K.C. Shaw lives in East Tennessee with her dog and two cats.  She has stories appearing soon in Big Pulp, Renard's Menagerie, and the Desolate Places anthology (Hadley Rille Books), and is currently working on her first novel.

September 18, 2053

Dr. Wenton said I was bound to be the department's good luck charm. I just think I'm the luckiest girl in the world, arriving at just the right time. What a day--and it's not even over!

I haven't admitted it to anyone here, but the only reason I applied for an assistantship at the LTTU lab was because they were new and I figured they'd need some extra help and I needed an assistantship. I read up a little about the broadcasts, but it wasn't anything that interested me too much--who could find them interesting; everyone says it'll take years to translate even part of one, right? Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. I haven't even been here two weeks and the computers had some kind of breakthrough. It's still going on. I'm on a quick meal break, sitting here with a sandwich in one hand and scribbling on the screen with the other hand. I didn't really intend to keep a journal, but this is so exciting I don't want to forget anything important.

I've seen the preliminary translation of one of the broadcasts. Well, actually I've heard the broadcasts and they don't really start and stop, and they're really garbled sometimes, but when they can get a focus on a signal even for a little while they number and file it as a separate transmission. Anyway, there are still a ton of gaps in the translation, but you can kind of understand it. And it seems to be a newscast! I still can't believe it. All those pops and whistles translated into who killed whom and why, and what people are going to do about it.

I can't really explain how I feel. I just keep thinking about that little starry patch of sky where the broadcasts come from, so far away and yet, today, so close. We're listening to their newscasts. Of course it's a newscast from thousands and thousands of years ago, those radio waves traveling slowly and steadily towards Earth over the centuries--but the aliens are still out there, still transmitting. We'll be listening to them for many more centuries, probably, and maybe eventually they'll start getting our newscasts too. How primitive they'll think us, listening to all that old doo-wop music from a hundred years ago!

Anyway, Dr. Wenton paired me with Gregory Murikami to get me up to speed on everything as fast as possible. I was thrilled, but I just nodded professionally. Gregory is really gorgeous. I suppose I should be calling him Dr. Murikami, actually, but even though he's a post-doc he treats us grad students like equals. And he has beautiful dark brown eyes and wears his hair in a ponytail and has a smile like the sunrise. It's going to be hard to concentrate when I'm around him, but I want to impress him too. I'm just going to have to work extra hard.

I think I hear the press guys on the stairs for the conference. I'm done with my sandwich anyway; time to get back to the lab!

October 21, 2053

Wow, the last few weeks have just flown by! We keep tweaking the translators and we're getting better translations every day. But we've got such a backlog of broadcasts, with more coming in every minute of every day, that it's going to take forever to get them all translated. I can't remember when I had a full night's sleep. But it's so exciting to be right in the middle of a major discovery like this that I don't want to sleep. I don't even want to leave the lab, because the translators might pick up something new.

I'm getting good at picking one broadcast out of the cacophony. It requires a lot of concentration, though, and Dr. Wenton drives me crazy by having me brief the press all the time. I don't complain, though, because I'm the newest one here so of course I get the jobs no one else wants. And I don't mind being on TV, if I don't have to spend too much time out of the lab. We always take a break to watch the latest newscasts about us, and I think I look pretty good on film.

Last night Gregory said he keeps wanting to ask me out but we don't have time. I thought he might be kidding so I just laughed and didn't think much of it, but today he disappeared for half an hour right before lunch, and came back with a rickety old TV tray, two subs from that place down the street, and a rose in a jam jar. He asked me out to lunch and we set up the TV tray in the store room--there's nowhere else that isn't crawling with people--and had lunch together. Somehow it was the most romantic date I can imagine. Gregory's really easy to talk to, and I know we took way too much time over lunch but no one interrupted us. I think it was the first hour since the translation breakthrough that I didn't think about the broadcasts even once.

September 9, 2054

It's been exactly one year since I came to the lab. Hard to believe. And it's been the most spectacular, busy year I've ever had. The media interest has died down, thank goodness, but the translations are improving by leaps and bounds. We get nearly complete translations sometimes.

Gregory is starting a new project, trying to nail down the length of day on the broadcasts' planet based on the type of broadcasts, including content. We couldn't have even dreamed about doing that this time last year. We still don't know where the broadcasts are coming from exactly; that's Dr. Wenton's baby. I'm still working on getting the clearest possible signal; sometimes I can get more than one signal in clearly at the same time on different computers, which makes me run back and forth across the room checking monitors. I also help the translation team, partly because I'm good at it but mostly because their work is the most interesting. I love being able to read the translations as soon as they're made.

