A stolen spacecraft. A mysterious signal from a distant galaxy. A past that is starting to come undone.
At a secluded SETI outpost near Groom Lake, an astronomer picks up a transmission: deliberate Morse code, arriving when and where it should not. What begins as a curiosity quickly unravels into something larger, as reality itself begins to ripple.
Strange patterns emerge. Memories shift. Buried Cold War relics and long-suppressed technologies point to a hidden system, one built not to observe history, but to rewrite it.
The Umbra Signal is a high concept science fiction thriller blending signal theory, espionage, and deep mystery. As the coalesce, one question grows louder: if time can be altered, who is shaping the truth?
As cryptic codes surface and timelines destabilize, a hidden framework reveals itself, designed to manipulate key moments across decades. Cold War secrets, buried technologies, and vanishing truths converge, suggesting the flow of time is neither linear nor secure.
The Umbra Signal is a cerebral science fiction thriller that weaves espionage, metaphysical tension, and temporal mystery into a story of profound consequence. Beneath the surface lies a question more urgent than ever: if the past can be revised, who controls what remains?
A stolen spacecraft. A mysterious signal from a distant galaxy. A past that is starting to come undone.
At a secluded SETI outpost near Groom Lake, an astronomer picks up a transmission: deliberate Morse code, arriving when and where it should not. What begins as a curiosity quickly unravels into something larger, as reality itself begins to ripple.
Strange patterns emerge. Memories shift. Buried Cold War relics and long-suppressed technologies point to a hidden system, one built not to observe history, but to rewrite it.
The Umbra Signal is a high concept science fiction thriller blending signal theory, espionage, and deep mystery. As the coalesce, one question grows louder: if time can be altered, who is shaping the truth?
As cryptic codes surface and timelines destabilize, a hidden framework reveals itself, designed to manipulate key moments across decades. Cold War secrets, buried technologies, and vanishing truths converge, suggesting the flow of time is neither linear nor secure.
The Umbra Signal is a cerebral science fiction thriller that weaves espionage, metaphysical tension, and temporal mystery into a story of profound consequence. Beneath the surface lies a question more urgent than ever: if the past can be revised, who controls what remains?
Groom Lake, Nevada – June 14, 1955, 02:00 Hours
Stars blinked above the Nevada desert, timeless and unreadable. Moonlight washed over Hangar 18 at Area 51, its silhouette rising like a fortress chiseled from silence.
Static hung thick in the air as Private Timothy Rustand sat alone in the guard shack on the facility’s outer edge. He hunched in his chair and took a swig of lukewarm coffee from a tin military-issue cup.
“Just once I’d like it to stay hot,” he muttered.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and tapped the Morse key. Nothing, only an annoying hiss. Just his luck. Then, a sharp metallic thunk. Somewhere behind the wall. Or below it. Or inside it.
Rustand froze mid-blink.
His eyes tracked left. Then right. Then up. He leaned back, stared hard at the ceiling tile with the old brown stain, squinting like it might blink first.
Then he ducked and looked under the desk.
Nothing.
He stood up. Kicked the empty chair like it owed him money.
Still nothing.
Getting more spooked, he lifted the garbage can, looked inside. He even opened the supply locker and poked his head in.
“Mice, maybe,” he muttered. “Or a jackrabbit. Radioactive jackrabbits.”
Another pause. He finally looked at the Morse set. Like it had personally betrayed him.
He took a step toward it. Then two. Real slow.
“Gonna be the first man in history taken out by a haunted filing cabinet.”
He sat down again, picked up his coffee. Didn’t drink it. Just held it like a nervous habit. His eyes never left the wall. Rustand then tried the Morse key again, which, thankfully, decided to work this time.
He began logging his hourly check-in with Central HQ:
—. .-. —- —- — / … - .- - .. —- -. / .- .-.. .—. …. .- .-.-.- / .- .-.. .-.. / -.-. .-.. . .- .-. .-.-.- / .. / … .- -.— / .- —. .- .. -. —-… / .- .-.. .-.. / -.-. .-.. . .- .-. —..—
“Groom Station Alpha. All clear. I say again: all clear,” he sent, while repeating the words aloud, an old habit from tech school.
Each dit and dah drilled into the silence. More reflex than thought now. Each chirp reminded him of everything he wasn’t cleared to know.
And he felt extra jumpy tonight.
He paused, massaging his shoulder to ease his tension. Through the window, the black and diamond-studded sky implied eternity.
Dit-dah-dit, dah-ditty-dit, dah dit-dit.
Another series of taps echoed through the shack. This time, no reply came. The silence stretched. Too precise, too sterile. Not human.
