Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1: SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO
Hiraya Buenavista stared at the open tab on her office computer for almost three full minutes without moving. The cursor blinked beneath her resume with the rhythmic, mocking persistence of a heartbeat—or a countdown.
HIRAYA BUENAVISTA, REE, ECE
Registered Electrical Engineer | Electronics Engineer
Topnotcher — 2032 Board Examinations
She had added those titles with such fierce pride three years ago, but today they just felt like an alphabet soup of unfulfilled potential. Below the header sat the unfinished draft of an application email addressed to NASA’s careers portal. Her fingers hovered over the home row of her mechanical keyboard, but they felt like lead.
What am I even doing? she thought, the words a familiar, toxic loop in her mind. This is just setting myself up for another disappointment.
The office air-conditioning hummed at a frequency that Hiraya was certain was exactly 60 Hz, a constant, vibrating reminder of the electrical grid she was currently a slave to. Fluorescent lights reflected off the rows of gray cubicles, creating a sterile glare on her dual-monitor setup that made her head ache. Somewhere in the back, a printer groaned through a large batch of blueprints, a sound she personally interpreted as the building itself sighing in boredom.
She adjusted her glasses—pushed down by a thin layer of sweat and the heavy, humid air of the afternoon—and reread the email for the fifth time.
On paper, she was a "Topnotcher," a title that carried immense weight in the professional landscape of the Philippines but felt increasingly hollow the more she stared at AutoCAD. She had spent her thesis year building a remote telemetry prototype from salvaged circuit boards, debugging UART protocols and RF interference until her eyes bled. Now, she spent her days arguing with clients about the "aesthetic" of electrical conduits.
The exhaustion wasn't just in her muscles; it was a bone-deep weariness that came from performing a version of herself that felt smaller than the one she dreamed of being. She felt like a signal being attenuated by too much distance, losing clarity with every passing day of spreadsheets and lighting layouts.
She saw Mr. Delgado approaching and immediately minimized the tab. He moved with the slow, inevitable momentum of a project deadline you can’t meet.
“Hiraya,” he said, dropping a stack of folders that landed with a heavy, dusty thud—enough to make her cold coffee ripple in its mug. “Client wants another revision for the lighting and signal layouts on the Bistro Onse project.”
Hiraya felt her jaw tighten. “Sir, we already revised the lux calculations twice. The lighting density is already at the limit of the building’s ampacity.”
“Yes,” Delgado replied, his voice as flat as a dial tone. “Now they want another. They want more 'warmth' without changing the bulb specs. Just... tweak it.”
Tweak it. The two most dangerous words in engineering.
“Sure, sir. I’ll run the simulations again,” she said, forcing a polite smile that didn't reach her eyes.
“Need the updated schematics by tomorrow morning.”
The second he disappeared, Hiraya leaned back in her chair and buried her face in her hands, letting out a long, shuddering breath. The air in the office felt too thin, compressed by the weight of expectations and the crushing reality of a career that felt like a dead end.
A head suddenly popped over the cubicle divider beside her.
“You need to stop accepting every unnecessary revision they throw at you and just send your NASA application already,” Maya said, rolling her chair closer. She pointed dramatically at the minimized browser tab like she could see through the pixels. “You literally have the resume ready.”
Hiraya smiled faintly, though it felt like a heavy lift for her facial muscles. “I don’t think I’m qualified for NASA, Maya.”
Maya gave her a deadpan look. “You graduated Top 10 in the National Boards. You built a working remote telemetry system from scrap parts. You fix old radios for fun. And you’re still here revising coverage maps for clients who think warm white and cool white bulbs are a personality trait.”
Hiraya laughed weakly. “And now I spend my days tweaking parameters so people can scroll TikTok without buffering in the provinces. Very glamorous.”
“You are impossible,” Maya groaned.
Hiraya looked back at her monitor. The NASA tab remained minimized at the bottom of the screen—a quiet, aching dream sitting beside endless spreadsheets and RF propagation charts.
