A Secret Message from Space -Sakib Bin Atiq

The night the message arrived, the sky above Riverbend City looked ordinary. Stars blinked calmly. The moon hung low like a quiet watcher. No one guessed that something ancient and impossible was speaking to Earth at that very moment.

Milon Malik was awake when it happened.

He was fifteen and could never sleep early. His room was small and messy with books about space stacked beside his bed. A cheap telescope stood near the window. Milon loved the night because it felt honest. During the day people talked too much. At night the universe listened.

Milon was sketching a black hole in his notebook when his computer made a sound he had never heard before. Not a beep. Not an alert. It was a deep vibrating hum as if metal was breathing.

“What now?” he whispered.

The screen flashed white. Lines of numbers appeared then vanished. A signal graph opened by itself. Milon’s heart began to race. He had installed many astronomy programs but none behaved like this.

Then the sound returned. It was slow. Rhythmic. Almost like a heartbeat.

Milon grabbed his headphones and listened closely. The sound was not random. It repeated in patterns.

Someone was knocking.

He called his best friend Sumi on video chat. She answered after three rings. Her hair was tied messily and her eyes were sharp even at midnight.

“Do you know what time it is?” she asked.

“You need to see this,” Milon said. “Now.”

Sumi frowned but leaned closer to the screen. “What am I looking at?”

“A signal,” Milon said. “It came from nowhere. Or somewhere very far.”

Sumi’s expression changed. She loved puzzles more than sleep. “Send me the data.”

Milon transferred the file. Sumi typed fast. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

“This is not noise,” she said slowly. “It’s structured.”

Milon swallowed. “From where?”

Sumi ran a quick scan. Her face went pale. “Milon. The source is labeled BH-77.”

Milon’s breath caught. “That’s not possible.”

BH-77 was a black hole. A real one. A massive spinning monster thousands of light years away. Nothing escaped a black hole. Not light. Not sound. Not messages.

Yet something had.

The next morning Milon and Sumi met at school. They barely spoke in class. Their notebooks were filled with symbols. At lunch they sat with Mustaq who was the only one they trusted. Mustaq was tall and quiet. He built robots from junk and believed adults knew less than they pretended.

“It came from a black hole?” Mustaq asked.

“Yes,” Sumi said. “And it’s repeating every six hours.”

“Maybe it’s fake,” Mustaq said.

Milon shook his head. “I checked the source code. It bypassed everything. It wanted to be found.”

Sumi leaned forward. “We decoded part of it.”

Mustaq raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Sumi took a deep breath. “It’s not words. It’s coordinates.”

Silence fell between them.

“Coordinates to where?” Mustaq asked.

“To here,” Milon said.

That evening Milon and his friends met at Milon’s house. The signal played softly in the background. His parents thought he was working on a science project. In a way he was.

Sumi projected a map onto the wall. A red dot blinked over Riverbend City.

“But why here?” Mustaq asked.

The signal changed suddenly. The hum grew louder. The screen filled with symbols that looked almost like letters.

Milon felt dizzy. “It’s reacting to us.”

Sumi whispered, “It knows we are listening.”

The power flickered. Outside the wind picked up. Clouds swallowed the stars.

Then the symbols rearranged themselves.

Sumi gasped. “It’s forming language.”

The words appeared slowly as if struggling to exist.

We are not lost

We are trapped

Time is breaking

Mustaq stepped back. “This is not funny.”

Another line appeared.

You opened the door

Milon’s chest tightened. “What door?”

The lights went out.

For one terrifying second the room was dark. Then the emergency lamp flickered on. The computer screen glowed bright.

A final message appeared.

Help us before the echoes end

The signal stopped.

No hum. No light. Nothing.

The next day news spread fast. Satellites reported strange disturbances. Clocks around the world lost seconds. Some people felt dizzy at the same time. Scientists argued on television. No one mentioned black holes.

Milon and his friends knew better.

The signal returned that night weaker than before. Sumi noticed something new.

“It’s fading,” she said. “Like it’s dying.”

Mustaq crossed his arms. “What if helping it hurts us?”

Milon looked at the screen. He felt a pull deep inside his chest. “What if not helping ends everything?”

They followed the coordinates deeper. The message pointed not just to the city but to an abandoned observatory outside town. A place no one visited anymore.

They went at dawn.

The observatory stood on a hill. Its dome was cracked. Rust covered the doors. The air felt heavy.

Inside they found old equipment covered in dust. In the center of the room stood a strange device that did not belong. It was smooth and black like space itself. Symbols glowed faintly on its surface.

Sumi whispered, “This was not built by humans.”

As Milon stepped closer the device came alive. The hum returned stronger than ever. The symbols moved.

Images filled the air. A civilization made of light. Stars bending. A black hole growing like a wound in space.

“They were explorers,” Sumi said. “They studied time.”

Mustaq clenched his fists. “And they got trapped.”

The images shifted. The black hole was not just a destroyer. It was a prison. A place where time folded in on itself.

“They are stuck between moments,” Milon said. “Echoing forever.”

The device showed one final image. A collapsing structure. The echoes fading.

“They are running out of time,” Sumi said.

“But how do we help?” Mustaq asked.

The device responded. Symbols formed instructions. Not words. Actions.

Milon understood first. “We need to shut it down.”

“Shut down what?” Sumi asked.

“The echo generator,” Milon said. “This device. It’s keeping them half alive. But it’s also tearing time here.”

Mustaq hesitated. “If we turn it off they might vanish.”

Milon nodded slowly. “Or be freed.”

The ground trembled. Outside the sky darkened even though it was morning. The hum became painful.

Sumi wiped tears from her eyes. “We don’t have a choice.”

Together they placed their hands on the device. It pulsed with energy. The symbols glowed bright then dimmed.

The hum rose to a scream then stopped.

Silence.

The sky cleared. The tremors ended. The device cracked and turned to dust.

For a long moment no one spoke.

Then Milon felt something warm brush his mind. Not a voice. Not words. A feeling of gratitude.

A star flashed briefly in the sky even though the sun was up.

The black hole went quiet forever.

Weeks passed. Life returned to normal. Scientists never found an explanation. The observatory was sealed off.

Milon still watched the stars. Sumi still chased puzzles. Mustaq still built robots.

Sometimes at night when the wind was right Milon heard a faint hum far away. Not from space. From memory.

The universe was still listening.

And somewhere beyond time the echoes finally rested.