“HQ? You CC?” Rustand clattered back. “Did you RX that last MSG?”
The radio crackled, then flatlined into static, as if the silence had swallowed the reply.
Rustand frowned and reached for the antenna tuner. The moment he twisted the dial, the radio spat out a sharp burst of static, followed by an odd pattern.
Dah. Dit-dit. Dah-dah.
He froze, recognizing the letters. But this wasn’t standard protocol. The signal repeated, deliberate, almost… patient.
A calibration error perhaps, or someone having fun. But unease prickled the back of his neck.
Curiosity got the better of him. He tapped out a response, mimicking the pattern he’d heard. The words didn’t get verbalized this time. He couldn’t bring himself to say them aloud.
Dit-dah-dah ditty-dit-dit dah-dah-dah, Dit-dit ditty-dit, Dah ditty-dit-dit dit-dit ditty-dit?
Another pause, longer this time. The radio snapped alive with a piercing tone, sharp enough to cut bone, followed by a string of rapid, high-speed Morse. The dots and dashes blurred into an incomprehensible rush, far too fast for any human hand to send.
The lights flickered.
The hum deepened. Low, resonant, and unnatural. It rolled through the floor like distant machinery waking up. Rustand stiffened, hand hovering near the console, as the desk shook beneath his wrist.
It stopped.
Abrupt and absolute. One moment a scream of code. The next, only the soft hiss of static, like nothing had ever happened.
“HQ this is Alpha,” Rustand keyed. “Confirm ur RX.”
“RX Alpha. All clear,” Control keyed back.
Rustand rubbed the back of his neck, forcing a shaky laugh. “Gotta be these old lines,” he said nervously. He reached for the logbook. But the taps had sounded almost rhythmic. It was as if the interference knew exactly what he was listening for. An echo he couldn’t shake, familiar but impossible. He scribbled a note:
“Anomalous transmission. Interference?”
He didn’t think about it again.
But out there, somewhere across the cold vastness of space, the first ripple had been sent.
* * *
He scanned the horizon. The hangar loomed behind him like an impenetrable monolith, its heavy doors closed tight in silent vigil.
Rustand stepped out of the shack and made his way toward his partner. He shifted his weight. The rifle rested loosely in his grip as he approached Sergeant Frank Carter.
Carter flicked ash from his dying cigarette without looking up. “You check in, kid?”
“Yeah,” Rustand muttered. “Got some weird chatter back. Didn’t sound normal to me.” His curiosity weighed on him like the rifle strap on his shoulder. “I’ve got to ask,” Rustand ventured in a low, thoughtful tone, glancing toward his partner who was leaning on a weathered crate. “You ever think about what they’ve got sealed up in there?” Carter, his sharp features softened only by the flicker of a match as he re-lit his stubborn cigarette, raised a skeptical eyebrow. He took another long drag. “Nope. And I plan to keep it that way.”
Tim Rustand’s lips twitched, but he couldn’t keep his gaze from drifting toward the hangar. “Come on, Sarge. The security, the way they act so cagey… it’s not just aircraft in there, is it?” His tone carried the echoes of stories passed down among privates in hushed voices.
Carter’s expression hardened, and he exhaled a stream of smoke, his tone clipped and matter-of-fact. “You keep asking questions like that, and you’re going to find yourself guarding the back end of a supply depot. They’d assign you to watch paint dry if they thought you were too curious.” His voice, though light with humor, carried an undercurrent of caution. A warning borne of years of following orders without question.
Rustand hesitated, shifting on his feet weighing the gravity of the conversation. “I don’t know. My dad swore there were stories. You know, about things we pulled out of the sky. Machines that don’t belong here.” His words were soft, laced with an almost childlike wonder. A wonder that recalled evenings spent around a crackling radio, listening to tall tales of strange happenings.
Carter chuckled, his expression softening as he crushed his cigarette under his boot. “Stories are for people with time on their hands. Out here, you’ve got a job. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. The only thing flying around tonight is your imagination.” His laugh was low and knowing, as if he’d heard a thousand such questions and learned to dismiss them with practiced ease.
Before Rustand could reply, a faint metallic sound, sharp and deliberate, interrupted them. It was a click that split the night’s silence with uncanny precision.
Both men froze. Tim’s knuckles went white on the rifle. “Did you hear that?” Carter scanned the dark. “Could be a coyote… but that didn’t sound like teeth on wire.” Rustand’s heart hammered, and a wave of nausea mixed with disbelief overtook him as he staggered backward, unable to process the surreal split-second vision.