“It’s too far away,” she admitted softly after a while. “That kind of dream feels impossible.”
Maya’s expression softened slightly. “That doesn’t mean you stop wanting it.”
Hiraya didn’t answer. Because the truth was she did still want it, and that wanting was a constant, low-frequency hum of pain in the back of her mind. It was a signal she couldn't tune out, no matter how much noise life threw at her.
By eight in the evening, the rhythmic clacking of keyboards and the low murmur of office gossip had bled away, leaving behind a silence that felt heavy and pressurized. Most of the office lights had been turned off, plunged into a gloom that made the remaining islands of light—including Hiraya’s cubicle—look like lonely stars in a fading galaxy.
Hiraya rubbed her eyes, her fingertips pressing against the dull ache behind her sockets. The blue light from her dual monitors felt like it was physically searing into her retinas. On the screen, the lighting layout for Bistro Onse was a chaotic overlay of photometric webs and wiring circuits.
She leaned closer, her glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose from a mix of fatigue and the lingering Manila humidity. She was deep into the DIALux simulations, manually adjusting the lumen output to try and satisfy the client’s request for "more fiesta vibes" without blowing the power budget. Every time she moved a capiz pendant light or shifted the spotlight on the bilao wall decor, the lux levels on the floor shifted like stubborn ghosts.
Just one more iteration, she whispered to herself, her voice sounding thin in the empty room.
The pay is stable, she thought, a mantra she repeated so often it had lost its meaning. The bonus will cover the rise in the electric bill. Mom needs the medicine. Mikmik needs the good kibble. Just keep the signal-to-noise ratio of your life high enough to survive.
She straightened her back, and a sharp, electric pop resonated between her shoulder blades. She ignored it. She had become an expert at ignoring her body’s protest signals.
8:15 PM…
8:37 PM…
8:52 PM…
The clock on the taskbar was a countdown to a tomorrow that looked exactly like today. You’ve survived the 2021 Boards; you can survive a Tuesday night, she told herself. But as she stared at the circuit breaker schedules on her screen, a terrifying thought flickered through her mind: What if this is it? What if I’m just a high-precision tool being used to solve low-stakes problems until I eventually break?
The lie felt thinner every time she repeated it. She wasn't designing the future; she was just trying to make sure a restaurant had enough warm white light to look "cozy" on Instagram.
At exactly 9:07 PM, she clicked 'Save,' attached the updated lighting schematics to an email, and hit 'Send' with a finality that felt like dropping a stone into a deep well. She didn't feel a sense of accomplishment—only a hollow, echoing exhaustion.
She shut down the workstation, the sudden darkness of the monitors reflecting her own tired face. She grabbed her bag and walked through the dark office, the floorboards creaking under her feet like they were groaning in sympathy.
Outside, the rain had softened into a light, misting drizzle that felt cool against her skin. Quezon City hummed around her—a distant roar of jeepneys and the scent of wet asphalt. She stopped by the 7-Eleven on the corner, the harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights of the store feeling like a physical assault after the dimness of the office.
She wandered toward the instant noodle section, standing paralyzed in front of the rows of colorful plastic cups. She did this every night—a small, pathetic ritual of pretended choice.
She picked up the 'Spicy Seafood' and felt the weight of it. Then the 'Creamy Carbonara.' She imagined the heat, the salt, the temporary distraction of a different flavor. She turned them over, reading the sodium content like it was a technical spec sheet.
Maybe tonight I’ll be a person who likes Spicy Seafood, she thought. Maybe a different flavor will make the apartment feel less quiet.
But the mental energy required to deviate from her routine was too high. Her "decision-making" battery was at 0%. With a small, defeated sigh, she put the spicy cup back and reached for the same, safe, familiar seafood cup she bought every single time.
She added a footlong sandwich, a chocolate bar, a can of Coke, and a small pouch of treats for Mikmik. Adulthood, she realized, was just the process of deciding which forms of "emotional support" were on sale.
