The Oooh! Signal

This story was originally written for the

2024 Literotica Geek Pride Story Event

.

=========

If you think about it for a moment, the universe is pretty much the ultimate tease. How does is it work? What is it made of? What makes it go? You cannot exactly reach out and

touch

.

Sure, you can fool yourself to think otherwise. Send out robotic probes that won't get anywhere interesting until the next ice age. Hardly a satisfying prospect now, is it? To wait several hundred millennia, for your obsolete piece of junk on a distant planet to dip its metal arm in mud and proclaim that hurray, there's probably some bacteria in there.

Or rather, was -- several hundred millennia ago. That's how long it'll take for the news to finally get back to you.

So, no: touching is pretty much out of question. All you can really do is

look

. Whatever secrets the cosmos deigns to reveal to you, it will do so through its photons.

Visible photons. Infrared photons. Microwave, terahertz, X-ray, gamma ray and radio... An entire spectrum of wavelengths and frequencies, just waiting to be observed. Yet eyes alone can only do so much: you need dedicated, sensitive equipment. Even the most acute instruments prove useless, however, if all they can see is light pollution from humanity's ever-expanding cities.

You have to escape this noise. You need to go far, far away from everyone. And if you discount the space itself, there are only a few places on the planet that suffice. Places that are remote and secluded enough to let you catch the furthest, oldest, most precious of photons.

Say, for example, the oldest, driest, most inhospitable desert in the world. A demo version of Mars, right here on Earth.

The Atacama desert, in the equatorial region of South America.

There are places there that haven't seen rain in half a decade. "Seasonal" rivers whose beds remained dry since neanderthals went extinct. Regions that are so barren, you'd struggle to find even the most meager of lichens. Where your robot would dig its metal arm into the ground, take a scoop, then do its chemical song and dance only to decide that no, this planet was actually devoid of life.

All in all, it was the perfect place for a massive observatory. No wonder that when they built one, it was the biggest, most expensive, and most scientifically valuable. Dozens upon dozens of large satellite dishes, each one almost seventy feet in radius, arranged over an area of a decently sized city. A technological feat no doubt, and also one of logistics. It couldn't have been easy to haul all these massive bowls, from a manufacturing facility somewhere in Europe or the US all the way down to the cozy, Martian locale of Nowhere, Chile.

But it had been done, and the observatory had been up and running for decades. By mid-21st century, thanks to the advancement in automation and AI, the sprawling facility could more or less run itself. All it needed was someone onsite to address the most urgent technical issues; nothing more complicated than taking out a broken piece of hardware and replacing it with a new one.

That someone was a crew of four, rotated every six months, and they were often a rather interesting bunch.

***

CHAPTER 1

"Hey, what's new today, Chris? Discovered any aliens overnight?"

A stocky bespectacled man, with bushy brown beard and a perfectly shiny scalp, looked up from a bowl of cereal to greet his companion. The man who entered the kitchen was a fairly tall, dark-haired guy in a checkered button-down shirt and jeans.

"Same old, same old. Just the constant beeping of your silly little pulsars," Chris said, opening the fridge and fetching a pint-sized carton of milk. "I honestly don't know why we even capture so much data at these frequencies. It's all just the same small bursts of gamma rays, at exactly identical intervals..."

'Small' was, of course, a decidedly relative term. A direct hit from a pulsar's "tick" could obliterate a big asteroid or perhaps a dwarf planet, but it would hardly faze a star or even a gas giant. In astronomical terms, this definitely qualified as small.

"Resource allocation is not for us lowly undergrads to decide," said the other man ruefully, dredging up a spoonful of Cheerios. "But hey, shouldn't you be happy about our current targets? I remember how you told me that pulsars are basically space clocks and lighthouses, so everyone would be watching them. If your aliens wanted to advertise their existence --"

"These aren't just

my

aliens, Rob," Chris huffed. "You may think that SETI is a fool's errand and a waste of money but it's been a serious scientific enterprise for decades now. Once we finally got people on Mars to dig up fossils that the rovers couldn't, no one seriously questions whether it's worthwhile to look for intelligent life."