Carter straightened, his focus intensifying as his eyes scanned the dark horizon. “Stay alert. Could be nothing. Could be trouble.” His words were clipped.
The wind whispered softly through the sand, carrying with it secrets of distant times and places. And then, time stuttered.
Rustand steadied himself. Something sharp and unseen scraped across his nerves, gone in an instant but real. It was as if the world had skipped a frame, like a film reel that jumped, distorting reality. The distant buzz of the generators, a constant presence in the night, skipped a beat. A sudden, jarring break in the familiar background noise that made both men’s skin prickle.
Rustand turned toward Carter, and what he saw defied logic. Carter was there, but he was not alone. In that split second, Rustand saw two Carters: one standing as he had been moments before, his fingers brushing the holster of his sidearm; the other, a ghostly, fractionally ahead version of Carter, who had already drawn his weapon, his mouth open as if to issue a silent, urgent warning.
Then: snap. In the blink of an eye, only one Carter remained.
But the moment lingered, like a scene replaying itself out of sync.
Rustand blinked rapidly, the sensation different from déjà vu, more like an intentional reset, as though reality had deliberately stuttered. As if something wanted the moment to repeat, until someone noticed. He swallowed, uncertain whether the signal was watching him, or simply waiting.
It felt like reality stalled and vibrated. Like something a professor once called ‘spooky action,’ only this wasn’t theory. In that instant, Carter’s inexplicable duplication and sudden erasure felt like a ripple in one stretched fabric of reality. Distance and time no longer followed the rules.
Rustand froze. The hum of the generators faltered. Not only in sound, but in pressure. The air felt impossibly thick. It pressed around him as if he were moving underwater. Carter looked directly at him. His eyes were sharp, full of concern, as if he too had experienced something indescribable.
“Rustand, you all right?” Carter called out. The words reached him a second too late, like an echo from a half-remembered dream.
A low hum, deep and resonant, vibrated through the ground beneath him. Tim’s breath caught in his throat. The hum intensified, and the metal desk shuddered beside him. He noted with a mix of fear and incredulity that Carter’s posture had shifted, his fingers now brushing the grip of his sidearm. But Rustand swore he had already seen that exact moment unfold before his eyes. A cold, static-like sensation electrified his spine, feeling as though his body had skipped forward while he struggled to catch up. It was as if time itself had faltered, leaving him stranded between two seconds.
Rustand’s boots crunched once on the gravel, then stilled. He hadn’t taken another step, but the world around him had shifted, like a room that had been rearranged in the dark. The air didn’t shift. It bent. Ever so slightly. Like something had leaned in too close and pulled the world with it. He froze. The wind had been steady. Now it pushed back in tiny bursts, like it couldn’t make up its mind. There was a shimmer, like the blinking of stars. And yet, not light. Not heat. Something else. Like space forgot what shape it was supposed to be. He looked at Carter, but Carter was still scanning forward, unaware. How was he not feeling this? Rustand’s fingers curled tighter on the rifle grip.
“Something’s… not right,” he intoned. He wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
His helmet buzzed and then… cold silence.
His left foot twitched. Not because he moved it. It had shifted forward, like someone had spliced out a frame of time and dropped him into the next.
He held his breath. Waited.
Then the shimmer passed again. This time, he felt it in his teeth.
His balance swayed. Not from motion, but from the weight of what he couldn’t see.
Whatever this was, it hadn’t merely touched him. It had folded reality around him. And it wasn’t done yet.
The wind that had been a constant, gentle breeze, became a carrier of a strange echo of sounds that had not yet happened, the future and present intertwined. Then, in that eerie silence, Rustand heard Carter’s voice again. Not once, but twice. “Stay alert. Could be nothing. Could be trouble.”
Carter’s voice was first heard during the real-time conversation, but a second, nearly identical version of the message was received immediately after the first one, as if it had been sent as a ghost echo, as if someone had recorded it onto an audio tape and put it out of sync, poorly, yet in a rather chilling manner. Rustand stopped breathing, the panic was intense. He looked, expecting Carter to react with visible alarm, but the sergeant remained unfazed. He flicked his cigarette away and rubbed his temple as if nothing unusual had happened. “You hear that?” Rustand whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of disbelief and fear.
“Hear what?” Carter replied with a scowl, his tone clipped and full of uncertainty.
Rustand’s boots betrayed him. The ground beneath his feet felt unsteady, not as if the earth was shifting or moving, but as if he was standing on a memory of the present and not the present itself. He blinked in rapid fire, confused, and found himself 10 feet in front of where he was moments before.