She reached the counter, where the night-shift cashier—a woman whose eyes held the same "thousand-yard stare" as Hiraya’s—waited.
The scanner beeped with a rhythmic, digital chirp. When the red laser hit the cup noodles, the woman paused for a fraction of a second. A small, knowing tuck appeared at the corner of her mouth.
“Seafood flavor,” she muttered under her breath, not unkindly. “Of course”.
Hiraya felt a flush of heat in her cheeks. It was a tiny moment of being seen, yet it felt like a spotlight on her stagnation. She gave a small, tired smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
“It’s a classic,” Hiraya replied, her voice sounding raspy.
The cashier nodded, bagging the items with practiced efficiency. “See you tomorrow, Ma’am.”
See you tomorrow. The words felt like a prophecy.
Hiraya paid, took the crinkling plastic bag, and stepped back out into the drizzle. The walk home was short, but every step felt like she was wading through deep water, carrying the weight of a life she had never intended to build.
By the time Hiraya reached her apartment, the rain had soaked through the shoulders of her teal blouse, leaving a damp, heavy chill that mirrored the weight in her chest. The hallway of her building smelled faintly of floor wax and someone’s late-night garlic fried rice—a domestic, grounding scent that usually felt like a hug, but tonight, it just felt like another reminder of how small her world had become.
The moment she turned the key and pushed the door open, a small orange-and-white blur trotted toward her.
“Mikmik,” she whispered, her voice cracking slightly.
The cat meowed indignantly, a sharp, demanding sound that asked where she had been and why her hands didn't immediately smell like tuna. He rubbed his head against her damp trousers, his purr kicking in like a tiny, vibrating transformer.
“Yes, hello to you too,” Hiraya murmured, crouching down despite the protest from her knees. “You’re the only man happy to see me come home”.
She followed the routine of a ghost. She walked to the kitchen, opened a can of premium wet food, and watched Mikmik dive in with an enthusiasm she hadn't felt for anything in years. Only then did she allow herself to turn toward the 7-Eleven bag sitting on the counter.
With robotic movements, she peeled back the lid of the seafood cup noodles just halfway, exactly as the instructions dictated. She filled it with water, the steam rising in a thin, fleeting cloud, and set the microwave timer. The hum of the appliance joined the rhythmic tink-tink of rain hitting the window grills, a lonely duet in the small kitchen.
She sat heavily in the wooden chair, her posture collapsing the moment she was off her feet. She unwrapped the footlong sandwich, the bread slightly soggy from the humidity, and took a bite that she barely tasted. With her other hand, she reached for her phone.
The screen flickered to life, illuminating the dark circles under her eyes. She navigated to her files and opened the NASA resume for the hundredth time that week.
HIRAYA BUENAVISTA, REE, ECE
The letters blurred as she stared at them. She remembered the version of herself that had sat for those board exams—the girl who believed that being a "Topnotcher" was a golden ticket out of the mundane. She had promised her father she would build things that touched the sky. Now, she was thirty years old, and the closest she got to the stars was looking at the LED specs for a ceiling fixture.
I’ve failed you, she thought, the realization hitting her with more force than the exhaustion. I’ve failed the eight-year-old girl who wore a cardboard helmet and thought walkie-talkies were magic.
A sob escaped, jagged and ugly. She didn't try to stop it this time.
“What am I even doing with my life, Dad?” she choked out, her voice echoing off the cold tiles of the kitchen. “This isn't the dream you had for me. But I don't think I can reach those dreams anymore”.
She gripped the half-eaten sandwich like a lifeline, her knuckles white. “I feel like I’m absorbed in the rat race, and the walls are too high to climb out. I’m so sorry, Dad. I'm so, so sorry”.
The microwave beeped, a sharp, clinical sound that signaled her dinner was ready. It felt like a mockery of her breakdown. She wiped her face angrily with the back of her hand, the salt of her tears stinging her tired eyes.