He remembered what a ruckus it had been, only a few short years ago. The last gasp of an old and eccentric billionaire, putting all his wealth and connections into this one mission to Mars: a return trip for six astronauts.

It actually succeeded, despite the constant bellyaching of many self-important pundits. They decried the effort as a waste of money that should've gone into their pet social justice causes instead. Ironically, they had all contributed to this success: by dutifully paying ten bucks a month for a tiny icon next to their name on a social media platform owned by the aging mogul.

"Alright, calm down," Rob said, waiting for his irritable comrade to take a seat at the table. "I'm not saying it isn't important. I'm just frustrated is all. We are sitting here, in bumfuck nowhere a hundred miles from the nearest city, and we have zero say in where all these antennas"--his hand swept the room, implying he meant the whole facility--"are pointing at. Heck, even our universities get scraps for telescope time! How much more does UCLA get because of you?"

Chris shrugged. "Maybe ten percent over everyone else?"

"Yeah, same for Harvard here," Rob scoffed. "It's not fair, man."

"What's not fair, guys?"

The question was uttered by a new, very melodious voice that rose over the quiet droning of the A/C and the humidifier. Its soft, chirpy quality had an instant effect on the gloomy atmosphere at the table. Both male heads turned to look at the new arrival, who sauntered into the kitchen and greeted them with a pearly white smile.

"Life, Abby," Rob said sardonically. "Although it just got quite a lot fairer, now that you're here..."

A giggle came in response, not exactly a girly one but still youthfully vibrant.

Abigail Brooks was her name, and she was a doctoral student of theoretical astronomy at the University of Colorado. Like most of the crew she was in her late twenties, sharp like a surgical scalpel and well qualified to conduct productive research using what the telescopes here received. Her area of expertise was cosmology, in particular the new theories of gravity; a rather more abstract domain than stars, pulsars, planetary systems, and possibly even aliens.

"Don't worry about him, Abby," Chris chimed in. "Rob was just complaining,

again

, that all we can do is watch the toys rather than play with them. Not that I disagree, but I prefer to talk about more cheerful topics over breakfast."

"Oh, I agree completely," said the smiling woman, as she stuffed a piece of bread into a somewhat run-down toaster. "With both of you, that is. But since we're already talking about our 'toys,' then I shall remind you that it's this time of the week again..."

"Right, inspection day," Chris groaned. "It is still my turn, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Yours, mine, and Daniel's."

Chris's face actually lit up at her answer. He obviously wasn't keen on going outside, into the sweltering heat and dryness of the desert, but his reluctance had notably lessened when he learned he'd be accompanied by Abby.

"Better wake up junior then," Rob suggested, taking a sip of his coffee. "You wouldn't want to still be out there when it gets really hot."

"It's fine. We can start in an hour and still make it back before noon," Abby said, slathering her toast with a blotch of peanut butter. "All three of us have done this a few times already."

But I've only done it once with both of them, she thought, and this time will surely be different. For the last few weeks, the men's presence had been more and more distracting, even if she tried very hard not to show it.

"Almost every week," Rob said dejectedly. "Don a hat, spray yourself with an SPF 50, haul a gallon jug of water, and drive around this absolutely gorgeous landscape --"

"You really are kinda grumpy today, Rob," Chris interrupted him. "Missing your fiancee, huh?"

"Oh, sod off," Rob replied, annoyed. "I'm fine."

"Don't tease him, Chris," said Abby with a calming smile, taking a seat at the table. "We still have four months to go, so we kinda need to get along, you know? So, talk about planet formation, or supernovae, or whatever it is you 'real astronomers' are interested in."

Chris chuckled. "Ah yes, unlike you who only deals with tiny little particles..."

"And huge galaxy clusters," Abby reminded him. "Because you know, gravity. There's more of it when things get big. It just gets more... attractive."

"Right," said Chris.

Funny, he thought there was something slightly odd in his colleague's tone of voice for a moment. He couldn't quite place it, though.

"Well then, I guess I should go and do something productive," Rob said, dropping his spoon into the empty cereal bowl with a clank. "There are like fifty new papers that my laptop tells me I should look at. I swear, these 'virtual research assistants' have become our bosses at this point, not the other way around..."

