Broadcast Lunacy

20251025

Written for Bradley Ramsey's "First Indulgence" event.

The signal was targeted. If it hadn’t been, the global losses would’ve been catastrophic. But in a way, the precision with which the signal was received made it more threatening; there could be no doubt intelligence was behind this.
So what led it to select its victims? The research groups afflicted seemed to have little in common; astronomers, meteorologists, some zoology teams…
The luckiest only experienced dizziness and disorientation. Most also described pain, ranging from unpleasant to debilitating, hallucinations, and a sense of being observed.
An unlucky handful descended into panic which quickly turned fatal once they became desperate to stop hearing the signal… by any means necessary. Attempts to restrain them resulted in violent paranoia and often escalated to additional casualties.
Attempts to analyse the signals were unsuccessful. Not only was there no resemblance to any known language, recordings produced the same effects as the live broadcast - and any machine such recordings were loaded onto started producing the sounds on loop. Even devices without audio outputs would hum and fizz and crackle the broadcast until they self-destructed.
It was entirely unrelated analysis, tracking when and where incidents occurred, which led to the first clue; in each case, the affected facility had experienced moon-rise moments prior. Further cases cemented the trend.
Astronomers rushed to collect visual data. What could possibly have caused this? Was it some alien attack? Or, perhaps, a tragic attempt to communicate?
Tension was running high as the Deep Space Eye, the only telescope in distant enough orbit to photograph the far side of the moon, was rotated away from its vigil studying the stars and back towards earth.
All other analysis had found nothing. No change to the moon’s surface. Wild hypotheses were thrown around, ranging from sudden seismic activity to invisible military bases.
Excitement mounted as the moon’s far face came into view. Here there was clear differences to previous images. A… new mountain range? A massive one stretching across three-quarters of the moon’s face.
What could have caused this? Any impact capable of creating such disruption would have sent the moon veering out of orbit, and certainly would have been observed from earth. The force must have come from inside the moon.
More of the face rotated into sight, agonisingly slow, until it was clear this wasn’t just a mountain range, it was a crater. The moon’s surface was splitting open!
Quick, focus the camera on the centre of the crater, be ready to capture analysis as soon as the sun illuminated the depths. From the visible geological structure, it did seem that the moon’s crust had been pushed outwards by some immense force. Were there volcanoes on the moon after all? What else could-
At first the light seemed to show only more rock. No sign of volcanic activity, or any other cause.
Then the eye opened.
Vast, glistening, featureless milky-white - it would’ve been hard to realise what it was, if not for the crushing sense of Being Seen which brought everyone in the room to their knees screaming.
The cosmic infant blinked. Squirmed against its fragile, no longer needed shell. Its gurgling cry, resonating from every wire forced to carry its visage, was now heard in full.
It was lost, and lonely… and famished.
Claws the size of mountains gripped and pawed at the edge of its cradle. A mouth larger than the eye gaped in an excited scream, causing many of the researchers to collapse, blood streaming from their ears.
These comparatively swift deaths would lead them to be dubbed ‘the fortunate ones’.
Frantic warnings sent to the government, the military, anyone, were received with disbelief… and carried the broadcast.
Cracks were now creeping onto the near side of the moon.
A mundane radio tower thrummed with gurgles which sent people and animals fleeing, birds dropping from the sky mid-flight.
Its first, feeble calls had been tentative. But now it knew there was someone who could hear.
The question, as people fled from its sight, was what did it want from them? What was it trying to say?
And did they have time to figure it out?

Prompt was “A strange radio signal is picked up by scientists on Earth. The mere sound of it makes listeners feel dizzy and disoriented. It's also in an undiscovered language. One thing is clear, though: it's coming from the moon…”