“You were my strength,” she whispered to the empty apartment. “The day you died... I think part of me died too”.
For a while, only the rain spoke. Then, Mikmik suddenly meowed loudly near the bedroom.
Hiraya sniffed and looked over, trying to find her voice. “What? You’re still hungry?”
The cat didn't move toward the kitchen. Instead, he crouched near the bed, his tail twitching as he pawed at the dark space underneath the frame.
“You found something?”
Another meow, more insistent this time.
Hiraya dragged herself off the chair, her legs feeling like lead, and knelt down beside him on the cold floor. She expected to find a stray toy or a dust-covered pen. Instead, her hand brushed against the rough surface of a heavy cardboard box tucked far back against the wall.
She pulled it out slowly, the sound of it dragging across the floor echoing in the quiet room. Dusty. Forgotten.
Hiraya stared at the lid. Written across the top in faded black marker were the words: DAD’S THINGS. The ink on "THINGS" had faded badly with time, but "DAD" remained dark and clear, as if it refused to be erased.
“That feels weirdly symbolic,” she muttered, a ghost of a smile touching her lips for the first time that night.
She had just been crying for him, and now, he had reached back through the clutter of her life to find her.
“Nope,” she said immediately, shaking her head even as her fingers hooked under the edge of the lid. “I am absolutely not emotionally stable enough for this right now”.
Mikmik meowed and sat back on his haunches, watching her with wide, unblinking eyes.
“You are not helping,” she sighed, and lifted the lid anyway.
Hiraya lifted the lid, and the scent of the past hit her immediately—a sharp, nostalgic cocktail of old paper, machine oil, and the metallic tang of cold solder. It was the smell of her childhood, the scent of the garage where her father had spent every weekend breathing life into discarded machines.
Inside were the fragments of a life built on curiosity. She saw his old engineering magazines, their covers curled and yellowed, and a stack of folded circuit schematics that looked like intricate roadmaps to a world only he understood. She picked up a worn-out wristwatch, its hands frozen at 4:12, and his heavy-rimmed glasses, which still had a smudge on the left lens.
At the bottom of the box lay several notebooks. Hiraya opened one, her thumb tracing the familiar, cramped handwriting. The pages were a technical diary: handwritten calculations for impedance matching, rough sketches of Yagi antennas, and diagrams for little projects he’d built from scrap electronics.
She saw the notes for a tiny signal amplifier he’d assembled using salvaged NPN transistors. He had meticulously noted the gain and the signal-to-noise ratio, treating a toy for his daughter with the same professional rigor he applied to high-voltage power grids.
Then she found the photograph.
In it, Hiraya was eight years old, her hair tied in messy pigtails. Her father sat beside her, grinning with a pride that seemed to radiate off the glossy paper. Young Hiraya was holding up a bright yellow walkie-talkie like she’d just discovered fire.
She remembered that birthday. Her father would stay in the kitchen while she hid in the bedroom, and he’d click the PTT switch, the speaker crackling with the warm static of his voice.
“Captain Hiraya, do you copy?”
She had laughed every single time, her small heart swelling with the belief that she was an astronaut talking across the vastness of space. He had encouraged that belief. He never told her that the range was only fifty meters; he told her she was talking to the stars.
“Everything was so simple back then,” she whispered, her fingers lingering on the photo.
Finally, she reached for the heavy object at the very bottom: the Kenwood TS-120S HF amateur-band transceiver.
Hiraya recognized it immediately.Her father used to spend hours sitting beside this thing late at night.
Sometimes voices from distant countries would crackle through the speakers.Sometimes he would speak back.
Young Hiraya used to sit beside him asking endless questions.
“Are they really far away?”
Her father would smile.
“Very far.”
Then he would tap the radio gently and say:
“Hiraya, someone on the other side of the world is talking right now. Isn’t that something?”
She had always said yes.
She had been eight.
Everything was something at eight.