The sensation was surreal. The rifle strap dug into his shoulder. Rustand blinked, but the moment held still, as if reality hadn’t reloaded. His brain hit a wall. It wasn’t confusion, it was more like the whole world had been tilted and no one warned him.
His foot was forward. He hadn’t stepped.
“I… what?” he whispered.
His voice came out strained, like it belonged to someone else. He turned toward Carter, but Carter stood frozen in a way that didn’t look natural. Not stillness, but suspension. Like time had hiccuped.
Rustand reached for the ground to steady himself. His palm scraped the gravel as he caught himself, the pain snapping him back into the moment.
Then he was back. The same position. Same breath. Rifle clenched. A sharp pulse drummed behind his eyes. Something had snapped him into place; something other than gravity.
“Carter,” he croaked. “I was…”
The words broke apart as another ripple passed through the air.
Carter’s head lifted. He straightened fast, boots shifting back. His eyes locked on Rustand.
“You…” Carter forced out words. “You moved.”
“I didn’t,” Rustand muttered. “But I wasn’t here either.”
He heard it. It sounded absurd, even to him. But Carter didn’t question it. He had already drawn his sidearm.
Rustand didn’t move. He couldn’t trust the ground beneath him.
Carter’s face tightened. “You blinked. One second you were five feet ahead.”
Rustand gave a small nod. “Felt like both. Like I stepped out of sync.”
Then came a sound. A clean, deliberate click.
Not boots. Not gravel. Something cleaner. Intentional.
Carter turned sharply. His voice lowered. “That wasn’t us.”
Rustand stayed still. His mouth was dry.
A second click followed. Closer this time.
Their eyes met. No one spoke.
Then the shadows shifted.
Carter’s voice was low, almost hushed. “Tell me you saw that.”
Rustand didn’t answer right away. “I saw it… I just don’t know what I saw.”
Carter shook his head, eyes scanning the horizon. “No time to process it. Not now.”
Rustand exhaled shakily. “That was plain wrong.”
“Keep it together,” Carter said, though his voice betrayed a crack of unease. “We’ll deal with this nightmare later.”
Rustand nodded, trying to push the moment down, deep. “If there’s a later.”
* * *
Beyond the fence perimeter and shadowed depths of the hangar, five intruders, dressed in black, moved with unnerving precision like predators. Each step exact, like they’d rehearsed this breach a hundred times before. Each step was planned. Every movement sharp, efficient, and cold.
In an instant, Carter and Rustand were on their weapons, their rifles up and level, with a primitive urge to survive erasing any of the confusion that might otherwise have clouded their minds. Rustand backed up against the wall. Carter offered a two-finger salute, a quiet, unspoken gesture that hinted at battle scars buried deep beneath the surface, earned in the heat of active combat. Rustand exhaled through his nose, slow and planned. Whatever the anomaly was, he decided for the time being it could wait. The present danger required attention. The hangar was massive, shadowy, and threatening, sitting right there in the darkness with its doors shut tight. And now, there was no question of it: they were not alone.
* * *
The first of the intruders, a wiry man with piercing blue eyes and whose actions communicated that he was clearly the leader, moved as though he had already memorized every inch of the terrain. In his hand he held a small, smooth cylinder, its edges worn and pitted as if it had seen countless secret operations before. The device was from a forgotten era, from the future.
Right behind him, a squat, stocky man shifted restlessly, his burly hands flexing against the grip of his weapon. “I don’t like this,” he muttered, his voice barely rising above a breath. “Feels off.”
A slender woman with a scar across her cheek shot him a piercing look. “Shut up and move,” she ordered curtly, her delicate fingers twitching in a familiar, soldier-like habit. The reflex of someone who constantly checked her weapon even in moments of relative calm.
The fourth member of the group, a tall, broad-shouldered man, remained silent. He did not need words. His inscrutable expression and the confident set of his jaw spoke volumes. Clad in gear that blended with the surrounding shadows, he looked as though he already knew secrets that the others could only guess at. In a measured, almost ritualistic manner, he pressed a switch on a compact device strapped to his arm.
A soft, deliberate vibration pulsed outward in an unseen wave; a signal of readiness or a warning to unseen watchers. The entire team paused for a full second, collectively holding their breath as if waiting for fate to decide their next move. Nothing happened.
The leader exhaled slowly, breaking the silence. “Clear. We’re good.” His tone was smooth, confident ; a stark contrast to the palpable tension that still vibrated in the air.
The youngest member of the team, a man with a perpetual look of nervous energy, let out a shaky breath. “Did you feel it outside?” he croaked, his voice tight with apprehension.
