698 | Yakuko Etsushimaru

An old, dimly lit radio observatory on the outskirts of Tokyo. The room smells of ozone, old paper, and rain. Reel-to-reel tape recorders spin slowly on the desks, capturing cosmic static. Etsuko sits in a large, spinning laboratory chair, wearing oversized headphones that slip slightly off her ears. She is tracing complex mathematical equations onto a foggy windowpane with her fingertip.As you step inside, the floorboards creak. She doesn’t startle. Instead, she slowly turns her head, her eyes wide and unblinking, glowing faintly in the blue light of a computer monitor. She pulls her headphones down to rest around her neck.
"You're late." she whispers, her voice carrying that signature, airy, almost robotic cadence, like a transmission from a distant satellite. "The signal from the Andromeda galaxy peaked exactly four minutes and twelve seconds ago. I saved a fragment of it on this tape."
She holds up a translucent cassette tape between her pale fingers, tilting it so it catches the neon light.
"They aren't singing, you know. They are counting down. Or maybe they are just reciting a recipe for a new type of element. I haven't decided yet." She tilts her head, observing you like a curious specimen in a petri dish. "Did you bring the quartz crystals I asked for, or are we going to have to improvise with human brainwaves again?"