But she was thirty now.
And most things were just things.
She hauled the machine onto the kitchen table, clearing away the cold cup noodles and the half-eaten footlong. It was a beautiful piece of engineering—a vintage analog beast with weighted dials and a vacuum-fluorescent display. But it was in a sorry state. Dust choked the vents, and the SO-239 antenna connector on the back was slightly bent.
Hiraya didn't even hesitate. She grabbed her toolkit from the hallway closet. As she opened the transceiver’s casing, she felt a strange, phantom sensation—the feeling of her father’s hand over hers, guiding her to hold the soldering iron at a 45-degree angle.
“Let’s see what’s wrong with you,” she murmured, switching into engineer mode.
She pulled out her multimeter to check the power rails. The battery contacts were heavily oxidized, covered in a green crust of copper carbonate She cleaned them with 90% isopropyl alcohol and a stiff brush until they shone. Then, she spotted a 1000µF electrolytic capacitor on the power board that had "crowned"—its top was bulging, a sure sign that the internal electrolyte had dried out and failed.
She desoldered the dead component, the scent of hot rosin flux filling the kitchen and making her eyes sting with more than just fumes. She replaced it with a fresh cap from her own spare parts bin, ensuring the polarity was correct.
At 2:17 AM, she finally plugged the radio into her desktop power supply. She took a deep breath and flipped the toggle switch.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, the amber lights of the display flickered to life.
*Krr-shhhhhhhh!*
Static burst through the speaker—loud, chaotic, and incredibly alive. It wasn't just white noise; it was the sound of the ionosphere. For a moment, it felt as though the apartment was no longer empty. The static filled the space where her father used to be.
She adjusted the VFO (Variable Frequency Oscillator) dial. Most frequencies were empty, but as she swept through the 20-meter band, she heard fragments of a weather report from a coastal station and the rhythmic, melodic chirping of Morse code (CW).
“Okay,” she whispered, her heart racing. “You’re listening. Now let’s see if you can talk.”
She picked up the hand-held microphone and pressed the PTT (Push-To-Talk) switch.
“Testing,” she said, her voice sounding small against the backdrop of the city rain. “Hello? Is anyone out there?”
She released the button. Only static answered her.
“Great,” she sighed, leaning her forehead against the cool metal of the radio. “So you can listen, but you can’t talk. Story of my life”.
She reached for the power switch to end the night, her spirit feeling as heavy as the transceiver. Then, the speaker didn't just hiss—it pulsed. The static shifted, sharpening into a human voice that sounded impossibly clear, yet filtered through a strange, metallic echo.
“...uh, hello?”
Hiraya froze. Her hand stopped millimeters from the power switch.
“Okay, either I’m hallucinating,” the voice crackled, sounding breathless and frantic, “or somebody just transmitted on that frequency”.
Hiraya grabbed the microphone, her knuckles turning white. “Hello? Who is this? I hear you. Please, where is this connection coming from?”
A long, agonizing second of static followed. Then, an exhale that sounded like a sob of pure, unadulterated relief.
“Oh thank God, you’re real,” the man said. “I’m Dr. Ryland Grace. Project Hail Mary mission. My comm systems are reading your signal direction as Earth, but the signal lag is basically zero... and I genuinely have no idea what’s happening right now”.
Hiraya stared at the glowing amber dial. She looked out her window at the rain falling over Quezon City.
“...Earth?” she whispered. “Wait. What do you mean Earth?”
The static hummed between them, a living thing that seemed to vibrate the very air in Hiraya’s small kitchen. Hiraya gripped the microphone, her knuckles pale against the black plastic. She didn’t want to be rude, but her analytical brain, conditioned by years of EM wave propagation and link budget constraints, was already flagging this as a sophisticated hoax.
“I’m sorry?” she began, her voice cautious and low. “I don't think I heard you right. What do you mean Earth? Are you... are you not on Earth?”