"Have fun," the other two said.

With nothing better to do, they watched as Rob put the dishes in the washer and walked out of the room. Shrugging, Abby then smiled at Chris for a brief second, before biting into her PB&J and purring contentedly at the simple yet deliciously familiar taste.

***

The entire telescope array comprised almost a hundred distinct satellite dishes. Each one was equipped with a highly sensitive receiver, tuned to capture a specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Together, aided by a generous helping of specialized software, they formed a single cohesive instrument, boasting a much higher resolution than any one receiver could. Combined with the carefully chosen location that minimized light pollution and atmospheric scattering, they were able to peer further into the universe's distant regions (and distant past) than anything else on the Earth's surface, or even in the low Earth orbit.

But many individual units also meant a higher chance of mechanical failure, particularly in the harsh desert climate. It was therefore a key task of the maintenance crew, to venture out and inspect every single one of these telescopes, no less often than once a month.

The antennae were spread over a large flat plateau, in four clusters aligned with cardinal directions around the central building. If you gazed upon it from an altitude of several thousand feet, the whole facility would look a bit like a four-leaf clover. It made it pretty obvious how the inspection should be carried out.

Once a week, the crew took care of a single leaf. It took them no more than a couple of hours to visit every antenna in one such section. A short time like this required no special provisions or training to endure the rigors of the scorching hot desert. Just like Rob had said, all you needed was a head cover, plenty of water, and a few dollops of the strongest sunscreen.

"Alright, here's the first one," said a young black man in a baseball cap. He was driving an old jeep with his two colleagues sitting in the back seat; they were the crewmembers who conducted today's inspection. He pulled up next to the truss tripod where a satellite dish was mounted, in the cool shade cast by its massive hemisphere.

"Antennae ALMA-N001," Chris mumbled, typing on a bulky laptop in a heavy protective casing that he'd opened on the jeep's hood. "Alright, let's check it out."

The main purpose of these inspections was to search for structural damage from exposure to high temperatures and low humidity. In more practical terms, it meant looking over the supports that held the dish in place, swiping them with ultrasound emitters that could detect internal defects, and also taking pictures of damaged or dubious spots for later reference.

It wasn't a complicated task in the slightest, but no one had thought it worthwhile to invest the time and engineering effort to automate it. Why build and program a robot, that would itself require maintenance, when you've got a few bored humans who could do the job much more cheaply?

"Everything's fine on this side," Abby called out, getting the two men to acknowledge her with a nod. She watched as they poked and prodded the slightly sallow, but still mostly white beams of the antenna's support structure.

In the shadow of its huge bowl the heat wasn't nearly as oppressive, but Abby was nevertheless feeling a little flush. Her eyes followed the graceful, calculated movements of her two companions, as they stretched and bent around the lattice of thick steel rods. She sighed, realizing that it wasn't just the weather that had warmed up her body, and that it currently secreted other fluids in addition to mere sweat.

"Fuck, I really don't know," she whispered almost inaudibly.

See, Abigail Brooks had a bit of a dilemma. Ever since she'd arrived at her temporary post in the Atacama observatory, but especially over the last week or thereabouts, she was wrestling with a difficult choice, one where both options seemed equally compelling.

Was it Chris or Daniel that she'd rather have as her fuckbuddy?

...Okay, that probably requires backing up a little.

Abby was one of the relatively few girls who were serious about astrophysics. Despite several decades of diversity efforts, the prevalence of typical female interests didn't want to budge: the field was still very much dominated by men. As such, she was quite used to being on the receiving end of male attention, of both wanted and unwanted kind.

The latter was paradoxically less of a problem for Abby. She had learned very quickly how to make her lack of interest crystal clear. Indeed, she could do it just fine even if it sometimes required getting physical in a rather different sense than her unbidden suitors were hoping for.

"This side looks good, too," said Daniel, the young black guy that liked to sleep late. "What about yours, Chris?"

"I see one tiny crack up here," he said, pointing above his head. "I already snapped a picture but I doubt it's anything serious."

"Sounds good. Let's add it all to the report and go to the next one?"

"Right on."

