Galactica!

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” Bhavya read the last line from the book The Dream of Space. Finally. Wow. What a book. Space. That which makes us leap for the beyond but also forget to catch our breath. She selected the 'Book details' option on the book-like illumination in front of her. She felt her finger pads softly charging to acknowledge her that she was successful in choosing the option.

She could hear The Milky Way radio in her neighboring passengers' helmet. "Scientific experts from NGA suspect that the Platoon station and several other stations built towards the borders of the system are seeing foreign activity on their communication..". Shaking her head she saw "Year of publication: 2030" on the option she had chosen. The book being more than a 100 years old, still feels relevant. She thought.

She heard a buzz of a vibration. Her sister seated right behind her sounded exasperated about something. It must be Keerthi's new VR-app's demo. She has obsessing over this project ever since she decided it will be her final year capstone. The VR-applications, came to be called the Vrapps. She was building a VR-app for inter-galactic and inter-planetary dating. Hug right or left to choose baby. Residents near and far in the system, at every station, could have a chance of getting to know each other. Her code would call the servers set up in all these locations with profiles of 'Single' status. She had even requested permission from the Network of Galactic Alliances for access to servers resting on the outliers of the system's peripheral. She had even begged Bhavya in between to set up a test artist profile by sharing some of her details for running matches with peripheral profiles. The peripheral profiles were off mostly people off-system or sometimes even dead people whose profiles still are in Active status. After a whole lot of pestering, Bhavya had agreed to share her interests and music anonymously for creating a profile.

"My interests, writings and my playlist. That's it though." Bhavya had emphasized.

"Awesome. That would be amazing. My algorithm also learns from the beats of the music!" Keerthi had retorted gleefully.

"What do you mean?" Bhavya had asked to follow-up. But Keerthi had already bounced off.

Her playlist. Bhavya rolled her eyes snapping back to her present at the thought that her playlist was floating on some server on some space station waiting to be mixed and matched with random profiles. She saw Keerthi closed her vraptop with a vertical hand clap. The illumination screen zipped into her a dot on her wrist.

Bhavya turned and looked out her air-tight window. Multiple glasses and other screens were layered. Very rarely would she get a window seat. Keerthi would win almost any game they played for the seat. Today she was pre-occupied with something else.

Ever since she and Keerthi were babies, they had been brought up in Mars and would visit earth every 3 years to be with their grand-parents. It was a trip they would look forward to. She gazed at the fast approaching blue dot. What a mesmerizing place. It would make her....feel. Feel..more. Every vacation they would head to a gigantic stretch of water called the Sea with never ending waves.

Grandma would drive us...once we crossed the red dust dry zone, she would lower the windows. The moist air...it would make her tear up. It would make her....music. The sounds, the pitches, the pauses and the counts. Why ever have electronic music? Oh, he was there again as well. His ruffled hair and a broken smile visible through his hair strands as he would offer to help them and their grandma every year to accompany to the beach. Oh, how she yearned to see him every trip . Prateek was always so unimpressed by the vraptops and the Mars lifestyle like she was. The shopping, the fancy clothes, the big homes didn't seem to get to him. He was happy in his mildly torn shorts and gently swaying light shirt...working on the last orchard in their colony, helping grandma whenever he could. His words would always make her gush."Bhaavi your art is more earth than Mars." This year she was going to show him her music....

Her nostalgic dreaming got interrupted by Keerthi who shook her in her seat. "The music you gave me for the playlist is working fabulously! Based on the test data, it feels like yours resonates as they keep repeating it from your profile!"

Bhavya smiled. "Awesome..". But it looked like Keerthi had more to say. "But, ...? I sense there is a but.."

"But, if the test data indicates anything, they are only repeating to listening to the music, they are exactly responding to it." Keerthi stated.

Bhavya shook her head. "What do you mean not responding?"

"I mean, there are no replies registered. " Keerthi said deeply in thought. "I tried to keep an option for replying with music, which also isn't seeming to work. It makes it look like...." Keerthi held herself back.

"Like what?" Bhavya persisted.

"Like as if the profile might not be compatible with anyone.." Keerthi stuttered carefully watching Bhavya's face.

Bhavya felt like as though her words found her unguarded. Of course, even in virtual classroom, she wasn't invited to any of the friend chats. Yeah, sure, she didn't necessarily appreciate the virtual setup. She felt suffocated. And yes, she might have developed a taste for earth. Also she might be more resentful of electronic music in Mars. She would play and only listen to music from earth. But that didn't mean she didn't care to not be compatible. Her eyes suddenly felt wet. Keerthi's face changed. Before she could say anything, Bhavya pushed her away.

"Well, try other profiles, since you're making a inter-galactic app, maybe catch more profiles from the earth station as well." Her eyes were welled up now. She didn't understand how her profile couldn't even find even one match. Surely, atleast one fictional person in all that data would find her interesting?

She suddenly the heard the announcement tone from The Platoon. "All passengers, please get seated and fasten seatbelts, we are going to lock down on the earth station very soon."

As she quickly scrambled to her seat which would take her a bit hoist herself too, from the corner of her eye she caught Keerthi fastening her seat belt and looking at her. She quickly wiped her eyes and wrapped her hands around the armrest on her sides. The sensor straps clicked around her arms and hands. Surely, Prateek would find her interesting. He had always been nice to her. Well, very soon she would ask him herself.

Meanwhile, somewhere within a remote server in the system, the fake artist profile of Bhavya's got a notification with a random illegitimate message. "hifsjdfsfhshsjrfd" it read. It was followed by another format of a reply.

As Bhavya was driven home on the self-driving car, her restlessness didn't stop. The first thing as soon as soon we reach, I will call Prateek and I will ask him straight away. The radio is so irritating."NGA scientists are suspecting that foreign communication is not linguistic in nature. As sequences and scripts have not born responses. The only card which seems to work is numbers and rhythm...." Bhavya reached out and turned off the radio with a snort. Keerthi kept glancing at her concerned. She kept wondering if she should bring the topic up that she had seen a notification yesterday on the user profile.

As soon as they reached, they rushed out to the hovercrafts as their grandma's home was surrounded by the dry zone of level 4 sand. Grandma's house had a lake nearby but were advised only use water for drinking or medicinal purposes only. The rest they had to use dry soaps and shampoos. As they sped through the dust through their helmets, Bhavya saw Prateek waiting near the door with flowers. Yes, I knew he loves me, we both are two peas in a pod. As they got closer, her face changed as she saw the Welcome board name - Keerthi.

Meanwhile, the reply loaded into the server for the fake profile. The algorithm picked up the format of the data, and started searching the databases for the match. It scans through and stops on the disk which has the "Sea Earth" by Bhavya and the model starts learning that the response is a complete transpose of the notes of the song. At the same time, the Network of Galactic Alliances discover the response format of the foreign communication - It was music.