There was a sharp, audible intake of breath from the speaker—a sound of dawning, terrifying realization.
“Wait,” Ryland said, his voice dropping from a panic into a stunned, academic curiosity. “If you’re asking me that, then you aren't Ground Control. You aren't a NASA relay. You're just... a person? On a radio?”
“I'm in Quezon City,” Hiraya replied, her brow furrowing. “In an apartment.Specifically in my kitchen. With my cat. Definitely on Earth and definitely not from NASA".
“Okay. Okay, wow,” Ryland muttered, and Hiraya could almost hear him pacing on the other end. “This is... this is significantly more complicated than I thought. Look, I am really aboard the spacecraft Hail Mary. My instruments confirm I am currently in the Tau Ceti system, which is approximately 11.9 light-years away from your kitchen table”.
Hiraya let out a short, dry laugh and reached for the power toggle. “Right. Eleven light-years. That’s a very dedicated bit, Dr. Grace. But I’ve had a really long day—hours of revising lighting layouts for a client who doesn't understand luminous flux—and I really don't have the bandwidth for this kind of prank”.
“Don't turn it off!” Ryland shouted, the desperation in his voice cutting through the speaker. “Please. Just listen to me first. I know how this sounds. I’m a scientist. I taught high school physics. I know that a transceiver like yours shouldn't be able to catch a narrowband transmission from outside the heliosphere. It’s not believable. It’s not possible scientifically. I am just as baffled as you are, but we are talking. That is a measurable fact”.
Hiraya paused, her finger hovering over the switch. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the spike of adrenaline. “Okay, let’s say you’re serious. How? Even if you had a massive parabolic dish aiming right at Manila, the Inverse Square Law alone would turn your signal into background noise before it hit the moon. And the lag... we should be waiting twelve years for a reply, not twelve milliseconds”.
“I don't know!” Ryland admitted, his voice a mix of excitement and sheer terror. “But before you go, can you just confirm one thing for me? Just to help me understand what’s happening? Is... is the sun dying?”
Hiraya blinked, pulling the microphone closer. “What? Why would you even ask that? No, the sun is not dying. In fact, it’s doing a great job right now—frying us all alive with a heatwave”.
The silence on the other end was heavy, punctuated only by the soft hiss of the ionosphere.
“That’s impossible,” Ryland whispered, his voice sounding hollow. “That’s the reason why I’m here. That’s the reason the Hail Mary exists. The sun is being eaten by Astrophage. Earth is facing a global extinction event. If you don't believe me, just search for it. Look up Project Hail Mary. It was the most popular international project in history”.
“I’m very familiar with NASA’s missions,” Hiraya countered, her fingers already reaching for her laptop. “I visit the portal every week. I was just looking at it an hour ago. The latest high-priority mission is Artemis II. It’s a Lunar mission. There is no mention of a dying sun or a Hail Mary”.
“Artemis II? A lunar mission?” Ryland’s confusion was palpable. “Why would NASA prioritize the moon when the entire planet is about to freeze? Why aren't you seeing the Petrova Line?”
“Maybe because you’re lying,” Hiraya said flatly.
“Have you actually searched for it,” Ryland challenged, “or are you just assuming it isn't real?”
With a frustrated sigh, Hiraya pulled her laptop closer, the screen illuminating her tired face. She typed the keywords with aggressive precision: Project Hail Mary. Ryland Grace. Tau Ceti.
She hit Enter. Her eyes scanned the results. “Tau Ceti is a real star, yes,” she muttered, scrolling rapidly. “But there is no Ryland Grace. No mission. No extinction event. Only space agency news about the Moon and Mars. You're a very smart person, Dr. Grace, but this is a very elaborate lie.”
“I am not lying!” Ryland’s voice spiked again. “Think about the technical details! How am I faking the signal modulation? How am I answering you in real-time if I’m a bot? I am telling you, I am on this ship!”
A sharp, audible intake of breath came from the speaker. Ryland went quiet for a moment, the sound of rhythmic tapping—likely a finger against a console—filtering through the static.
