A Soft Sound in Deep Space

This is an inspiration from a dream, a universe of little people The universe does not speak of its own accord. But what if you spoke first? In 2026, the furthest human footprint is still on the moon, but our eyes have already reached beyond the asteroid belt. An abnormal piece of data ignored by everyone, a spectral signal that should not have appeared there, pushed aerospace engineer Lu Chen into a deep space contact that he had never expected. He issued the first active greeting in human history , in the name of an individual. Then, the response came. Not the sound he imagined, nor the form he imagined. The existence called "Echo" is changing everything in ways that humans cannot understand: from the rules of physics, to the perception of time, to the definition of civilization itself. "Echoes" is about a first-type encounter that takes place entirely in the near future. It doesn't take place in a distant galaxy, doesn't rely on faster-than-light spacecraft, and doesn't require aliens landing on the White House lawn. It begins with a piece of missing data, from an ordinary person's late-night decision, and then unfolds slowly and irreversibly in the daily cracks of the human world. If you've ever wondered - if the universe did answer, would we be ready? If you have ever thought about it - if the answer is no