For ten agonizing seconds, there was only static. Then, a new transmission. Shorter this time. A single word.
"S-R-T-Y-M," she said into the void, her voice trembling. "We see your map. But what's at the 'M'?"
She read the transmission again:
"srtym."
She pulled up the raw data. The signal wasn't a continuous stream. It was a rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat. Each pulse varied slightly in duration and intensity. When she mapped those variations to a simple 26-character alphabet, she got the same sequence every time: S-R-T-Y-M.
Her breath caught. She wrote the coordinates of each key on a piece of paper. S (2,1), R (3,2), T (4,1), Y (5,2), M (4,0). She plotted them.
Frustrated, she stared at her keyboard. Her fingers hovered over the home row. And then, like a ghost guiding her hand, she placed her left hand on the keys. Pinky on A, ring on S, middle on D, index on F.
It looked like a cat had walked across a keyboard. That was the first thought of Dr. Elara Vance when she saw the transmission:
Her eyes snapped to her own fingers. The "S" was under her ring finger. "R" was under her middle—no, that was wrong. "R" was index. Her heart started to pound. She repositioned her hand. What if the sender didn't have five fingers? What if they had… six?
Elara grabbed the microphone to the main transmitter. The protocol was clear: Do not respond to an unknown signal. But the shape was a question. The path was an invitation.
She spread her hand unnaturally wide, imagining a different anatomy. If a being had six digits, their "home row" might be different. She mapped the letters to the keys a six-fingered hand would naturally rest on.