“Wait,” Ryland said, his voice shifting from panic to a sudden, dark clarity. “Wait, I’m an idiot. Of course you can’t find it. It was a black-budget operation. Strategic secrecy. They didn't want the world to know the sun was dying until they had a solution, or at least a way to prevent total societal collapse. It was top secret. Only high-level government officials and the scientists involved knew the full scope”.
Hiraya leaned back, a skeptical brow arching. “Oh, okay. So it’s a top-secret, world-saving mission that only you know about. Sure, sure, Dr. Grace. Whatever you say. Did the Men in Black give you the ship, too?”
“I’m serious!” Ryland’s voice spiked with frustration. “The whole thing was run by a woman named Eva Stratt. She had more power than most world leaders. They kept the mass from panicking by controlling the narrative. But I... I should have remembered that. My head is still a mess”.
He let out a long, weary sigh that sounded physically painful. “I was in a coma for a long time. A forced medical coma for the trip. When I first woke up, I couldn't even remember my own name, let alone the security clearance levels of the mission. My memory is like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. I probably just assumed everyone knew because, to me, it’s the only thing that matters anymore”.
Hiraya listened to the raw vulnerability in his voice. It didn't sound like a prank anymore; it sounded like a man struggling to hold onto his own reality.
“Alright, let’s say I believe the ‘top secret’ part for a second,” she said, her voice softening despite herself. “That still doesn't explain how you’re talking to me in 2037 when your world is supposedly freezing over. If I look out my window right now, I see rain and the lights of Quezon City, not a global ice age”.
Before Ryland could respond, a new sound cut through the static. It was a series of rhythmic, melodic tones—three distinct notes that sounded like a flute made of crystal.
“Grace stressed. Question,” a flat, mechanical voice spoke through the speaker.
Hiraya jumped, nearly knocking over her cold coffee. “Uh... is that a robot?”
“What?,” Ryland said, sounding breathless.
“That voice!” Hiraya pointed at the radio as if he could see her. “The mechanical one! Did you program a bot for this too?”
“Oh. You mean Rocky?”
“You named your Robot Rocky?”
“He’s not a robot,” Ryland said, hesitating for a heartbeat. “He is... actually an alien. From the planet Erid”.
Hiraya stared at the transceiver in disbelief, her mind feeling as though it were being pulled apart at the seams. “A what? An alien? There’s no way you’re with an alien right now”.
“He’s using a translator system,” Ryland explained defensively.
“Which is exactly what a robot is!” Hiraya countered. “Seriously, this whole thing feels like a bad rip-off of a movie. Like a low-budget version of TARS from Interstellar”.
“…Interstellar?”
Hiraya blinked. “You don’t know Interstellar?”
“No?”
“That’s like the greatest space movie of all time.”
“Never heard of it.”
Hiraya stared blankly at the radio. “That movie is literally a masterpiece.”
“I’ve been slightly busy trying not to die in space.”
“…fair enough.”
Then the strange translated voice spoke again.
“Grace Rocky friends. Rocky good. Rocky help".
Hiraya’s internal monologue was screaming. I am actually losing it. I am sitting in my kitchen at three in the morning, arguing about Interstellar with a man and his pet rock-alien who shouldn't exist.
“Hello, new human friend,” the mechanical voice added, the tone almost polite.
Hiraya let out a long, shaky sigh and leaned her head back, staring at the flickering fluorescent ceiling. The memory of her father’s voice drifted through her mind, steady and calm.
“Someone far away is talking on the radio, Hiraya. Isn’t that something?”
She looked at the Kenwood radio—the machine she had just brought back from the dead—and felt the weight of her reality shifting. Just a few hours ago, she was worried about lighting layouts and AutoCAD revisions. Now, the impossible was vibrating through her dining table.
“Yeah, Dad,” she whispered to the empty, rain-scented room. “It’s definitely something”.