Preface

The signal was captured by accident.

A deep-space communications satellite recorded it on March 17, 2043, at 04:32 GMT. Its origin was traced to a point beyond the galaxy. No one knew who had sent it. No one knew why.

But the data was flawless.

Mathematics without error. Physics centuries ahead of Earth's understanding. Medicine capable of rewriting human nature.

It was named PROTO.

For the first twenty years, no one asked where it came from. They asked only one question:

How do we use it?

Then, buried deep within the vast archive, researchers discovered something unusual.

The data was not merely a collection of formulas. There was another structure inside it — layered, deliberate, and stubbornly resistant to decryption.

It did not behave like information.

It behaved like a pattern.

And the longer they studied it, the stronger the feeling became that something was studying them in return.

The signal never responded.

But its silence was too precise to be empty.