The Voice from Beyond

Chapter 2

"Oh come on! Work you stupid thing!" Phil was sat beside the last server that had shown him multiple error messages, working through the code to find the issue. He had already fixed the cooling that had apparently let the server heat up too much plus some lose wires, but now it was just being a pain in the ass with rebooting and calibrating. The last seven hours had been spent fixing all the servers, even checking the ones that seemed fine just to be sure. Halfway through the analysis of the signal had been completed, but the servers were more important, so he hasn't looked at that one yet. 

Finally the last red line of code disappeared, giving him the all clear. He sighs and slumps back against the wall, wanting nothing more than to just lay down and sleep.  First day and already everything was driving him mad. With a loud yawn and a much needed stretch, he got up from the floor, put everything back in its place and left the server room. Through the window he could see the last traces of light fade behind the horizon, the only partly cloud covered skies showing of thousands of glittering stars. Great. A whole day wasted. And he hasn't even fixed the two dishes yet! 

Grabbing his phone from the desk, he quickly checked if he had any missed messages. One from Kristin wishing him luck and telling him to take enough breaks, Wilbur asking how the move went, Tommy demanding attention so he didn't have to study and the rest were messages from group chats. He answered all of them, thanking Kristin and promising he will go to bed soon, telling Wilbur they can call tomorrow so he doesn't have to type it all out and Tommy got a paragraph about preparing for his finals and that Phil was not raising dropouts. 

The small blinking light on his monitor eventually pulled his attention away from the group chats he was reading through. Right, the signal. He grabbed his own headphones and plugged them in, not daring to touch the old ones laying on the desk. Who knows what touched them beforehand, not to mention the dust and the fact it could have lose wires ready to short circuit and explode. Navigating through the different settings, he eventually got the fully formatted signal and put it into the audio section. With a nervous glance back at his phone, he pressed play. 

At first it was nothing. Just quiet static. Then a deep humming sound, distorted by a bunch of other things out in space probably. The humming picked up in volume, the pitch shifting back and forth between two tones. Phil looked at the analytics of the signal while it played. The source was a small planet and a repeating electromagnetic wave pattern. There was no form of message encoded, which was expected. The ones that had messages never made sense, letters assembled by chance alone. 

Though it does sound off. Why was the volume constantly rising? He was simultaneously lowering it on the computer to not blast his ears off, but damn that was impressive. 

Then the signal abruptly stopped, leaving silence and a ringing in his ears. 

Phil hummed, staring at the file for a little. There could be all kinds of reasons for such a sound to exist, this was by no means evidence that aliens are out there. Not by a long shot. But it was interesting. For all he knows this could just be howling winds or some sort of eruption or odd vibrations. So, he saved the file on one of the many provided harddrives and took it out once the full download was completed, putting it away in a box for later. 

It seems like such a waste of resources, having him put each signal on a small harddrive and collect them in a box to send over to HQ once it's full. Like an incredible waste of both resources and time on his end. But oh well, if that's what they want, he'll do it.  Not his place to question their methods anyways, he saw what results that one would bring. Not a fan of being put somewhere where he truly had no connection to anything.  

Glancing at the time and the dark sky outside, he decides that his shift for today is over. Turning all the unnecessary systems off, he pushed away from the desk and walked over to his quarters. Dinner consisted of a simple sandwich because he didn't feel like making anything more complicated. Not that he had much of a variety to cook with... or knew how to do that. He was proud enough to say he can make a lot of different things with noodles, having grown up on a tight budget.