CONTACTEE
Dimension: SfaD
Author: Peter Matthew Check
Date: December 2, 2025
The weather in Chile was calm, and the Atacama Desert was even quieter that night than usual. The fans of the Paranal Observatory turned slowly, lazily, as if they too sensed that something in the air had changed.
Dr. Ignacio Herrera, the night operator of the observatory’s southwestern module, sat alone in the control room. It was 02:11 a.m. Only the blue glow of the monitors and the fluorescent strips of the emergency panels lit the room.
Ignacio was sipping the cold remains of coffee when something appeared on the main panel that wasn’t supposed to be there. It was a strange pattern and soon after, a series of numbers lit up on the monitor—numbers that didn’t resemble interference, an error, nor cosmic noise. They repeated. Then they changed. And then they combined into something that made Ignacio’s breath stop:
“If there is something humanity would like to know, just say it...”
Ignacio staggered in his chair. He had no idea what was happening. But the cursor on the screen blinked at him urgently, so he typed something.
As soon as he did, an instant reply came. Without delay.
And thus began a conversation with something that could not be of human origin.
Ignacio understood this well, but he did not shy away from such an opportunity. He began asking focused, systematic questions — whatever came to his mind:
People would like to know where artificial intelligence is heading.
It is something that is not natural. It goes against what is called natural development. It is a leap to a place where humankind would reach only after hundreds, even thousands of years. It is an attempt to accelerate at the expense of one’s own understanding. This path leads to development, but not to what a person is meant to undergo.
Is that all? So what should people do?
Be themselves. In naturalness, which brings them precisely what they long for — because that is why they were created. Without barriers, they can find their own path. Reliably and without unnecessary detours.
It sounds so simple, but in life it feels so complicated...
It is simple. The complexity is attributed to it by the person himself.
But time passes... and humanity is rushing toward ruin.
That is irrelevant. What matters is to be ON THE PATH every day. Regardless of how long it will be.
What do you mean by “being on the path”?
I mean being present in your life. Being yourself — not the role or roles you have learned to play, hiding and masking your own naturalness.
Where do our paths lead?
To the source.
What is the source?
The origin. The essence. The fundamental beginning, which becomes the end — which is itself a new beginning.
Why all of this?
It is the meaning of being.
Why should I be?
You do not have to be as a human. You were created as energy, and that energy transforms. The state of energy you are in now is just a transformation that will continue.
Why?
That is the plan.
And if I don’t want to be part of it?
Then don’t...
I don’t understand.
You will understand easily. Everything is development. A path forward. The form is not important — the development is. If you do not want to continue now, sit down, regain strength. Later, you will set off again. That is simply how it works. That is the principle not only for humans.
And the meaning?
As already said. Change is development. It is the driving force that turns the universe.
But why?
Perhaps so that the emptiness that once was does not return.
--hhhhhhhh
When the last line of the dialogue suddenly and unexpectedly vanished from the screen, the room fell into such dense silence that it felt as if even the air had frozen. Paranal was suddenly no longer an observatory — it felt like a stone ship anchored in the endless cold void, where even the whisper of a thought sounded as loud as a shotgun blast.
Dr. Ignacio Herrera slowly stood up, feeling like someone from whom an entire galaxy had just drifted away. The air was dry, mercilessly still, like petrified eternity. Herrera stretched, inhaled deeply, and took his mug — the last remnant of what gave him a sense of representing human civilization in the middle of cosmic silence — intending to make himself a refreshing coffee that he hoped would return his senses to reality. The coffee machine hissed like a small volcano, and the smell of coffee spread warmly through the room.
Ignacio stepped outside and the door creaked behind him as if the old world were protesting against what he was about to do. The night over Atacama was deep, dark, proportionate to infinity, so black that the stars glittered like silver ornaments on a Christmas tree. The telescope domes stood motionless in the landscape, resembling silent monoliths of an ancient civilization, observing humans with the same curiosity with which humans observe the stars. Ignacio stood there for a long time, motionless, feeling like a stone guardian between two worlds.
The dry air ruled with cold, and the wind carried his breath into the silent night.
Then Ignacio took a deep breath, exhaled — and with that came a small awakening into reality.
He returned inside, the door closing behind him like a vault lid. He sat down. The monitor pulsed softly. Ignacio opened the backup file containing the conversation he had just had with something that had unexpectedly taken over his computer.
A short moment of reflection, and then he hovered the cursor over the button: Delete.
The system asked: “Are you sure?” Herrera smiled — a quiet, exhausted smile of a man who had realized that even contact with the universe can be just another disruptive element in a life already overloaded by artificial intelligence and confused people.
Enter.
The icon disappeared. And with that, the conversation was thrown mercilessly into the trash, from where it could no longer be restored. And so there remained only the silence of the night observatory — silence that does not ask questions.
Sometimes it is that simple to delete a universe.
Ignacio stood up, and it felt to him as if this gesture alone had signed a peace treaty with the entire galaxy. It was time for another coffee — a second dose of caffeine in a night that seemed older than the dust of the stars. He poured himself a cup and it smelled again. And in that moment, he resembled a guardian of the Holy Grail — the last and the first defender standing at Earth’s gate, not wanting to let in those who come from the cosmos.
At that moment, he realized that some endings do not need to be dramatic. They can simply be quiet, cold, and yet profoundly human.
When his night shift ended, he put on his coat and simply went home.
He gave a tired nod to the colleague who replaced him, without saying anything significant.
And yet just moments earlier, he had deleted what humanity had been waiting for over centuries.
A conversation with an extraterrestrial civilization — the first contact between a human and beings from distant space.
And what is most paradoxical about his action? Ignacio didn’t do it for the good of humanity. He didn’t do it to prevent an alien invasion. He didn’t do it to stop panic among those who don’t believe in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
He did it purely, solely, and only so that at the end of his night shift he wouldn’t have to deal with anything — and could get home as quickly as possible, where he could finally get some sleep.
