I shut down the receiver at 00:02. The hum didn’t stop.

No source ID. No encryption handshake. Just a timestamp that flickered between 02-24-20 and 1967.

The signal arrived at 23:42. Not a broadcast, but an echo—looped, decaying, like someone hit record twenty years ago and forgot to stop. For 20 minutes, I listened to the same three piano notes played backward, layered over a woman’s breath. Then static. Then a whisper in Japanese: “Mada koko ni iru” (I’m still here).