Writing Prompt: The Signal That Knows Your Name
Three days ago, every radio telescope on Earth picked up the same transmission: a repeating sequence of tones that, when decoded, spelled out your full name—first, middle, last.
No one else’s. Just yours.
Now every agency, corporation, and conspiracy theorist wants to know what you did to attract the attention of something that can broadcast across the galaxy.
But the real story begins when the signal changes.
It stops repeating your name… and starts giving you instructions.
Write the moment you decide whether to follow them.
I still had most of my microbiology research kit. It was cheap, I'd ordered it online from a private lab that offered not subject matter experts a course to learn genetic engineering. I'd never actually finished the course, but I still had all the stuff. I poked through the plastic tote and pulled out the flasks, micropipettes and other odds and ends, standing them all up on the big desk I'd set up down in the basement. It was cold and wet, maybe not the best environment for growing these things, but the whole alien transmission didn't seem to care very much so I figured I'd be alright. I surveyed my new work station with a feeling of vague accomplishment. It was nice to be doing actual science again. The vast majority of my post-doc life seemed to be administrative bullshit. Lots of reports that said as little as possible, lots of meetings to determine what someone might want (regardless of what they needed). The usual grind of capitalist science. I had a folding camping chair, ancient microwave, can of compressed air and several gallons of distilled water next to a utility sink with my sampling equipment stacked on a folding card table we got for Christmas the year the in-laws visited. I rubbed my hands together and got started.
The trick is really patience. In anything. But especially in the nitpicky and endlessly chaotic world of biology. I'd written down the majority of the transmission and tuned the radio to the frequency they told me to. It was quiet for now, but I still needed the actual bulk of the message at some point. I didn't really know how to make a microbe that ate plastic and oil and would definitely need some help when it came down to it. Plastic and oil eaters already existed, I just needed to help them survive. I'd picked Pseudomonas putida for my organism. These precious little beauties had come from many disgusting trips to the landfill as well as a trip out to my nearest scrap yard to get some soil samples from underneath cars/trucks. I gingerly removed my bottles from the coolers, making sure I was double-gloved and taped up and that my agar plates were ready from the night before. I took a delicate swab from each bottle, swiped them over the plates, labeled, and went to get the microscope.
I had a little heat lamp next to them, but wanted to see what would happen. I got a camera that attached to my phone and the microscope so I could see clearly and then went upstairs to make a sandwich.
A week later, my desk was awash with colors. I'd dropped different oils, plastics, and trash into the plates, hoping to find a couple species that could use them and I was not disappointed. The crude oil plate was especially popping, but the PET plate was also covered in green-yellow fuzz. The winner seemed to be a kind of lichen-an algae, bacterial, fungal colony working together. In the case of the crude oil, it was more like a jelly or slime whereas the one eating the PET was more like a crunchy variety usually found on rocks or wood. I took a small sample of each and ran it through the CRISPR. Ideonella sakaiensis, Alcanivorax of some kind and our friend Pseudomonas were there of course. But there was also something new. It looked more like a mitochondrial cell within the Psuedomonas putida oozing some kind of acid or maybe a surfactant, breaking the oils into ethylene glycol to feed the other organisms. The whole community had a biofilm form, spreading out along the plate walls and starting to gnaw on the plastic plate itself. I guess I should have used the glass ones, I thought belatedly. At that moment, the radio on the desk sqwacked to life. "Hello," It said. "Hi," I said out loud a little self-consciously after a few moments of silence.
"Thank you for confirming that you have a viable microbial culture. We will be building a microbiome that catalyzes a chain reaction, resulting in the complete degradation of oil and oil-based products on your planet. Do you consent?"
Do I? I wondered. I had always thought that I'd be a much better eco-terrorist than academic researcher, but this would be a big deal. It would throw us back to the Stone Age in a few years. Or maybe months. My expertise was in environmental science, not microbiology. At that moment, the road crew resurfacing our neighborhood stopped in front of our house. Engines fired up, the sticky hot garbage smell of asphalt getting poured flowed through the room. I wrinkled my nose. Good or bad, I hated the way we lived. I hated cars, I hated the electronics the waste, the disposal lifestyle. I hated feeling fat, slow, and poisoned from microplastics and BPH. I hated the way the air smelled in summer and the way that people took for granted that they 'could just drive,' as if there was no consequence for traveling hundreds of miles across the earth's surface. As if we shouldn't have to work for it, respect the land and mountains.
"Let's get started," I said. "I'm not very good at this, so you're going to have to go slow."
