((bed: station hum - station_hum_01.wav))
Elena: Argus Station, day four hundred and twelve. Commander Elena Voss recording. The array caught something at oh-three-hundred hours. Marcus, tell me I'm not imagining things.

Marcus: You're not imagining things, Commander. It's a narrowband signal, repeating every eleven seconds. And it's... Elena, it's coming from inside our own comm buffer.

Elena: That's impossible. Oracle, analysis.

Oracle: Signal origin triangulated to the Argus relay dish. Timestamp on the transmission is tomorrow, oh-four-hundred hours. The signal has not been sent yet.

Marcus: So we're receiving a message from tomorrow? From ourselves?

Elena: Play it.

Oracle: Playing. ((radio static burst - radio_static_01.wav)) "Elena: Don't trust the coordinates. Marcus: Which coordinates? Elena: The ones in the Kepler file."

Marcus: That's... that's our voices.

Elena: Oracle, is this a prank? Did you synthesize this?

Oracle: I did not. The voiceprints match you both at ninety-nine point seven percent. The message continues. "Oracle: The Kepler file was altered at oh-two-hundred hours. Marcus: By whom? Elena: By us. Tomorrow."

Marcus: Okay, that's genuinely unsettling. A warning from tomorrow about something that happens in... fifty-eight minutes?

Elena: The Kepler file. That's the deep-field survey data we've been compiling for six months. If it's altered, we lose half a year of work. Oracle, show me the file's access log.

Oracle: The Kepler file was last modified at oh-two-hundred hours today. By Commander Elena Voss.

Elena: I was asleep at oh-two-hundred hours! I haven't touched that file in three days.

Marcus: Unless... tomorrow-you did. Elena, what if the signal is real? What if tomorrow we discover the file was corrupted, and we send a warning back?

Elena: Back in time? Marcus, we don't have that technology.

Oracle: Correction. You will have it in approximately twenty-three hours. I have been running the numbers since the signal arrived. The relay dish, aimed at the Kepler four forty-two beacon and overloaded at four hundred percent, creates a closed timelike curve. It is possible. Once.

Marcus: So tomorrow, we fry our own dish to send a warning back to today? That's insane.

Elena: It's also the only explanation that fits. Oracle, can you trace where the alteration came from? Really came from?

Oracle: ((warning alarm - alarm_01.wav)) The modification pattern matches a solar flare bit-flip cascade, not human editing. The flare hits the array in... forty-one minutes.

Marcus: So nobody altered anything. The sun did. And tomorrow-us panicked, assumed sabotage, and burned out the dish sending a cryptic warning.

Elena: Which means right now, we have a choice. We can let the flare hit, lose the data, and burn out our dish sending a warning that will only confuse yesterday-us...

Marcus: ...or we shield the array, save the data, save the dish, and never send the signal at all.

Oracle: If you never send the signal, then what did I receive at oh-three-hundred hours?

Elena: The signal we already received. It's already happened, Oracle. The question is whether we close the loop... or break it.

Marcus: Commander? Your call.

Elena: Shield the array. All power to the magnetic screens. If the universe wants a paradox, it can file a complaint.

Oracle: Shielding engaged. ((deep rumble - deep_rumble_01.wav)) Flare impact in thirty seconds. Impact absorbed. Array intact. Kepler file intact.

Marcus: And the dish?

Elena: The dish lives to see another day. Oracle, log this: Argus Station, day four hundred and twelve. We received a warning from tomorrow... and chose not to need it.

Oracle: Logged. ((soft chime - soft_chime_01.wav)) Commander... the signal has stopped repeating.

Elena: Of course it has. We never sent it.

Marcus: You know what the strangest part is? Somewhere, in some version of tomorrow, we're still arguing about those coordinates.

Elena: Let them argue. We've got a survey to finish. End recording.
((bed:end))