The desert had always whispered, but that night it straight-up sang. A low, thrumming groove rolled over the dunes like somebody tuning the universe through a busted tube amp. Old Rayas stepped out of his shack, sand squeaking under his boots, watching the sky twist itself into a glowing spiral — a teal vortex pulsing like a giant cosmic heartbeat. He didn’t know whether it was calling to him or warning him, but hell, after forty years alone in the wastes, Rayas figured anything making that kinda entrance deserved to be answered.

So he fired up the dish.

The receiver groaned, metal bones flexing as the old wheel-rig creaked to life. Rayas had rebuilt that thing more times than he could count — sometimes sober, sometimes not — and it still looked like it had been welded by a mad preacher with divine inspiration and terrible eyesight. But tonight? Tonight it hummed like it had been waiting for this very moment since the Big Bang. When the beam hit the center of the dish and lit up that orange halo, Rayas felt the world tilt. Like gravity was a suggestion and the stars were leaning in to listen.

The signal poured through him — a riff older than language, heavy enough to make the sand vibrate in patterns only gods or drifters could understand. His mind ballooned outward, brushing against thoughts not his own: vast minds living in the dark matter between galaxies, ancient caravans drifting across the void, and something else… something that sounded like a choir made entirely of dying suns. They weren’t speaking words so much as intent, like a message being jammed straight into his bones: Tune the world, old man. Bring it back into harmony.

Rayas wasn’t sure whether he was chosen, cursed, or just in the wrong place at the right time — but as the beam anchored itself to the dish and the dunes started glowing like the desert had become a giant speaker, he grinned. For the first time in decades, he felt alive. Like the universe had finally spun the dial to the right frequency, and he was about to learn what came after enlightenment, madness, and feedback loops.

Whatever came next, Rayas figured he’d greet it with the same philosophy he used for every broken machine and lonely night: if it hums, you follow the hum.

released December 5, 2025

Additional artwork included in the download.

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Artwork by DALL-E

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