Chapter Text
They had started out like any other, no one had really expected anything big to be found; this was the SETI ‘department’ after all.
SETI, The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, in other words the alien department. The department of crazy people, well not actually, but they are kind of the laughing stock of the program.
Look, someone's got to look for alien radio signals and if they aren’t going to do it then Fundy will just have to do it himself. The SETI is rather small with most of the funding going to ‘actual scientists’. Located in a small side room near the back of the building.
Lines waved over the radar accompanied by beeping.
Fundy slouched in his chair, trying to get comfortable as he scrolled on his phone. The pattern of beeps were always rather constant, being that of background radio mostly. If he wasn’t already used to it, then it could very well lull him to sleep.
The beeping became more frantic suddenly, he jumped a little at the change. Looking up with his eyebrows pulled together curiously. He was met with large spikes and valleys on the radar, odd. The spike had a constant pattern, this was natural, something had purposely made this.
It was a signal.
He took a sharp inhale, eyes widening at the prospect of this signal being alien. ‘Okay, don’t get ahead of yourself.’ He took a deep breath and stole himself for a moment.
‘Maybe this isn’t an alien signal, maybe it’s a deep space satellite.’ He tried to reason, but the only deep space satellite in that direction was the Voyager 1 and it had stopped responding ages ago……
Okay, if this is a signal then he could probably listen to it, yeah he’ll just put it through the radio.
He swallowed his nervous excitement and turned the knob on the radio to the frequency of the ‘message’. He leaned closer in his chair, pressing his orange ‘fox ear’ headphones (they were clearly cat ears) closer to his ears.
Voices started to mumble through, they sounded far away, but they clearly weren’t in English. He could hear some music start in the background, now that was in English…. What the heck?
Is that rock music?
He was shocked still. Fundy didn’t know whether or not to laugh or freak out and question what reality he lives in that has aliens listening to the rock music of all things.
The voices moved closer and then stopped, then he heard laughter one sounded oddly human. They talked a bit more back a forth, before to his surprise, he heard English.
He was taken a back as he heard what sounded like a teenage boy being to speak, “Hello citizens of earth, Tommy fucking innit speaking! I made it to space before you losers! And I stole your discs and there’s nothing you can do about it! By the time you get this message I will be light years away from you and the discs will be long gone, suck it!” The message was cut off, the original beeping began again.
Fundy took off his headphones, a flat look on his face and he pushed his rolling chair across the ugly gray carpet. “You okay fundy?” Niki, the only other person who worked in the SETI, asked.
Fundy looked at her concerned expression, and then fell into a full on fit of laughter at the absurdity of the situation. God, he was going to have to show that to his superiors. Niki started to look concerned, “are you okay? What happened?” She asked.
He wiped a tear from his eye and his laughter started to die down, “did you know that aliens like rock music?” He asked her with a smile.
“No it didn’t, why?” She asked, expecting it to be the set up for a joke. Fundy sighed, “no reason, but I think that aliens might have robbed us.” Niki looked confused, “I don’t get it. What the joke.” He waved her over and played back the message.
She stared at him for a minute before realizing what he was implying, her eyes widened and she looked back and forth between the radio and him before sliding to sit on the floor.
“This- this is the discovery of the century! We’ve found aliens!” She said a bit exasperated.
“Fundy! This is amazing! We need to get someone in here stat!” He let the message continue a bit in English, right before it cut off. She listens to it, being more shocked than before.
“W-was that a kid? And did he mean that he’s from earth?……” she questioned before deciding to press the emergency button on the wall, alerting everyone in the building and their superiors.
———————-
In the following weeks the message would be heavily Analyzed before finally being released to the public in a presidential address.
The government confirmation of the existence of aliens rocked the nation and then the world. Groups of people rallied together in support of ‘Tommyinnit’ and his acts of theft against Earth. It was most teens who found it extremely funny that some teenager got to space somehow and stole the golden discs.
Someone had managed to search through the missing records of kids in Britain named Tommy or have named similarly and find Tommy’s identity.
In some places you could see him spray painting on the sides of buildings or under bridges. He became nutritious in popular culture as a symbol of mischief and a meme of sorts.
The government’s of the world honestly had no clue what to do about it, the theft was light years away and he had got the discs to the aliens, so they weren’t that mad. They were more confused on how he got into space to space in the first place.
Aliens had been discovered and they had to add Thomas Careful Danger Kraken Innit to the history books as the first human in deep space, who was also the first human to commit a federal crime in deep space. A very weird year for humanity, but it’s safe to say that the name ‘Tommyinnit’ wouldn’t be soon forgotten.