Bobby looked at his reflection in the dark glass of the terminal. For years, he had told himself the nightshift was a dead-end. Lonely. Forgotten. But now, for the first time, he realized: he had never been alone.
The reply was instant: THE NIGHT WATCH. WE HAVE BEEN MONITORING THIS STATION FOR 11 YEARS. YOU ARE THE FIRST TO NOTICE THE GAP.
He was awake.
Another file. This one was older—a scanned, handwritten note, timestamped 1999: BBS2 -Bobby-s Nightshift Parts 1 2-
"To the one who finds this—If you're reading this on the BBS2, you didn't stumble. It chose you. Don't fight the nightshift. It's the only shift that matters. The day people count stars. We listen to what's between them. —Arthur"
Bobby’s thumb hovered over the transmit key. The BBS2—a clunky, beige terminal with a monochrome amber screen—hummed in the dead silence of the KZ-99 observatory’s basement. His nightshift was supposed to be simple: monitor the automated star-scans, log meteoroids, and drink terrible vending machine coffee.
He hadn't noticed any gap. But now, scrolling back through the logs, he saw it: every night at 3:00 AM, the data stream glitched for exactly 0.7 seconds. For eleven years, day-shift dismissed it as a power flutter. Bobby, alone with his thoughts and the hum of the machine, had subconsciously flagged it as wrong. Bobby looked at his reflection in the dark
The next line appeared:
BBS2://NIGHTSHIFT.ACK//SOURCE:UNKNOWN//MESSAGE:BOBBY. WE SEE YOU.
"At 3:00 AM, the sky is not empty. It listens. You are now one of the listeners. Your first task: tonight, when the glitch occurs, do not log it as a power flutter. Log it as 'contact.'" Forgotten
3:00 AM. TONIGHT. TUNE TO FREQUENCY 0.0. LISTEN TO THE SILENCE. YOU WILL HEAR THEM MOVING. DO NOT BE AFRAID. THEY ARE WHY WE WATCH.
Not a meteor. Not satellite debris. A structured pulse, riding a frequency the array wasn't even tuned to receive. It came through as raw text on his debug console, line by slow line:
At 2:47 AM, he got something else.
ACCEPT OR DECLINE?