Climbing back in the car, Abby was still pondering her dilemma. The other kind of male attention, the one that she

did

want... Well, that kind was often a lot trickier to handle.

For one, there didn't seem to be enough of it for Abby's liking. Of course, when you looked at her -- a 5'9" strawberry blonde girl with a slim body, ample breasts and a shapely derriere -- it seemed completely preposterous that there would be too

few

men hitting on such a lovely woman.

And yet, it was precisely the case, because the problem lied without. While there were many cute guys around her, it was a challenge of the highest order to get any of those shy astronomy geeks to make their first move. To make things worse, they were all totally browbeaten by the endless harangues about consent and harassment, so most of them ended up too terrified to so much as look at their female colleagues.

Frustrated at their ineptitude, Abby would thus take matters in her own hands, defying what few societal expectations still survived into the middle decades of the 21st century. It had earned her a bit of a reputation in the faculty and beyond, but it didn't bother her overmuch. What mattered was that she was getting enough sex to keep her thoroughly satisfied, allowing her to focus on her career and research.

"This one's old," Daniel said, stopping the car practically underneath the visibly worn-down structure. "It has those ancient electronic circuits from the early 2000s that cannot be diagnosed remotely..."

Chris sighed. "Guess that's my job then, seeing that Rob isn't here," he said, opening a box attached to one of the truss's beams. A dangling wire popped out; he caught it and connected it to the laptop. "Daniel? Wanna learn how to run diagnostics on these vintage motherboards? I promise you'll find it not only boring and tedious, but also totally and utterly useless outside of this place. Up for it?"

Daniel snorted a laugh. "I'm game, man!"

Smiling only reflexively, Abby was once again reminded of her predicament, as she gazed longingly at these two delectable men. Underneath the khaki shorts she was wearing, her moist pussy throbbed softly with unquenched lust.

No, these days she definitely wasn't getting enough sex to keep her satisfied. She was trying to hold on, but her long and vibrating friends could only do so much.

If only one of these cute guys stopped being so annoyingly considerate! How convenient that would be?... It would spare her the dilemma of not only choosing between the two, but also bearing the burden of the inevitable tension that'd follow.

Alas, one problem with smart guys like Chris and Daniel was that they were

smart

. They knew that engaging in intimate relations with a person you were forced to live with was fraught with a risk of drama. While it wasn't exactly forbidden by the contract they'd signed, and the open secret was that it had happened before, it could still make things awkward for the remaining months of their shift.

"Alright, now we just wait a couple of minutes," Chris said, glancing between the progress bar on his screen and the lithe figure of Abigail who loitered between the yellowed beams, seemingly lost in thought. "How's the survey, Abby? Need some help with it?"

"Oh," she gave out, yanked out of her wishful daydream. "Sure, if you boys are finished already, you can look over there," she said, pointing to the other side of the antenna's base.

"Hmm, okay," he said, gazing furtively at the swell of her breasts in the white tank top. "I was just asking because, uh, you seemed a bit distracted. Make sure you drink enough water, okay?"

She smiled at him. "I will, thanks."

They soon wrapped up at this unit and proceeded to the next one. At every stop, Abby found her thoughts alternating between Chris and Daniel, as if comparing the relative merits of jumping the bones of either of them.

On one hand, Daniel was younger and more athletic, but he was also more timid and reserved. He was fresh out of the graduate program at Columbia, so he looked at everything with starry eyes full of awe. Abby hoped that his enthusiasm would readily translate to much baser activities than solving the mysteries of the universe, because she sure liked the idea of his muscular, chocolate-skinned body pressing against hers.

Chris, on the other hand, was quick-witted, funny and handsome, not to mention very passionate about his lifelong chase after extraterrestrial civilizations. Tall and lean, he often sported a bulge in his jeans that hinted at a formidable weapon. Abby wondered how it would feel, for this spear of his to impale into her needy pussy.

Either man would be great, really. As she worked herself up more and more, thinking about each one of them in turn, her naughty mind started to conjure scenarios of

both

of them having their way with her body. She shuddered at the mental image it evoked: of her on hands and knees, with Daniel behind her thrusting his big black cock into her quivering pussy while Chris fucked her face with a substantial manhood of his own.