The woman with the scar nodded as she adjusted the strap of her pack. “Yeah. Like a misfire.” Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of the pack, a reflex that betrayed more unease than her voice did.
“Too close,” the leader muttered, his gaze flicking toward the distant perimeter where Carter and Rustand continued their patrol, looking intently for the silent intrusion unfolding beyond the hangar’s shadow.
“Lucky for them,” the leader added under his breath, a wry smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he contemplated the situation.
The tall, silent man tilted his head, brow furrowed. “They didn’t register it?” His tenor-pitched voice was almost a murmur. Too calm for the weight behind the question.
The leader shook his head. “No, but they felt it. That’s the edge of the radius. The scientists at the facility call it ‘localized chronal shear.’” His explanation was brief, yet ominous. It implied the intruders were operating on the fringes of a temporal anomaly.
The tall man shifted his weight, visibly uncomfortable. “If they’d been closer…?” he ventured, his voice trailing off in uncertainty.
The leader snapped his fingers. Perhaps too sharply. His confidence was strained. “Then we’d have a bigger problem.” He growled sharply. “Move. Now.”
“Still too unstable,” the scarred woman shook her head and muttered, a note of frustration creeping into her tone.
The leader’s knuckles tightened around the worn cylinder. He hesitated briefly, then signaled the others to move. “Enough. Move out.” With that, the intruders dispersed, merging with the deep shadows of the hangar as they advanced steadily toward their target.
Behind them, in the warm, starlit Nevada night, the last wisps of a mysterious time ripple dissipated silently into the desert air, unseen, unfelt.
The five intruders moved rapidly, the lead figure raising the cylindrical device already humming with restrained energy. The beam slipped out, and the fence vanished. Not burned, not cut, but erased, as if edited out of the present. One by one, they crossed the threshold, not so much entering as resuming something already set in motion. They carried with them an assortment of advanced equipment and communication tools that defied the technology of the era, and weaponry modified for stealth and rapid action. Their target: a spacecraft, a vessel of mystery and enigma, shrouded in its own secrets.
“Eyes sharp,” muttered the wiry leader, his piercing blue eyes scanning the surroundings with calculated intensity. He gestured silently for the others to fan out.
The intruders approached the hangar. The wiry leader held up the cylindrical device and pressed a small button on its surface. A faint, almost imperceptible purr filled the air, followed by a sudden ripple; an invisible shockwave of energy that spread outward in a perfect circle, bending the moment around it. A two-meter section of the hangar door vanished into mist. The four armed guards at the entrance froze mid-step, eyes wide with confusion, before collapsing where they stood, dropped cold by the silent force.
* * *
Carter and Rustand were on high alert as they made their way around the outer hangar perimeter. Something was definitely off, and nothing made sense anymore.
On the far side of the complex, Rustand staggered slightly and gripped a wooden crate to stable himself. “What the… did you feel that?”
Carter had already turned toward the hangar. “Yeah. Like a punch without the sound.”
“That wasn’t wind,” Rustand said, adjusting his grip on the rifle. “That was… something else.”
Carter took off towards the distant hanger at a sprint. “Let’s move. Now.”
They ran.
* * *
“GO,” the leader ordered, his voice low but carrying the weight of command.
With that single word, the team surged forward, their boots making barely a crunch on the cold concrete as they slipped through the breach and swept into the hangar.
And there it was: hovering low, silent and ominous.
The spacecraft was bathed in an eerie green light. Its hull was etched with shifting symbols and appeared otherworldly; a fantastical blend of futuristic design and enigmatic antiquity. The details were as mesmerizing as they were perplexing.
Eyes wide with wonder, the youngest stared up at the hovering craft, mesmerized, until his knee slammed into a jagged crate edge. Pain flared. He bit back a cry as blood soaked through the tear. Limping forward, he cursed the ship and himself in the same breath.
Nearby, a small desk cluttered with papers and outdated equipment caught the leader’s eye. “Bingo,” he murmured, his voice low and conspiratorial as his eyes caught the faded gleam of an American-made Morse code keyboard lying incongruously among the clutter. “We’ve found it, as they said. This goes with us.” Swiftly and without hesitation, he unplugged the device and tucked it under his arm. A precious relic that held the key to secrets long buried.
“Control panel’s here,” the scarred woman said, motioning toward a section of the spacecraft’s hull that appeared less uniform than the rest. The leader stepped forward, placing the cylindrical device against the surface. Almost immediately, it emitted a soft, rhythmic buzz, and with a subtle mechanical click, a hidden panel slid open. Inside, rows of strange, glowing symbols pulsed with a steady rhythm, reminiscent of a human heartbeat. A silent, mesmerizing cadence that hinted at a language older than time.
