Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Lanterns: A First Contact Science Fiction Short Story (The Noise Floor Book 1)

Lanterns: A First Contact Science Fiction Short Story (The Noise Floor Book 1)

Escoda, Kevin

Paperback

Science FictionGeneral Fiction

ISBN13: 9798193417477
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 18 2026
Pages: 32
Weight: 0.13
Height: 0.07 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Two hundred and fourteen stars are flickering in unison. It is a countdown. It ends in ninety-one years.

When an exoplanet pipeline flags an impossible correlation, astronomer Ilinca Vasile tries to kill the signal and fails: someone has built shutters around two hundred stars, and they are counting down. Decoding the message takes a decade. Understanding it costs the world its old idea of the universe.

Because the lanterns are not a greeting. They are a road sign. THIS REGION IS SWEPT. DARKEN BEFORE THE COUNT COMPLETES. And along the corridor they mark, nineteen dead civilisations lie spaced like milestones.

Going silent has failed everyone who tried it. But the lantern builders' own machines have survived inside the corridor for two million years, and they are not silent at all. They are doing something else. Something a whole species would have to learn.

A complete story in five movements, for readers of Liu Cixin, Ted Chiang and Arthur C. Clarke: first contact, cosmic dread, and an answer to the silence of the sky you have not read before. A 30-minute read, with an author's note and a preview of the next Noise Floor single.

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