Enigma

Author : J.D. Rice

June 7, 2105: Today, we switched on the communications array and confirmed what Dr. Keller’s team had previously detected. The signals we are detecting follow recognizable mathematical patterns, resembling the transmission encoding commonly used on Earth. We have yet to verify whether or not these signals are coming from some other government on our planet, but the sheer bulk of transmissions seems to support Dr. Keller’s hasty conclusion: We’ve stumbled upon an alien communication frequency. It may only be a matter of time before we can make contact.

December 14, 2105: Ongoing efforts to decode the alien signals have gone nowhere. We’ve brought in encryption experts from across the world to analyze the transmissions, but we are no closer to unlocking their secrets. Some on the encryption team believe the level of mathematics at work to be beyond our understanding. Others believe potential linguistic differences will make it impossible to understand the messages, even after we have decrypted them. Only time will tell.

May 3, 2106: Congress has voted to continue funding our project, despite ongoing dissatisfaction with our results. We are exploring the possibility of designing new decryption software to break down individual messages.

August 22, 2106: The communications array has fallen silent. All messages have stopped.

September 10, 2106: No new messages have been detected by the array.

November 17, 2106: We have decided to transmit a message out into the void. We will send the message in all Earth languages and pair them with mathematical sequences to demonstrate our intelligence. Perhaps we will get an answer.

January 11, 2107: Array still silent.

March 1, 2107: Long-range telescopes have detected thousands of large, metallic objects nearing our solar system. They are too far out to estimate their shape.

March 7, 2107: The metallic objects draw nearer.

March 10, 2107: The objects detected by our telescopes will not enter the Sol system, instead passing us by en route to some location farther out into the Milky Way.

March 12, 2107: The objects are passing as close as they will come. Images from our high aperture telescopes verify our suspicions: Alien spacecraft are about to pass Earth. Who are these travelers? And why will they not communicate?

March 14, 2107: The last of the alien ships passed our system today, drawing close to the orbit of Pluto. As it passed, we received a single message through the communications array, transmitted in all Earth languages.

“They are coming. Run.”