It was spring in the northern hemisphere, the kind of day that makes you smile with your face to the sun. Blossoms opened on trees in London’s parks. Young couples strolled past storefronts in Tokyo where mannequins wore fashion two seasons ahead. In Boston, professors chalked equations on green boards, trying to remember what it was like to be wrong in public. And in Washington, a man in a blue suit leaned over a secure telephone, asking: “Is this a prank?”
But it wasn’t a prank.
By the second week, the signals had formed a pattern: new broadcasts every forty-eight hours, always at 03:17 UTC, always heard by everyone listening. There was no discernible source and no delay, just some undefined and indefatigable voice whispering in every ear at once, regardless of longitude.
The fifth signal included a full musical number. Strings and brass and an impossibly crisp baritone crooning something halfway between Sinatra and an early Apple keynote:
“Get ready, Earth … for something incredible. One planet. One chance. One. Big. Event.”
It ended with applause. It wasn’t human applause, exactly. It was something else, something layered. It was too symmetrical, too clean. It was less the sound of real hands and voices and more like cheers as recreated by a machine trying to imitate enthusiasm.
The United Nations held a session that lasted nine hours and concluded with a resolution titled “Concerning Non-Hostile Extraterrestrial Broadcasting.” It was unanimous and meaningless. In Brussels, the European Parliament voted to establish a Committee on Interstellar Commerce, chaired by a Belgian woman who once led yogurt trade negotiations.
Scientists, philosophers, and advertising executives were invited to weigh in. SETI scientists, underfunded for decades, became minor celebrities. Dr. Rosalie Ng, astrophysicist turned signal analyst, appeared on The Daily Show, her careful syntax clipped by the laugh track:
“We are not receiving a message. We are receiving ourselves, distorted and reassembled.”
The audience didn’t know whether to laugh or applaud. So they did both.
In the markets, futures trading for luxury survival shelters spiked 11%. In Los Angeles, influencers began a trend of “cosmic minimalism,” deleting their social accounts with dramatic video tributes and farewell montages set to the Interstellar soundtrack.
Pastors preached on Sunday mornings, skeptical journalists nodded somberly on Wednesday night panels, and Reddit bloomed with theories like mold in a forgotten kitchen. Theories that it was aliens. Theories that it was God. Theories that it was late-stage capitalism, achieving sentience and crying out for blood.
No one turned off their TVs.
In our apartment, we sat in the dark and watched reruns. My wife had gone quiet. Our son, seven years old, began whispering jingles in his sleep.
“Red Bull gives you wings…”
“Have it your way…”
“Open happiness…”
At Langley, they dusted off files marked “Project Echo Mirror,” an experiment from the ’60s involving parabolic satellites and subliminal messaging. At CERN, a physicist ran a simulation showing how sound waves might wrap around the curvature of space-time. No one really understood what he meant, but the simulation was beautiful, and it made for good television.
Somewhere in Nevada, a team of ex-NASA engineers built a whiteboard big enough to fit every known jingle from 1950 to 2020. There were over 14,000. They color-coded them by product type and nation of origin. A graduate student cross-referenced the signals with historical ad campaigns and discovered an uncanny pattern: every message corresponded to a moment of collective disappointment: failed product launches, bankrupt companies, canceled shows.
“The world is being reminded of everything we tried to sell and couldn’t,” she wrote.
Still, no one turned off their TVs. No one stopped listening.
And then, on the fourteenth day, the signal arrived early. It was shorter than the others, with no music and no fanfare; just static, then a single phrase in English, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, French, Hindi, and Swahili:
“Ten days left. Everything must go!”
That night, in churches, bars, and online forums, the same question circled like smoke:
What happens when the sale ends?
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