Static Over Eden Base

In the wake of Apollo, a provincial radio astronomer tuning a battered dish intercepts a strange, shifting signal: fragments of a forgotten off-world colony's log—lacquered voices, nursery lullabies, municipal ordinances—overlaid with impossible alien modulation and institutional static. As tape reels reveal human names erased by noise, politicians and generals scramble; some call it cosmic interference, others deliberate corruption. Against the din of reel-to-reel hiss and vacuum-tube warmth, one archivist races to reassemble truth: was the colony abandoned, exterminated, or folded into a message not meant for human ears?