The message had been received approximately fourteen hours ago. Our first communication with an alien species.

 

It was not what anyone had expected.

 

Dara looked at her computer screen intensely, trying to see patterns amongst the abstract, trying to read the unreadable, but none of it made sense. She prided herself on being able to decode some of the rarest languages: Assyrian cuneiform, Sumerian and Zapotec glyphs. She also held the honour of being credited as the chief linguist who’d finally decoded the Indus Valley Script. But, this… this was wholly different.

 

There were no words or characters on her screen. Neither was there any spoken sound. All she had were lights.

 

Pulsing, flashing lights. Some were round like small suns, some oval, some spinning. Some glowed softly, others burnt up the screen with a fierce intensity. And they didn’t stay still, they moved around on her screen at random, changing colours and intensity at will, a myriad of colours and brightness. Sometimes the lights grew in size, taking up half her screen, and sometimes they shrunk so it seemed like they’d disappeared entirely.

 

“It’s impossible!” said Derek behind her. Like Dara and countless other linguists across the world, he’d been called in to help decode the alien message.

 

“That’s what you said about the Indus Valley Script, and we got there. We’ve just got to find a pattern.”

 

“A pattern, in this? It’s just madness. A scattering of lights. It makes no sense at all. I’ve analysed speed, intensity, colour, how they travel and spin. There’s nothing on there to give any clues at all about what’s going on. It’s all random.”

 

“There’s always a pattern,” insisted Dara.

 

“Maybe not this time. I’m taking a break.” Derek shoved his chair back from his computer station and headed to the kitchen for more coffee.

 

Dara rubbed her eyes. Maybe she needed a break, too. She’d been staring at a screen for six hours straight since she’d got the call, and she was no further ahead. Everything depended on that message being decoded. Was it a warning, or a friendly greeting? Panicked leaders across the world demanded to know.

 

“What are you trying to say?” Dara said to the screen in exasperation.

 

One white light paused and burned brightly in the middle of her screen. In a way, it was beautiful, much like she’d imagine an angler’s fish lure, in the deepest, blackest parts of the ocean. Is that what these lights were, just a distraction? The twinkling light grew bigger on her screen, and she felt herself being drawn to it. Tentatively, she reached out a finger to touch the light. She stopped halfway. Should she? But then the light pulsed as if it were responding. Wanting her to reach out. To come closer. Was it possible that the message itself was alive?

 

Dara touched the white light.

 

The end of her finger began to glow.

 

It was… alive?

 

Dara smiled. She’d solved it. The lights weren’t a pattern; they were living things.

 

She tried to pull her finger away from the screen, but it was stuck.

 

“Der—”

 

A surge of electricity pulsed through her nerve endings as the white light shot itself into her.

 

“You say something?” said Derek, coming back into the room, stirring his coffee.

 

Dara’s eyes glowed, but she kept them on the screen. There were more to be reborn. To find new bodily homes. “Come touch the screen, Derek,” she said in the host’s language. “I've found what we’ve been looking for.”