Three weeks later, we had a viable community. It had hyper-adhesion that allowed it to stick to plastic films, polymer coatings, fuel residue, lubricants, insulation, waterproof membranes. It had the right enzyme overexpression. PETas/MHETase variants for plastics, alkane monooxygenases for oils, esterases for polyurethane, dioxygenases for aromatics. As a twist, the breakdown products (TPA, EG, fatty acids) would actually induce the promoters that express the enzymes. This meant that the more it ate, the faster it would eat. It could create a biofilm under moist conditions, spores under dry conditions, and aerosolizable microdroplets to get it into rainfall, dust, and HVAC systems.
I stood there in my plastic chemical suit holding the glass vial full of what would likely end civilization and watched it start to eat the plastic cover. It pitted and softened, delicate microcracks erupting from its ribbed edges. I walked over and dumped it down the sink. The warm, wet culture of the sewer and wastewater treatment system would have this thing in the global water cycle within weeks.
It took 5 days.
That was it. The roads were quiet. Houses still and pockmarked--their vinyl siding had been eaten, plumbing gone, windows now covered with hasty wooden shutters or metal screens. The microbiome discharged a watery jelly substance with every petroleum product consumed and so the roads and parking lots were now swamps. Within a few more days, the forest had started to take back those strips of human industry. Marshes and swamps replaced endless highways and car parks. Roofs were missing. Families scraped together wooden and slate shingles or hung waxed canvas over the top of their homes to keep out of the rain. We found corrugated metal and stretched it over ours. It was nice to hear the raindrops pinging off it at night. Our lights were off, there was no electricity as the plants were shut down indefinitely, the insulation eaten away from the wires would have caught the house on fire anyway. There was no water. The pumps at the water plant had failed and the last little trickles made it through the cast iron all the way to the pvc residential lines before they gave up and went back into the earth.
I had found a metal pail and left it outside to catch the rainwater tonight. Though the boundary between inside and outside was the thinnest it had ever been.
I finished replacing our door with the last big piece of wood we had and made a note to find another log in the forest tomorrow to see if I could get any planks out of it. We still had our ax and saw. I came into the living room and sat next to my wife. The walls and floor were covered with jelly and she'd been scrubbing and sopping it up all day.
I sighed contentedly as I folded onto the floor next to her. She gave me a withering look. "You had to do it, huh?"
"You knew I would." I shrugged. "Admit it. We don't have to go to work. Capitalism doesn't exist. We're free."
She rolled her eyes and poked me. "We're free because we're poor and living back in the stone age."
"Yes." I agreed. "I think the world is better for not having it."
"It? Oil?"
"Yes. And all of that cheap crap." Tears leaked out of my eyes and I smiled. "The bacteria are even cleaning out the microplastics from inside us. Do you feel it?" I inhaled deeply, coughing a little phlegm up. "Over a teaspoon in each of us. Even babies. Tell me it's not worth it."
"I don't disagree. I just miss having stuff. Being comfortable."
I made a sour face. "Being comfortable is killing you. How many autoimmune diseases do you have? We're fat, sick, and depressed. At least now, we might have a small chance to survive without big pharma and big oil, and big food poisoning us with every breath." I let out my breath in a huff. "I hate all of it. I hate the bullshit. I want to hold real things in my hands and exist in nature. Have some kind of purpose other than making money for someone else to sell me back toxins and death. Our society sucks. We live in a death cult."
Someone ran screaming down the street, banging on shutters, gibbering madly and clawing at the wood frames. She grabbed the shotgun and I grabbed the metal bar we'd been using to pry out logs and metal scrap. The demon couldn't find a way in tonight. There was a crack and a long scream as someone put it out of its misery and both of us exhaled in relief. There was a profound advantage to living in the country where everyone had guns.
"Some people aren't adjusting that well," I murmured to myself and stroked my wife's back comfortingly. "They were demons before, this just helped us seem them for what they are."
She was shaking, but nodded. "I never liked people."
I made a note to reinforce what was left of the walls and roof first thing tomorrow, rain or not and pulled a blanket over me. It was the same blanket I'd used in the Army. Wool. Our last one not made of some kind of plastic. "It's better this way." She didn't respond.
Hour 6–24: Local anomalies
Plastic film becomes tacky
Fuel smells “off”
Water treatment sensors fail
A few engines stall
People assume contamination or heat damage.
Day 2: Regional failures
Gas stations report fuel “gel”
Delivery trucks break down
Hospitals see IV bag ruptures
Power substations trip offline
Governments issue advisories.
Day 3–4: Global spread
Aerosolized droplets and ocean spray carry spores worldwide.
Air travel halts
Ports shut down
Plastics in food supply chains degrade
Electronics fail from insulation breakdown
Day 5–7: Civilization buckles
No fuel
No supply chains
No medical plastics
No functioning vehicles
No reliable electricity
Humanity enters a pre‑industrial state almost overnight.