Words All The Way Down

Inspired by the following prompt: [WP] You’ve found the answer to Fermi’s Paradox of “There must be more advanced civilizations than us, so why haven’t they contacted us”, turns out there’s a “Great Filter” that destroys over 90% of civilizations before they can journey to the stars, on Earth, we call that filter “The Internet”.

Dr. Negris settled into her chair with a sigh, preparing for another long night at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory at Caltech. Computer fans whirled in the background, ready to process any information the GEO600 detector might pick up. They mostly just spun, processing either nothing or just random noise.

Some time past 2am, an LED on a nearby machine and the sudden, louder hum of the computers in the background alerted her that something had been detected. Usually, it wasn’t much of anything, but on longer nights like these, anything was worth checking, if only to pass the time.

Slowly, Dr. Negris worked down her list of checks to perform against the incoming signal. Most of the tests failed and Dr. Negris was ready to chalk it up to just more random noise the detector had picked up. Then, curiously, the pattern recognition routine flagged something down. She perked up; that particular routine never succeeded on anything. Out of curiosity, she started to run programs to try and diagnose exactly what that pattern meant.

Gravitational waves, nothing.
Light waves, nothing.
Encoded signals, ……

The machine crashed. In a panic, Dr. Negris rushed to power the computer back on hopeful that she could resume her analysis. However, on boot, she found that both her analysis and the incoming signal from the detector had been corrupted. So, much for the top of the line, she figured. Anyways, it was probably nothing anyways.

Then, several hours later, the signal came again. Ready this time, she continued her analysis from where she left off.

Encoded signal, match for language. 

Suddenly all the accumulated fatigue of the long night spent waiting in the observatory disappeared. If there was language, there had to be a message. And, if there was a message, she had to know what it was. A few minutes later, and the following words rendered on her screen.

BEWARE, THE GREAT PACIFIER.
IT HAS DOOMED US AND WILL DOOM ALL WHO INTERACT WITH IT. 

The computer fans slowed now, and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory was quiet once again. Dr. Negris didn’t notice her ears ringing from the impact of the discovery she had just made. Quickly she pulled up the observatory’s internal Slack channel to let her co-workers know about her unbelievable night’s work.