Chapter Text
Mateo was looking at his telescope. He had made it himself. Well, he had changed it himself... by adding a special filter and attaching an infrared camera. His own DIY infrared telescope. It allowed him to purge the sky of the visible light pollution and see the stars like God intended. Now, he was looking at Tau Ceti. He often did that, being fascinated with the story of Hail Mary, the last prayer sent to the universe before the world went to shit.
The star blinked. No, not blinked, it was brighter now. He zoomed in. What he thought was a two times more luminous star turned out to be two stars—Tau Ceti and... something that wasn’t supposed to be there. It was not moving, so it wasn’t a space station. Maybe an asteroid? But it was too bright. A bright star seemingly around Tau Ceti. Then he realized.
He had to call his boyfriend. He’d take it from here.
CNN 
@CNN
BREAKING: ESA confirms Hail Mary’s "Beetle" probe headed towards Earth.
352 Retweets 43 Quote Tweets 1.2K Likes
Eva Stratt looked at her phone. She hadn’t made so many connections with powerful people around the world to get the beetle announcement from a fucking tweet. Although it’s not like it would stay hidden from the public for longer—it fired light straight towards earth to decelarate. Every amateur astronomer with a simple IR telescope could see it—it was ten times as bright as Pluto when it started slowing it down.
She phoned her old friends at ESA. It was NASA that was supposed to get information from the beetles in the original plans, but the data wasn’t encrypted, so every space agency had a chance to be the first to make contact. The next steps would require cooperation—she trusted that different deep space networks wouldn't start firing conflicting instructions to the probe that would make it fly towards the sun.
Her contacts assured her that when the data came, she would be among the first to see it. Then she heard another report that the beetle sends a frequency that is too low. Not understanding it at first—science not being her strong suit even after years of working for ESA—her acquaintance explained that the small ship was moving too slowly, likely having additional mass.
She cursed herself. How could they miss it? It was obvious that the Hail Mary crew could have found something that wasn’t raw data, a small compartment for holding some substance would go a long way but she hadn’t thought about it.
It would be thirteen hours until the information window opened. Eva Stratt ordered a taxi.
Antoni Roche had always found it challenging to explain his weird career path.
Considering him “gifted” but “lazy”, his parents had made a reasonable assumption enough, seeing him correctly answer game show trivia while not studying for his exams at school. Random bursts of hyperfixation look useless to a deadbeat parent even when they’re the reason for his good performance. Once in college, with minimal prompting from his then boyfriend, he explained the inner workings of a steam engine—his relation to the field of mechanics being a two-week long steampunk phase in middle school.
When the time came to choose college, his reason for going to the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw was violin being his annual interest at the time. He hadn’t lasted there, giving up after one semester.
The next subject he had selected was applied linguistics—the interest held out longer, allowing him to pass the exams at the end of the first year. Unlike the last thirty times he had tried to study a language with no more than three lessons given for each one, this time the more organized knowledge didn’t get wasted. He had continued learning Chinese and English on his own, even when he had enrolled in astrophysics. Forcing himself to remain at the new school and familiarizing himself with the same topic for longer even got him a PhD. Although, after initial fascination wore off, he treated it like a necessary work and not a passion.
Now, Antoni was plopped down in a chair in the main control room of ESTRACK. The rattle of voices filled the space around. He looked at the readouts from the Cebreros. It, like every other radio telescope, was pointed in the direction of the upcoming probe, since every space agency wanted to be the first one to contact one of the beetles. Saving the world was reserved for cooperation of all superpowers, but with one country claiming the announcement of salvation itself.
The data showed nothing. Five hours to contact window, he thought himself, no need to be impatient.
He sent a message to Mateo.
I’ll be home late. I’m working overtime.
Tell me whats on there when you get back, I was the one who saw it first :p
He smiled to the message, amateur astronomy was one of the things they connected over in the beginning of their relationship. Antoni got bored after a while but still sometimes found time to go on countryside to watch stars with his boyfriend. It was crazy that this time Mateo managed to find something before professional astronomers. Everyone waiting for the probe was expecting a higher frequency, he just randomly was using a filter that turned his telescope into a perfect beetlescope. On twitter other hobbyists were showing similar photos; after hearing about the spacecraft everyone with the right gear was trying to immortalize this moment.
He went to get coffee. Humanity's hope wasn’t arriving just yet.
The beetle from Hail Mary with a possible sollution to astrophage crisis. What can we expect?
An interview with Prof. Barley García
In the break room was a older woman with a stern look. She held a coffee in her hand while making a second one in an espresso machine. She looked familiar but Antoni was sure she didn’t work here. Maybe she was one of the reporters he had seen on TV? They weren’t supposed to be let in though. Well it was just a break room so no classified information leak should be possible.
“How much longer?” she asked not with curiosity of a reporter but with an impatience of a boss. Was she some important union official?
“I don’t know, madame, but at least four hours,” he answered.
“Sorry for being impolite. I don’t like just idly waiting, but there’s not a lot more to do mere hours before finding out if your life’s work succeeded.”
Now she really didn’t make any sense. Why did European politicians talk about Hail Mary like it was her work? There weren't a lot of things the EU helped with before its launch. It wasn’t even proper federation then, being just a international organisation similar to today’s Union of South American Nations.
Then it hit him. Her age, the fact she was at ESA, the way she talked about Hail Mary—he was drinking coffee with Eva Stratt, the most infamous woman of the twenty-first century.
Jorge
@astrobullshite
If it was me on that ship, I would send back 12 hours of me screaming "WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE"
0 Retweets 0 Quote Tweets 3 Likes
The beetle was around Saturn’s orbit; it probably just got the “We’re here” signal from Earth and started broadcasting its data. Within the next hour, humanity will get the answers.
The line of the text were clear. We made contact, our antennas were positioned exactly right. We were first; it will take whole minutes for other agencies to calibrate their radiotelescopes to focus on the beetle. The whole room was celebrating.
The beetle started sending infromation—for several minutes just its location to allow the world to concentrate on what it has to say. The makers of the probe couldn’t allow for the first batch of data to go unnoticed. Well, it would loop eventually, but with the sixth mass extinction on the horizon, every hour counts. Finally it started sending things they actually cared about.
The downloaded files started appearing on the screen.