Robyn Michaels
It started with the flickering lights.
I wasn’t in a creepy mansion or wandering through an abandoned warehouse. No, I was sitting at my kitchen table, picking at a plate of spaghetti while trying to ignore the pile of unpaid bills mocking me from across the room. I had just finished another grueling shift at the call center, my feet aching and my patience thinner than the dollar bills in my wallet.
And then, the light above the table flickered. Twice. It wasn’t unusual—this building was older than dirt, and maintenance only came around when the ceiling threatened to cave in. Still, something about it felt off.
I chalked it up to exhaustion and poured myself another glass of wine.
The next day, the flickering followed me to work. It started with the fluorescent lights in the break room, then the computer monitors on the call floor. Even my phone screen glitched, flashing static before returning to normal. No one else seemed to notice.
At first, I figured it was coincidence. Maybe a power surge. But by the third day, it was everywhere—the supermarket, the bus stop, even the streetlights outside my apartment. Always the same rhythm: two flickers, a pause, then three.
I wouldn’t have paid it much mind if not for the man on the bus.
He was middle-aged, wearing a threadbare coat and clutching a cracked tablet like it was a sacred relic. He sat across from me, his lips moving as if silently counting. When the lights inside the bus flickered, his head snapped up, eyes narrowing as he stared at the ceiling.
“You see it too,” he said suddenly.
I blinked, startled. “What?”
“The flickers,” he said, leaning forward. “The pattern.”
I wanted to tell him he was crazy, but something in his eyes stopped me. There was desperation there, yes, but also something sharper—recognition. He wasn’t just guessing. He knew I’d noticed.
“It’s just faulty wiring,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced.
He shook his head. “No. It’s a signal.”
He introduced himself as Victor and insisted on walking me home. Normally, I wouldn’t have let a stranger follow me anywhere, but curiosity overrode caution. Victor spoke in a rushed, almost frantic tone, explaining how he’d been tracking the flickers for weeks.
“It’s not random,” he said, tapping his tablet. “I’ve mapped it out. They’re everywhere—buildings, devices, even the stars.”
“The stars?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Victor nodded, scrolling through a series of grainy photos. They showed constellations with certain stars circled in red. “The same sequence: two flickers, pause, three flickers. It’s a code.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re right,” I said. “What’s the code for?”
He stopped walking, his eyes locking onto mine. “They’re trying to talk to us.”
I didn’t sleep that night. Victor’s words haunted me, as ridiculous as they sounded. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting the flickers of the streetlamp outside my window.
Two. Pause. Three.
Against my better judgment, I met Victor the next day. He showed me more of his research—diagrams, recordings, even a rudimentary translation algorithm he’d built. The flickers, he claimed, were a kind of interstellar Morse code, sent by beings far beyond our comprehension.
“They’re not hostile,” he said. “If they were, they wouldn’t be trying to communicate.”
I wanted to laugh, to tell him he was insane, but part of me couldn’t shake the feeling that he was right. The pattern was too deliberate, too consistent. And the more I listened, the more I realized it wasn’t just the lights.
It was in the hum of my refrigerator, the rhythm of dripping faucets, the static between radio stations. The world itself seemed to pulse with the signal.
Over the next week, I became obsessed. I stopped going to work, stopped answering my phone. My apartment became a cluttered mess of notes, graphs, and sound recordings. Victor and I worked together, piecing together fragments of the message.
“They’re calling us Keepers,” Victor said one evening, his face illuminated by the glow of his tablet. “I think they’re asking for our help.”
“Help with what?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Victor hesitated, his eyes darting to the window. “I think… I think their world is dying.”
The signal grew stronger. What had once been subtle flickers became undeniable flashes, as if the universe itself was shouting for attention. And then, one night, it stopped.
I stared at my darkened laptop screen, my chest tight with dread. Victor hadn’t answered my calls all day, and I hadn’t seen the lights flicker in hours. It was as if the world had gone silent.
That’s when the knocking started.
It was soft at first, barely audible. But it grew louder, more insistent, until the walls seemed to shake with each thud. I opened the door to find Victor standing there, pale and trembling.
“They’re here,” he whispered.
We ran to the rooftop, the city sprawling beneath us in eerie stillness. The sky was clear, the stars brighter than I’d ever seen. And then they flickered.
Two flashes. Pause. Three.
Victor raised his tablet, his fingers trembling as he entered the sequence. A low hum filled the air, resonating in my chest. The stars seemed to shift, aligning into a pattern that burned itself into my mind.
“They’re opening a gate,” Victor said, his voice barely audible.
A beam of light shot down from the heavens, illuminating a spot just a few feet away. And then, impossibly, a figure emerged.
It was humanoid, but its body shimmered like liquid metal, its movements graceful and fluid. Its eyes—if they could be called that—glowed with a soft, golden light. It raised a hand, palm open, as if in greeting.
Victor stepped forward, tears streaming down his face. “We’ve heard you,” he said. “We’ll help.”
The being tilted its head, its golden eyes narrowing. Then it spoke—not in words, but in a cascade of flickers and hums that vibrated through the air. Victor’s face fell.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“They’re not asking for our help,” he said, his voice hollow. “They’re recruiting us.”
Before I could react, the beam of light flared, and Victor was gone.
The being turned to me, its golden eyes unblinking. The lights around the city began to flicker again, faster this time, more insistent.
Two flashes. Pause. Three.
And I understood.
The signal wasn’t a plea. It was a summoning.
And I was next.
Endless Horizons 