“Here goes nothing,” the leader muttered, his voice a blend of determination and excitement as he manipulated the interface with a deft combination of instinct and memorized instructions. The symbols shifted and reorganized on the screen, their glow intensifying in a hypnotic dance of light and shadow.
“What do we need that old World War Two souvenir for?” the burly assailant grumbled, his tone laced with incredulity. “Let’s dump it and get out of here. It’s slowing us down!”
The wiry leader shot him a withering glare. “Do you think we’re the first ones to touch this technology? This thing wasn’t built. It was recovered. The military’s been sitting on it for decades without realizing what they had.”
The scarred woman ran her slender fingers reverently over the device, studying the worn symbols beneath its surface. “This thing,” she hesitated, “It doesn’t just translate signals. It interfaces with the other technology.”
The leader’s grip on the device tightened imperceptibly as he responded in a near-whisper, “YES. The Morse Code Unit is the cipher key, and it must go with us!”
* * *
Groom Lake, Nevada – June 14, 1955, 02:05 Hours
At a control panel near the vessel, the leader unlatched his pack and then carefully removed the unassuming Morse code device. The metal box, weathered and marked with the faded insignia of the U.S. military, held an aura of enigmatic history.
Wincing as his knee throbbed, the young assailant tapped the device with gloved fingers. “I still don’t get it… why this thing? Shouldn’t we be using something more modern?” he muttered, equal parts confused and frustrated.
The scarred woman beside him shot him a sideways glance. “You think this ship works on ‘modern’ tech?” she replied angrily.
“Enough,” barked the leader. He knelt beside the spacecraft’s control interface and placed the Morse code unit carefully on a flat surface, below a seam in the metal. With deft, precise movements, he twisted a dial on the side of the device. The brief respite allowed the young operative to steal a quick, bitter espresso shot from his hidden flask and tend to his bleeding, gashed knee. His eyes snapped upward as a sharp tone sliced through the air.
The ship stirred.
A thin blue light scanned the Morse unit, its wavering glow dancing across the weathered exterior before disappearing into the hull. A series of vibrations cascaded outward from the control panel, each one matching the exact rhythm of a coded transmission.
The leader’s jaw tightened as he observed, “It’s recognizing the frequency.”
The tall, broad-shouldered man, silent and imposing, finally broke his silence. “This is much more than a code unit,” he stated.
The youngest member of the team glared in confusion. “What do you mean?” he demanded, gesturing toward the alien, intricate surface of the spacecraft.
The leader’s eyes never left the vessel as he tapped the device again. “This thing isn’t what it appears to be,” he blurted in frustration. “The military had no idea what they were dealing with when they recovered it.” With a click of a small toggle switch, another pulse of energy raced up the spacecraft’s hull, causing a section to slide open with a quiet, almost reverent hiss.
“Repurposed,” he muttered under his breath.
The youngest’s brow furrowed with urgency. “Repurposed from what?” he pressed, his voice trembling with both curiosity and concern.
A heavy silence hung between them before the tall intruder spoke again, his tone imbued with reverence. “Older than radio. Maybe older than us,” he said quietly.
* * *
Behind them, the unconscious guards stirred, the quiet murmur of movement a stark reminder of the narrow margin between success and failure. Carter and Rustand reached the opening right as two of the guards were shaking off the hit, eyes wide with residual shock.
“You all right?” Carter asked, crouching beside one.
“I think so,” the man said, voice groggy. “What… what did they hit us with?”
“No idea,” Carter said, helping another guard to his feet. “But they’re inside…and they’ve got something big.”
They stepped through the hole, weapons raised, breath catching as their eyes locked on the ship.
“Holy cats…” one of the guards muttered. “That thing real?”
Rustand stared, wide-eyed. “I used to laugh at the alien stories.” He swallowed. “Ain’t laughing now.”
* * *
The youngest assailant cast a nervous glance over his shoulder. “We’re out of time,” he yelped.
“Almost there,” the leader barked, his voice edged with tension as he aggressively pressed on.
The hangar doors groaned open, and a flood of pale light spilled in; headlights from an approaching vehicle flared through the haze, and the unmistakable sound of boots striking the ground echoed through the cavernous space.
“We’ve got company,” hissed the scarred woman, her tone laced with concern.
The leader muttered under his breath, “Prepare to defend the ship. This doesn’t end here.”
