The Station, Part 5

4/6/2207

It began exactly seven days ago. My name is Robert Bradley. I am a Lieutenant in the United Systems Navy, currently stationed on Deep Territory Monitoring Station Frontier 2 and the sole crew member. I had gotten up at my usual time (07:00) and performed the routine checks of all major systems. Takes about half an hour to do that. Then I got on the comm to Central Command and reported in. Got the usual response from my contact there. A very nice, very pretty comm. officer named O’Brien. She always greeted me with a smile and I think she had an unspoken sympathy for me. She knew that I was all by my lonesome here, and spent a little more time talking to me than regulations called for. I appreciated that. I made sure to always ask her about news from Earth, not that I was particularly interested, as home was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Something about a lack of human violence, the wrath of Mother Nature and all of those common problems of centuries past that plagued Earth centuries ago being wiped out made Earth an otherwise dull place to me. Thoroughly explored and catalogued, Earth. That’s why I had gone into the service in the first place. I’d bought into the whole “adventure” aspect of the navy. That had been three years ago. After a brief stint on a reserve cruiser and a short lived colonial port assignment, I’d gotten this lovely project. Apparently my psych profile had marked me and a few other officers as prime choices for the brand new, nearly fully automated Frontier Class communication stations to be deployed along the edge of explored space. Instead of the more expensive explorer vessels that had pioneered much of the known universe, these satellites are fully committed to endlessly scan the surrounding heavens for the holy grail of space exploration—signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Not that you need reminding of any of this, but this is my story and it’s probably going to be a standard operating procedure from here on out to fill you in on my personal history. Hell, it’s my whole purpose for being here. And has it happened you’re asking. That’s the question. Has it happened?