all at once

here’s one for you; we detected a signal that predates our launch by centuries yet bears our EXACT 2048 bit encryption signature, a tight, disciplined pulse repeating at intervals that match the rhythm of our engine output, and when we triangulated its source, the coordinates resolved to a point directly fucking behind us. It’s fixed in the space we have already traversed, and that realization felt like being somehow audited by the past, like discovering that every decision leaves a gravitational echo that refuses to dissipate, and Sylvania calculated that if we continue at current velocity the signal will eventually overtake us not by chasing but by expanding, blooming outward until it encompasses our trajectory, and the most unsettling part is not that something is following, it’s that the pattern suggests we are not fleeing anything at all, we are unfolding it, like a thought that we were always meant to arrive here, whether we consented or not.. a paradox?