We're starting to get an idea of the aliens' world from their broadcasts. They seem to be in a time of political upheaval, and there's a lot of violence and uncertainty. Every time I start feeling sorry for them, though, I realize that it's not all that different from newscasts here on Earth. Newscasts always accentuate the negative, so it seems like the world's in turmoil when really things are mostly just jogging along same as usual.

Gregory's invited me to visit his parents over the holidays. I knew we'd been getting more and more serious, but I really didn't expect to meet his parents yet. This is a good sign. He really means a lot to me.

January 12, 2055

Gregory's mom is adorable! His parents were pretty old when they had him so they seem more like grandparents than parents sometimes. His dad is just like him, but with gray hair. I get along with both of them, but I really hit it off with his mom. I could tell Gregory was pleased. He went off and did boy stuff with his dad, and I went out shopping with his mom. She asked me how serious I was about Gregory, and I told her he was the only important thing in my life. I meant it, too, even though the broadcasts are actually a close second (not that I said so to her). She said he talks about me all the time when he calls.

Gregory and I jumped right back into the activity at the lab when we got back and I hardly saw him for almost a week. There was so much backlogged work to get through I hardly saw anyone, anyway. Then last night he called me at the lab and said he had something important to discuss, so could I come by his flat on the way home. My heart just flopped into my shoes at that point. I just knew he was going to want to break up, and it was going to kill me.

But when I got to his flat he had that old beat up TV tray set up in the middle of the living room, with subs and a rose and everything like that day last year. And he asked if I'd marry him.

I told him yes. We haven't set a date yet, because I can't think straight. Work is going to suffer a little for a while, I think.

June 26, 2055

Graduation last week, a new translator to set up yesterday, and getting married today. And as an early wedding gift Dr. Witson presented Gregory with a formal promotion to co-head of the lab. We all knew that was coming, but it was a nice surprise to have it now. It means a pay raise for him, so when we get back from our honeymoon we can look into buying a house. And I'm going straight into my doctoral work, which is exciting too. In a few years we'll have two Dr. Murikamis in the family, me and Gregory. I'll have to ask Dr. Witson's wife if she finds it confusing figuring out which Dr. Witson is meant when someone leaves a message or something.

I almost don't want to leave the lab with that new translator tearing through the backlogged broadcasts so fast, but I'm looking forward to spending two weeks with Gregory and no one else. We're visiting Japan for a week so I can see where his family is from originally, and the next week we're spending in Italy to see where my family is from originally. We're leaving tomorrow.

I'm so nervous. It's stupid to be nervous. Heck, I've been on TV in front of millions of people talking about stuff I hardly knew about, back when I first joined the lab. I wasn't nervous then. But I'm nervous about walking thirty feet with only my family and friends to see me if I trip over my gown or something. I guess it's not that I'm nervous about, really. This is a big, important step, getting married. I almost wish I was just sitting in the lab fiddling with RF gains and listening to the clicks and whistles of that alien language.

But I love Gregory and want to spend the rest of my life with him. We've talked a little bit about having kids after I finish my doctorate. I'd love a boy and a girl. Maybe twins.

Wow, I'm really talking rot. Dr. Witson--Mrs. Dr. Witson--is banging on the door. I didn't mean to lock it, actually. I'm almost dressed, anyway, I just can't zip the gown up by myself. The girls from the lab are my bridesmaids, and I know they're out there too. I guess I'd better let them all in and stop being nervous and enjoy my wedding day.

June 26, 2058

Three year anniversary and graduation on the same day! Gregory took me out to celebrate. We were going to go with a big group from the lab, but since it's our anniversary Gregory wanted to go somewhere romantic. We might as well have gone with the lab group, though, because we just talked shop all through dinner.

Our receivers are getting really outdated but there's not enough money to set up new ones, not unless we get a grant. We've got a couple of people working on grants, of course, but I know Gregory's worried about that new lab in California. It's state of the art so they're sucking in all the grant money right now, and we're bound to be duplicating efforts too. And with Dr. Witson talking about retirement in a few years, we may be looking at the end of the lab pretty soon.

