Plot
Derek Echevaro, a gifted mathematics student at the University of Cincinnati is haunted by what he believes was a UFO he saw as a child. In 2017, a UFO briefly appears over Cincinnati International Airport and causes electromagnetic interference to the ATC broadcast. Cover stories dismissing it initially as a UAV and later a Gulfstream IV are released, but Derek does calculations that invalidate the airport's claims. He decrypts the ATC interference, ascertaining it is the fine-structure constant in 14 digit chunks.
Derek later finds an unexplained executable running on his computer, which prompts him to reformat the interference into binary code. His obsession begins straining his relationships with his friends and roommates Lee and Natalie. Derek’s efforts attract the attention of Franklin Ahls, a senior official with the clandestine FBI Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Ahls is in Ohio with a team of scientists overseeing the coverup and trying to decipher the message, and believes it is from at least an extraterrestrial Type 1 civilisation.
Believing he has a limited time to decipher the interference, Derek approaches his professor, Dr. Rebecca Hendricks, for help. Although initially apprehensive, she helps him investigate the cell phone signal disruptions that took place during the UFO incursion, but ultimately concedes there is a missing unit of measurement in the calculations. However, during a lecture on eigenvalues and eigenvectors, Hendricks deduces and tells Derek the missing unit of measurement to decipher the coordinates is 21 centimeters (the wavelength of neutral Hydrogen). Borrowing Lee’s car, Derek travels to the coordinates and briefly observes the UFO. It broadcasts a further signal, before disappearing again.
Derek is briefly detained by armed operatives, before being released into a car with Ahls, who confirms the UFO operators put the fine-structure constant in their message to help build a common mathematical language. Ahls tells Derek the new message is more complex and likely contains 3D coordinates to the extraterrestrials location. He confirms humanity is not alone in the universe, and offers to recruit Derek to assist in calculating a more refined version of the FSC to ensure the interstellar location they determine is accurate.
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