Alien Genesis: The First Contact

The electromagnetic pulse that changed everything arrived on a Tuesday.

Dr. Elena Vasquez was three hours into her overnight shift at the Arecibo Observatory when the computers began screaming. Every monitor in the control room flashed red, and the cacophony of alerts made her coffee mug rattle against the metal desk. She'd been tracking routine solar flare activity, expecting nothing more eventful than calibrating the radio telescope's sensitivity settings. Instead, she found herself staring at a signal pattern that defied every principle of natural cosmic radiation she'd studied in her fifteen-year career.