Still, it's hard to be too depressed about it tonight. Gregory and I are sitting out on the porch in the dark, just enjoying each other's company and the beautiful evening. He was writing letters but now he's just leaning back and looking into the night sky. He's still the best-looking man I've ever seen. Sometimes I can't believe we're married. I know he's looking at a particular section of sky, because whenever I look up at night I'm thinking of our broadcasts too. The lab still hasn't pinpointed what star is associated with the broadcasts, and lately we've had to shelve that project anyway due to budget constraints. But I like looking up and thinking about all those people, impossibly far away, going about their business at the same time I'm going about mine. It makes me feel close to them, somehow.

April 5, 2061

It's actually April 26, but I wanted to record the date April 5 and I haven't been able to do that until now. I was due in mid-August but on April 5 I started feeling so sick. Gregory called for an ambulance but by the time the paramedics got there I was in labor. I miscarried in the ambulance.

I don't remember much about it, except that our son was stillborn. They had to keep me sedated for two days because I kept having hysterics. Oh, God, I can't imagine this kind of grief. I can't bear it.

My sister stayed with me the whole time. She knits. I remember waking up in the hospital hour after hour and seeing her knitting, knitting, something white. And then I woke up once and she was done and showed it to me. I know she wanted to make me feel better, but it was a sort of pouch to bury my son in and it was so small. I couldn't stop crying.

February 12, 2063

Dr. Wenton pulled it off. We got the grant. We'll be moving to a new lab summer after this, at the Pikeville campus. But Dr. Wenton has also announced his retirement; I guess he doesn't want to move, or maybe his wife doesn't want to give up her teaching job here. Either way, I'm not sure what's going to happen with Gregory and me. Gregory has been teaching full-time for the last year, leaving Dr. Wenton in charge of the lab. He said he did it so I could get a promotion, but I'm not so sure. It's like ice has grown up between us ever since my miscarriage. I think Gregory wanted to get out of the lab so he wouldn't have to spend so much time with me.

But with Gregory teaching, I'll have to make the decision to stay here and pick up a teaching job myself, or to move with the lab and commute four hours on weekends to come home and see Gregory. I just don't know what to do.

I suggested last week to Gregory that we see a marriage counselor. He said he didn't have time. I scheduled an appointment anyway. I don't want to lose Gregory, but I don't know what's wrong between us.

February 26, 2063

Gregory refused to see the marriage counselor. I wasn't surprised. So I went to see her myself, but it wasn't very helpful. I cried a lot. She had about sixteen boxes of tissues scattered around her office, and somehow it made me angry to think that she expected me to cry.

Dr. Wenton has recommended me as new lab director. I asked Gregory what his views were--whether I should accept or not--hoping to start a discussion. But he just shut me down the way he's been doing for at least a year. He said it was up to me. I told him it had to be a joint decision and I needed his input, and we ended up yelling at each other.

I left and spent the night in the lab, just listening to the broadcasts. It's so soothing, and we've set up the translation display right next to the computer stations so we can watch the translation as we listen to the transmission. It's like a language tape and I keep picking up new phrases myself. I've tried to imitate the language, but it's a lot of clicks and sing-song notes and I just can't make the right noises.

I listened all night, to a bunch of newscasts, and something the translator had difficulty with that seemed to be a sports match of some kind, and some of the drumming type of music that's so popular right now. The newscasts were mostly about a new political leader that's come to power. Apparently he's pulling all the city-states together into a united world. Actually, world isn't the right word, exactly. We've pretty much established that there's only one area of the planet where people live. We're not sure if it's the only continent or just the only livable one. I wish I could go there and see for myself, visit these people I know so much about by now.

The shift change for the two people on duty is at dawn. I didn't pay them any attention, but when they started getting so loud on the stairs that I couldn't hear the broadcasts I got up to tell them to move. Sounds just echo right up the stairs.

I ended up joining them to hear what they were talking about, though. The Mars colony disaster, they're calling it on the news. It's funny to think that in all the lab, filled with sophisticated listening and recording equipment, we didn't have a single way to listen to broadcasts from our own planet; one of the new shift members had brought her phone-V and we crowded around her and watched the news reports as they came in. The new Mars colony life support system had failed, and the backup with all its fail-safes had somehow failed too, and nearly six thousand people had suffocated within an hour.

It was horrifying news, but in a way it made me feel calmer. All my own troubles seem so small compared to that disaster. It's as if I finally have a way to share my own grief and make it more manageable somehow.

August 12, 2064

I contacted a divorce lawyer today. I'd put it off and put it off, but all my suspicions have become realities. Gregory has been turned in to the university authorities for having an affair with an undergrad in one of his classes. I should have seen it coming, but I just didn't want to believe it.

