The Aurora Protocol

The electromagnetic pulse hit like a fist to the skull. Every screen in the ISS Command Module flashed white, then died to static.

Commander Sarah Chen's hands moved before thought. Check life support—green. Verify pressure integrity—nominal. Toggle backup power—online.

Protocol 7-Alpha. They'd drilled this a hundred times.

Marcus Webb floated beside her, equally mechanical. Two professionals treating catastrophe as checklist. His fingers danced across his console, rerouting comms through tertiary systems.

Nothing.

The smell hit Chen's sinuses—sharp ozone, like lightning had struck inside the station. Circuits cooking. She tasted copper on her tongue and swallowed hard.

"Backup frequencies?" she asked.

"Dead," Webb said. His voice carried no inflection. "All channels."

Chen's fingers found her sleeve. The mission patch—her father's from Apollo 19. Threadbare fabric under her thumb. She pressed down, grounding herself in the gesture.

"Estimate on restoration?"

Webb stroked his beard. Once. Twice. "Unknown."

The comm system crackled. Both their heads snapped toward the sound.

"—contamination don't look for patterns Sarah don't—"

Volkov's voice. Fragmenting. Chen lunged for the controls, her rigid posture breaking as she twisted mid-float to reach the replay function.

"—psycholog—don't—Sarah—"

Static. Then nothing. The silence pressed against Chen's eardrums.

"What did she say?" Webb's measured tone had cracked. "Pattern contamination? Psychological?"

Chen's hand hovered over the replay button. Her father's voice echoed in memory—signals in the cosmic background radiation, Sarah, they're everywhere—right before the dementia took the last of his coherence.

"Commander."

Webb wasn't looking at her. He stared toward the module's exit, toward the Cupola Observatory. His face had gone the color of old ice.

"You need to see this."

Chen pulled herself through the narrow passage, her movements tight and controlled despite the cold spreading through her chest. Webb followed, maintaining his deliberate slowness even now.

The Cupola's seven windows framed Earth below. And dancing across the planet's limb—

Chen's breath stopped.

Auroras. But wrong. Green and violet curtains undulating in patterns that shouldn't exist. Mathematical sequences rippling through light. Geometric structures forming and reforming, each iteration more complex than the last.

She recognized the constants. Pi. Phi. The fine-structure constant.

Her father's words, clearer now: signals in the cosmic background radiation.

"It's not random," she whispered.

Her notebook appeared in her hand—she didn't remember reaching for it. Pen moving across paper, capturing sequences before they dissolved. The patterns beckoned, promising meaning just beyond comprehension's edge.

"Sarah." Webb's voice had dropped to something barely audible. He'd used her first name.

She kept writing.

"Consider this." He floated closer, his hand reaching for hers but stopping short. "Some doors, once opened, cannot be closed."

Chen looked up from her frantic documentation. Webb's eyes held something she'd never seen in three months aboard the station—fear laced with recognition. As if he'd known this moment would come and dreaded its arrival.

"Volkov said don't look for patterns," he continued. His hand dropped to his side. "She didn't say there aren't any. She said don't look."

The patterns pulsed below them. Chen felt them pulling at something deep in her mind—not curiosity, but compulsion. A door Webb said couldn't be closed.

Her father had looked at something he shouldn't have seen. Spent his final years trapped inside fragmenting consciousness, raving about messages in static.

She looked down at her notebook. Already three pages filled with calculations. When had she written three pages?

"Let's stay focused," she said. The words felt hollow. Her verbal anchor, meaningless now.

Webb said nothing. He just looked away from the patterns, toward Earth's darkness, as if the absence of light offered more safety than its presence.

Chen turned back to the windows. The patterns had changed. They were more complex now. Responding.

She raised her pen.