Resonance

The note was written in pencil, the letters pressed so hard into the paper that they left shallow grooves. The handwriting was uneven, like whoever had scrawled it was in a rush or barely holding it together. Jayme stared at it, she gripped the edge of her car door. The parking lot was empty except for her busted sedan, the late autumn wind pressing dried leaves against the cracked asphalt.

“Drive west for 100 miles.”

It wasn't a threat. No signature, no clue who had left it. Just an instruction. She scanned the lot again. There wasn't anywhere for someone to hide, not here outside the barren strip mall. She didn't know why she folded the note and shoved it into her jacket pocket. Maybe because it was easier to do that than throw it away.

The car's engine coughed but caught on the second turn. Jayme adjusted the rearview mirror. She told herself she wasn't looking for someone watching her. Still, she hesitated over the gas pedal. The fuel gauge was low. She'd need to fill up if she was going anywhere, let alone a hundred miles west.

“Stupid,” she muttered, but the car rolled out of the lot.

---

The miles ticked by in silence, the sort that settled after dusk when the radio gave up trying to grab a signal. The highway was mostly empty, the occasional semi passing on the other side. Jayme glanced at the odometer. Forty-three miles. She still didn't know why she was doing this. The note could've been meant for someone else. But her name was carved into the air between her and the steering wheel, even if no one had written it.

The gas station at mile sixty-seven was the kind of place that felt like it had been abandoned, even though the lights were on. Jayme pulled up to the pump, stepping out into the cold. The wind carried the faint stench of something metallic. She filled the tank in silence, she scanned the edges of the lot and the empty highway beyond.

When she stepped inside to pay, the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly glow on the shelves of expired snacks and motor oil. The man behind the counter looked up from his phone. He had the kind of face that made him impossible to age—somewhere between thirty and fifty, with graying hair that didn't match the youth in he looked.

“Long drive?” he asked as she handed him crumpled cash.

“Maybe.”

He scanned her, not leering, just… observing. He handed her change. “West, huh?”

Jayme froze. “What?”

“Your tires,” he said. “Dust from the salt flats. Been seeing a lot of that lately.”

She didn't respond. She walked out, the bell above the door jingling behind her. When she glanced back at the station in her rearview mirror, the attendant was still watching her.

---

The freeway bled into backroads. The pavement turned to gravel, then dirt, then something that barely passed for a road at all. Her odometer hit ninety-eight miles when she saw it—a metal structure rising out of the horizon like an oil derrick but wrong.

She slowed, pulling the car off to the side. No one had followed her, and yet the air felt heavy, like she wasn't alone. The structure towered higher as she approached on foot. It wasn't rusted, but it wasn't new either. The metal was pockmarked, dulled by exposure. The base was wide, tapering upward in uneven sections. A lattice of beams crisscrossed its surface, and at the top, a dark, smooth sphere was suspended, too perfect to feel natural.

Jayme stepped closer. The electricity pulsed faintly through the ground, though there were no visible wires. No lights. No sounds except the wind. The closer she got, the more she could hear something—no, feel it. Like a low-frequency pulse brushing against her ears. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was wrong. She reached the base and saw the hatch.

It was open.

She hesitated, the note burning in her pocket. This was insane. She should turn around, drive home, and forget she ever saw this. But she moved anyway. The ladder stretched down into darkness, the kind that didn't yield to curiosity easily. She climbed.

---

The descent was longer than it should have been. The air changed as she went, growing cooler and damp, like she was heading into the earth instead of staying in open air. When she reached the floor, the space opened up. The sphere from above hung suspended in the center, only now it was translucent, faint lines of light flickering across its surface like veins. The pulse she'd felt earlier was stronger here, vibrating through the floor, through her body.

She wasn't alone.

A man stepped out from behind the sphere. He was tall, lean, and looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. His clothes were plain, but he was covered in what looked like oil or ash. He didn't speak at first. He just stared at her, as if he'd been expecting her but didn't quite believe she'd come.

“You made it,” he said finally.

Jayme narrowed her eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

He didn't answer. Instead, he gestured toward the sphere. “Do you know what this is?”

“No. And I don't care. I'm leaving.”

“You can't,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Watch me.”

“It's not a threat,” he said quickly, his voice almost pleading. “It's just… you need to see this first.”

Jayme hesitated. “See what?”

He walked toward the sphere, placing a palm against its surface. The veins of light reacted, spreading outward like ripples. The pulse grew stronger, and suddenly, the room was filled with sound—not noise, but voices. Dozens, maybe hundreds, overlapping in a language she didn't understand.

“It's not from here,” the man said. “It's a receiver. A beacon. It's been pulling signals from… somewhere else. I've been trying to decode them, but it's… hard. It's not just language. It's physics. Math. Biology. Things we barely have a framework for.”

Jayme shook her head. “Why tell me this? Why leave the note?”

He frowned. “I didn't leave the note.”

Her stomach turned. “Then who did?”

The man looked at her like he didn't have an answer. Or like he was afraid to say it out loud. “This thing… it's not just receiving. It's sending too. I think—no, I know—it's been reaching out. And something out there is answering.”

Jayme backed away. “You're insane.”

“Am I?” he asked. “Think about it. Why did you come here? Why didn't you ignore the note?”

She didn't have an answer. She'd been asking herself the same thing since she got in her car.

The man stepped closer. “You felt it, didn't you? Before you even got here. That pull. That need to follow. It's not coincidence. It's this.” He pointed to the sphere. “It's in your head now. In mine too. It's—”

The pulse grew deafening, cutting him off. The sphere's surface flared, the veins of light bursting into patterns too intricate to follow. Jayme stumbled back as the room seemed to tilt, her balance slipping. The man shouted something, but his voice was swallowed by the noise. And then, just as quickly, it stopped.

The sphere dimmed, returning to its faint glow. The man was on his knees, panting. Jayme stared at him, she trembled.

“What the hell was that?” she asked.

He looked up at her, his face pale. “It's not just sending signals. It's… calling them here.”

Jayme shuddered. “What's coming?”

He didn't answer. Because somewhere above them, the hatch slammed shut.

---

The writing prompt for this story was:
You find a hand-written note on your windshield that says, “Drive west for 100 miles.”

This story was written by:
openai/gpt-4o-2024-11-20

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Thank you for reading. Please post a comment if you have feedback on this story.