And I had given up my position at the lab to stay with Gregory. I was so stupid. Dr. Wenton had decided, reluctantly, to stay on at the lab during the move, at least until he could train a replacement, but after I called the divorce lawyer I called Dr. Wenton. He's ready to step down and retire as soon as I'm ready to step in. Thank God I can go back to the lab. I've only been away a few months but I miss it already.

I've got to go pack. How can I love Gregory so much and hate him so much at the same time?

November 8, 2072

I just got a call from Mrs. Dr. Wenton. Mr. Dr. Wenton died last night. I was so shocked to hear it--he seemed so young. It seems like just a minute ago that I was introduced to him for the first time at the old lab. What happens to the years?

We've been collaborating with the California lab on a new translator and it's finally working correctly. I didn't do any of the programming, of course, but I headed the team who supervised the dictionary. We've got a brilliant new grad student who's invented an alphabet system for the alien language. I love looking at it. It looks a little like Arabic.

The newscasts are much calmer these last few years. It's funny to realize I worry about those people I'll never meet, and that I'm glad when they're doing well. We named their leader Keith the Great after the intern who helped us with the computers after the blizzard knocked out our servers last spring. Fortunately the California lab was able to pick up the slack while we were down and no broadcasts were missed.

The twenty-year anniversary of the first translation is next September. The university is planning a giant celebration and they want me to write a book about the lab. I had already started the project with Dr. Wenton last year, but I don't know if I want to go on with it without him. He was so important to the lab for so long. The only other person who could really do the book justice is Gregory, and I haven't seen him for years.

September 30, 2073

I'm so glad all the celebrations and media events and parties are over. I'm exhausted. The book was well received, although I think the part I wrote with Dr. Wenton was superior to the part I wrote with Gregory. No one else seems to have noticed, though, so maybe it's just me. The ice hasn't melted between Gregory and me. We did most of our collaboration long-distance. He looks about the same, although he's wearing his hair in a very young style that I think makes him look silly. Dr. Myer told me at one of the parties last week that Gregory has been married and divorced again since our divorce, and that he's living in a flat near student housing. It's pathetic to hear that he's trying to act like a kid.

Keith the Great is good for the alien world, but not so good for publicity here. We had a lot of press conferences, but no lasting media interest. That's fine with me, as long as we can keep our funding. With all the paperwork, it's hard for me to find as much time to actually listen to the broadcasts as I'd like; the last thing I need is more media people wanting tours of the lab.

April 5, 2080

It's cruel that I got the news today, when my son would have turned 19 if he had lived. Mike called me from the California lab. They think they've got the right star at last. The reason it was so hard to pinpoint is that it's not there anymore.

Mike says they're pretty sure the broadcasts come from a star system whose star went nova around 4200 BCE. They had a team of historical astronomers working on it on the off-chance, and they found the information they needed in ancient Chinese star charts.

So if Mike's history kids are right, all the broadcasts are coming from a doomed world that was incinerated by its sun thousands of years ago. It's hard to take. On the other hand, the broadcasts we're receiving must be from long before the nova. At least we have this window into an alien culture that no longer exists.

I talked to Mike about it for a long time. We've decided to compile the important highlights of the broadcasts so far and re-broadcast them from Earth, in the original and in translation into English. That way, beings on other worlds who might just now be evolving radio technology may one day learn not just of Earth, but of that other long-lost planet.

It's cloudy tonight. I'm glad. I don't want to look up into the sky and realize there's no one there to feel close to.

March 22, 2091

My birthday. I'm sixty. I don't feel any different from twenty--just a little more creaky.

Gregory called me today. I couldn't believe it. He said he needed to get together with me to work on the new edition of the book, but I think he just wanted to talk. He told me he's retiring next year, and reading between the lines from things he said, I think he's scared to be alone. He's finally reaching out to people he put behind him a long time ago. He lost his father early, and his mother died a few years ago. I wish he'd told me about her death so I could have at least gone to the funeral. I should have kept in touch with her. She was so supportive when I had my miscarriage.

I'm so busy at the lab that I had to cut Gregory's call short. But we did set a date to get together about the book. I'm looking forward to seeing him, but at the same time I'm dreading it. I'm afraid it'll open old wounds.

July 6, 2091

Gregory's gone completely gray. I swear I almost didn't recognize him. But he looks so much like his dad that it's astonishing, too. I told him so and I think he was pleased.

