Sometimes I wonder how we survived when televisions were only televisions and not a way to watch Netflix and YouTube and a hundred other streaming services, some more specialized than others. Mandy had paused on the CNN science news stream, which was one of the only sub-streams not inclined to dissolve into wild speculation about the sex lives of celebrities when there was nothing better to talk about.

The talking head of the moment—a redheaded woman with a solemn, lineless face, like she was being CGI-refined in real time—looked at the camera and said, in a pleasantly modulated voice, “We have received confirmation from NASA, the ISS, and other related parties, and can now report with near certainty that the signal you are about to hear is extraterrestrial in origin. Again, this was recorded at seven thirty-five p.m., Eastern Standard Time, by Dr. Anthony Vornholt of the Portland Observatory.”

Her composure flickered. Only for a moment. Long enough for me to see the raw animal fear behind her eyes, hot and bright and terrified.

“It is my duty to inform you that we are no longer alone in the galaxy. Our neighbors have finally found us.”

The picture cut out, replaced by a black screen with a white rectangle in the middle, framing a single line of text which identified the sound’s original location and the astronomer who recorded it. I barely noticed. I was too busy listening to something that should have been static but was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard, something I had never heard outside my dreams. It was the sound of branches rubbing together in alien air, the song of dragonfly petals trembling in a forest the size of a continent. It went on and on, chiming, climbing, moving through musical formations that were alien to anything Earth had ever borne. I knew that if I listened hard enough, long enough, I would understand it. I leaned forward, completely focused on the sound—

Then it stopped.

I jerked upright, startled. The television was off. Mandy had taken the remote out of my hand while I was transfixed. She was looking at me, mouth a thin line, that same animal fear showing behind her eyes.

“Anastasia,” she said. “What was that?”

“It was beautiful,” I said. I felt suddenly, utterly serene. I hadn’t been wrong. All that time, all those years, I hadn’t been wrong. It had taken decades for them to come for me, but now that they were here, things were going to change.