true horror of the alien’s bloodlust, we began to dread the static murmur of the interstellar transmitter. But we could not turn away, this was a momentous chance to make first contact, and we must press onward despite our fears.
To establish a real rapport, we knew we would need more than audio. There must be sight as well as sound. With great effort we configured our equipment to send the first blurry images between the stars. How would the alien appearance match the savagery of its words? We were soon to find out.
At last the historic moment arrived, and with the transmission of a single image, the face of our alien counterpart was indelibly seared into our minds. Even now I shudder to recall it, the keen predatory eyes, the jaws that dripped viscera from a recent kill. Unknown vistas of horror opened up within that still-twitching carcass clasped in its sanguine claws.
It was no alien intelligence that had contacted us from across the light years. The cold truth was far more chilling — we had touched minds with a terrestrial tiger! Some quirk of physics had crossed its feral consciousness with our technology, like a demon summoning from the pits of mankind’s savage past.
With revulsion we severed the transmission forever, but late at night I still hear the click and hiss of interstellar static, and glimpse in my mind’s eye the crimson glare of that rapacious intellect. We have glimpsed the primordial darkness that lurks in the soul of creation, and are forever changed.
The boundaries between the worlds have worn thin, and no firewalls or frequencies can protect us from the nameless menace that prowls the void.