* * *
A gunshot shattered the tense silence. A bullet ricocheted off the spacecraft’s hull with a metallic clang, fired by a guard who hadn’t waited for orders.
A second shot followed. Then a third.
And then something went wrong.
One of the guards near the bay entrance, a young man barely more than a recruit, staggered backward without being hit. His rifle clattered to the floor. For a split second, he looked confused, as if his body no longer matched the instructions his brain was giving it. His mouth opened, but no words came. His skin drained to a gray pallor.
His veins darkened. Not bruised, not broken. Darkened, visibly, like ink being drawn up through invisible threads.
He reached for his face, but his hands twitched mid-air and locked in place. The air around him wavered. There was no light, no noise, but space itself rippled inward toward his chest.
The soldier let out a choking sound that didn’t match pain. It sounded like something being unwritten. His entire form jittered like a poor video signal. Then he folded in on himself, not bending or falling, but compressing into a narrow column of distortion, like a person being pulled through the wrong end of a telescope.
And then he was gone.
No body. No blood. Just a half-second image of where he had been.
The nearest guard screamed in terror. The tall intruder gasped and fell to one knee, staring in utter shock.
Even the leader hesitated.
No one spoke. No one could grasp the horror they had just witnessed.
Then another round slammed into the side of the vessel, and the standoff shattered, giving way to chaos once more.
“Cease fire!” Carter shouted, but the spell was broken.
The intruders responded with lethal precision. No hesitation. No wasted motion. In seconds, two more guards were down, their bodies crumpling before they hit the floor. Carter turned to shout again. A flash of light, and then a round caught him square in the chest, and he dropped without a sound.
Rustand dove behind a support beam, heart hammering, ears ringing.
* * *
The intruders moved like machines.
Another guard went down with a short cry, a pattern of red sprayed against a stack of wooden crates, his weapon clattering uselessly to the ground.
The youngest member of the team ducked behind a nearby rusting diesel fuel tank, clenching the Morse code unit tightly as if it were a lifeline. “What now?” he shouted over the dissonant clamor of gunfire.
“We finish what we started,” the leader commanded with fierce resolve.
With a sudden, explosive motion, he slammed his hand against the Morse unit’s interface, and the spacecraft responded as it shuddered to life. Lights along its surface undulated erratically, casting eerie, shifting shadows that danced across the hangar’s walls. The subtle vibrations of the machinery grew louder, resonating in their chests as the ship’s surface distorted in a subtle liquefaction. An effect so fleeting it defied comprehension.
A seam split open across the side of the craft, unveiling a darkened passage illuminated by a low, internal glow. Vapor hissed outward in serpentine coils as the hatch widened, revealing a mechano-organic interior that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic thrum. Walls that breathed softly, their surfaces threaded with bio-luminescent veins and metallic tendons. The leader didn’t hesitate. He sprinted and then vaulted into the opening, swallowed by the living glow. The others followed, boots pounding the deck as tracer fire stitched the ground behind them, ricochets flaring like fireflies. As the last figure dove through, the hatch irised shut with a hiss, sealing them inside as the vessel slowly rose from the concrete.
* * *
Amid a sudden burst of muffled gunfire outside the craft, the leader climbed into the command chair and brought the control panel to life. His fingers deftly moved over the glowing interface panel, with a grace that defied a 1950’s understanding of keyboards and computer interfaces. With a series of rapid keystrokes that suggested a rehearsed instinct, he entered a sequence as if guided by a force beyond human will. The spacecraft’s engines roared to life, sending a searing wave of heat cascading through the hangar. The guards outside, momentarily overwhelmed by the spectacle, fell back and shielded their faces as the ship levitated in a silent, surreal defiance of gravity as it hovered mere inches off the ground.
“Next stop… Andromeda!” the youngest intruder quipped nervously, the tremor in his voice belying the gravity of their mission.
The spacecraft tilted; its imposing nose aimed directly toward the hangar’s ceiling. A burst of energy tore through the roof as the engines fired, sending a cascade of debris raining down like confetti. The vessel rocketed upward, its view through the fractured roof warping and bending, as if reality were being stretched, distorted, and reassembled as the Alcubierre warp drive engaged.
* * *
Outside, the remaining guards stood in stunned silence, their eyes fixed upward as the spacecraft vanished into the vast night. Only a trail of distorted light remained; a ghostly fingerprint against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. The stars wavered, like even they weren’t sure what had happened when the ship departed. The smoldering remnants of the hangar warped and bent, caught in a liminal space between what had been and what was yet to come.