We spent an hour talking about the book and got a lot done. Then, when I was gathering my things up to go, Gregory said--out of the blue--"He would have been thirty this year."

Gregory never really talked about our son. That was his way of dealing with his loss, but it was hard on me. But now he wanted to talk about him, and I just listened. Gregory talked about the miscarriage, and said maybe we should have adopted afterwards--that maybe it would have held our marriage together. He said we might have been grandparents by now. And he cried, the first time I've ever seen him cry, and he apologized.

That ice between us melted. We cried together, and I told him about Keith the Great and his sun going nova. We talked about retiring, and growing old, and plans for the future. We talked about getting back together.

September 18, 2093

Has it really been forty years since I came to the lab? There it is on the cover of the book--fortieth anniversary. I had to add a huge section for the last twenty years, but Mike co-wrote it with me. Gregory wrote a new introduction. Sales haven't been all that high, though. Europa gets all the press these days.

Gregory has moved in with me. I had too much room in this house anyway. We talked about getting remarried, but that seems foolish somehow. We get along better than I think we ever did, but I'm not ready to make the statement that it's a new beginning for us. Maybe I'm afraid of being hurt again.

June 31, 2100

My big retirement party was today. I was planning on hanging on until 2103, but Gregory wants to do a little traveling.

He talked me into marrying him again. He said it was ridiculous to both have the same last name and not be married. So we had a very simple, short ceremony with a few close friends last week. Mike joked that it was about time we made honest people of each other.

We're going on our second honeymoon next month, as soon as I've tied up all my loose ends at the lab, and we're going to the same places as last time: Japan and then Italy. I only wish--oh, I wish so much we'd had children.

January 18, 2107

I try to get to the lab a few times a month, but Gregory's been so sick lately I haven't had time. He's been in and out of the hospital so often I know half the nurses by name.

I think this is his last visit, though. Gregory is in ICU and isn't expected to regain consciousness. I spoke to the doctor last night, and he wasn't encouraging. So I said my goodbyes to Gregory, even though he couldn't hear me, and I went to the lab for the first time in months--I needed to get away from the hospital.

The hospital ordered me the taxi, since I don't drive now. I think they call it piloting now, though, since these new cars hover. I almost gave the old address, but the lab moved again to bigger facilities last year.

It was late when I came in, and I didn't recognize the two students on duty. They recognized me, though, and helped me get the new equipment set up. I have my own set of headphones since I don't hear as well as I used to. They block outside noise. The students were friendly and wanted to tell me all about the latest broadcasts, which I hadn't been following. There had been a lot of natural disasters in the last few months, they said, and Keith the Great--I'm glad they still call him that--was broadcasting speeches frequently, trying to hold the nation together.

I sat down and put my headphones on. The old familiar clicks and whirs and whistles soothed me, and although the translation was on the screen in front of me, translating as the transmission was received, I didn't need it. I suspect I am the only person in the universe who understands the aliens' language. I thought about that as I listened, and realized what a useless, useless skill it is.

I tuned in a newscast, and it was disturbing. Death tolls, emergency shelters. But it kept my mind off Gregory. I didn't want to remember Gregory the way he was now, fragile and sunken and dying in a hospital bed. I wanted to remember him on my own terms--his smile that made me fall in love with him, his quirky sense of humor, his enthusiasm and intelligence.

I listened all night, expecting the hospital to call. I heard Keith the Great give a speech about solidarity in a time of strife. More newscasts with higher death tolls, and talk about shuttle timetables. The translator didn't understand the word shuttle, but I understood it from context. Shuttles where?

As the night crept on the newscasts became more frantic. The students monitoring the equipment started tweaking the translators, until I took my headphones off long enough to tell them the translators couldn't keep up with such rapid speech. I went back to listening.

The first shuttle launches were announced. Keith the Great was staying. He wouldn't take a shuttle. He made another speech. More death tolls, higher every time. More interference that made it hard to make out words. Two more shuttle launches. Riots by crowds trying to get on the shuttles. One shuttle exploding on liftoff.

A burst of static cut across the transmission, and it went on and on. The students worked on the equipment feverishly, but I could tell it was functioning properly. I was listening to a star going nova, engulfing a dying world.

The static died abruptly as broadcasting equipment on that long ago and far away world melted in the star's blast. My translator screen went blank after pages of error messages from the static. And I could hear nothing in my headphones except the occasional pop and static of normal radio background noise.

I sat without moving. The students, after a few frantic minutes of calls, sat down at the other stations and looked at me, waiting. I listened to the silence.