It began as a faint, rhythmic pulse hidden in the static of deep-space radio waves — a signal traced to 3I/ATLAS, once thought to be just another interstellar object drifting through the void. But the data told a different story. The signal was deliberate, intelligent — and counting down.
Inside a dimly lit control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, every monitor flickered with the same pattern: a series of pulses decreasing by one each day. Someone — or something — was sending a message.
“It’s not a comet,” whispered a shaken voice over the comms. “It’s a warning.”
The world’s brightest scientists scrambled to decode the signal, while encrypted transmissions between global agencies hinted at objects moving faster than physics should allow. Telescopes began detecting faint glows along the predicted trajectory — not reflections of sunlight, but artificial emissions.
As days passed, the countdown continued. The final message, embedded deep in the waveform, carried one chilling phrase translated from mathematical code:
“We will arrive in 35 days.”
No one knew what they were — explorers, machines, or something beyond comprehension. But the silence that followed was louder than any explosion.
And high above the world, the object named 3I/ATLAS kept coming — unwavering, silent, and unstoppable.