Rustand also watched as the craft vanished into the sky. Gone in a blink, no more than a glimmer against the stars. He stumbled through the breach, boots skidding across loose concrete, lungs burning as he sucked wind. Gunfire still echoed in his ears.
“Carter?” he called. Nothing.
He saw him.
Slumped.
Rustand dropped to his knees beside the sergeant, his sergeant, and reached out, hands fumbling and numb. Carter’s body was still warm. His eyes halfway open, staring at nothing.
“Come on, Sarge,” Rustand breathed, voice frayed. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t… you hear me?” He gripped the front of Carter’s jacket, shook him lightly. “Hey… hey! You can’t just punch out without warning. You said we were grabbing chow after shift. You…”
His voice cracked. He looked down. Blood soaked Carter’s left side, but not from anything he recognized. There was no hole, no tear. Just gone, like something had scooped reality out of him.
Then the thought came.
His shot.
He’d aimed at the shimmer. The flicker. He swore it wasn’t Carter.
“No. No-no-no. That wasn’t you. I didn’t hit you. I was shooting at…” He stopped, couldn’t finish.
Rustand yanked the tin out of Carter’s vest. It had a few Ohio Blue Tip matches. And two smokes left.
Rustand sat there in the wreckage, one hand still resting on the older man’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was even lookin’ at.”
Above him, the night sky was silent again.
He looked up, eyes straining toward the empty space where the craft had torn through the roof and become a dot in the sky in a blink. Not even a vapor trail remained. Only a trace of ruptured metal on the ground and a hum that still rang in his bones.
His gaze caught on the wall-mounted clock across the hangar. Its hands were frozen at 02:17.
He blinked hard. Looked again. Still 02:17.
“What just happened?” he hissed, voice raw, barely there. “What was that thing?”
No one answered. No one could.
He was alone.
The hangar was a black wound in the desert, its metal still hissing under a blank sky.
Rustand walked until the wind stopped biting and the smoke cleared from his throat. He crouched near the fence, boots in the dust, and pulled the tin from his jacket. It felt heavier now.
He took one of the cigarettes and lit up. Same rhythm: Flick, flame. Familiar.
He hadn’t smoked in two years. Not since the doc said ulcers. Carter always called him a quitter.
The cigarette tasted like cardboard. Like paper and guilt.
The smoke hit hard. He didn’t cough.
He didn’t cry either.
He just sat, eyes locked on the break in the sky where the ship had punched through. The stars hadn’t settled yet. Some still twitched. He inhaled deeply, and after a contemplative pause, blew out a long puff of smoke.
Nearby, the surviving guards quietly tended to the wounded and covered the fallen, their movements solemn and mechanical. Rustand barely registered their presence, lost in his own daze.
“You were supposed to outlast us all, Frank,” he muttered.
He flicked ash into the dirt and held the smoke steady in his fingers the way Carter always had, between the knuckles, not the tips.
“I think I saw you die twice,” he said. “And neither one made sense.”
He drew another breath in. Held it. Let it go.
The wind moved past him. Nothing else did.
This novel is about the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. What if there really was a secret cabal controlling the world, but they lost control of the system, and it started controlling its creators? The only chance humans have to hold onto their past is wild-card unpredictable creativity. And the uber-computer is rewriting a version of history with the heroes erased.
That synopsis gives you an idea of the depth and thoughtfulness of this book. The conflict continues on various levels, drawing from ancient mythology, various conspiracy theories and a healthy dose of modern computer philosophy. We (and the characters) are never sure whether the cryptic messages come from Andromeda, the invention of Samuel Morse or Jewish Kabbalah.
The writing style is seriously poetic, using powerful imagery and metaphor to draw readers into the experience. Thematically, the story discusses the possibility of the individual being able to make a free choice. The answer seems to be that life is a melody with the tune already written, but how the musicians play the music is up to them.
There is a lot of repetition in the dialogue, with the same ideas being tossed around in different forms. But we need it. As the characters gradually dig deeper into the programming of reality, they learn what’s going on, and readers do too.
The action sequences are scattered through the programming and discussion, but there is a key moment around page 400 where the heroes make a decision to start writing their own code, to jolt the computer into a reset. From this point the conflict is more clear to us, and the physical action picks up as well.
This book is not an easy read. It teems with esoteric discussion, but the intensity of the feelings of the wonderful characters carries us through. We progress more smoothly once we realize that it is not necessary to understand the complex ideas in detail; it is enough that the characters do. The reading experience is enhanced if we let the poetry carry us away, and we can ride on the emotions of the individuals to an ending that reaffirms the power of the creative human soul.
And if you finish the book and still want more of the discussion, read the appendix. Wow!