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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5358868" data-attributes="member: 143">This story was a lot of fun to write, or I should say, to edit, since my players did the hard work of providing the dialogue. Here's the epilogue I promised:* * * * * EpilogueThe command center at the signals monitoring center at the Arecibo Observatory was almost empty; most of the staff was still celebrating in the village at the base of the hill.  David Foster was enjoying a first-class sulk, wishing he was down there with them.  Angelina was down there, no doubt, fending off the advances of that slick bastard Eduardo, from the NSA’s team.  Thus far she’d resisted, but in the general mood of revelry and relief that had followed the successful return of the Mars mission, who knew what could happen?“It’s not fair,” he said. “Mm hm,” Gustav Prieto said, without looking up from his comic book.“I mean, we won the war,” David added.  This time Gustav didn’t even bother to respond, and after a moment, David pushed off from his chair and got up.  “I’m going to get a Coke from the machine.  Do you want—“He was interrupted by a ping from his monitoring station.  Dropping back into his seat, he swirled his mouse to deactivate his screen saver, and looked at the data scrolling down his screen.   “Getting something,” he said.  “That’s odd.”Gustav Prieto finally lifted his eyes.  “That statement is never followed by anything pleasant,”  he said.  When David didn’t respond, or look up from his screen, the other scientist sighed heavily and got up, moving to where he could look over the other man’s shoulder.  “It’s just background,” he said, after one look at the pattern displayed on the screen.  “No, wait, I think it’s a signal,” David insisted.  “Look, the pattern waveform here is way too focused.”“Point of origin?”“Can’t tell.  The source… it… it’s just there.”“What do you mean?  You can’t even ID the general direction?  How can that be?”“I don’t know.  Maybe it’s something different, a tachyon beam, or something.”Gustav snorted.  He started to say, “Science fiction,” but he bit off the words unspoken.  Too many things that would have been considered ‘science fiction’ a year ago had become very real. “Within our solar system, or from outside?” he persisted.  “Mars, maybe?”“I told you, I can’t tell.  The signal just appears, I don’t even have anything to base a plot from.”“Pattern?”“Computer’s not seeing anything right off.  It doesn’t match any of the alien signals in our database.”“Well, that’s a relief, anyway.  What about the target destination?”David hit some keys, and Gustav shook his head as a new field of data appeared.  “No, look.  Doesn’t even come close to any land masses.  Not a signal, unless somebody’s trying to contact somebody living under the Earth’s oceans.  Unless the signal’s a message to the whales, it’s nothing.”  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” David said, as Gustav went back to his chair and picked up his comic book.  “Nice try, though.  Figured if you couldn’t go down to the party, you’d make them come up here, eh?”“Heh, maybe,” David replied, with a smile.  He hit ‘Save’, and then closed the file, and went to get his Coke. THE END…?</blockquote>

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