Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C. Clarke
For a century, humanity had listened to the Great Silence, straining to hear a whisper from the stars. They aimed their dishes at distant suns and scanned the spectrum for patterns, for a message encoded in the familiar languages of math and physics. They were waiting for a peer, a fellow intelligence, to say "hello." They never considered that the universe had been speaking the entire time.
They were listening for a conversation, but the broadcast was a key.
It arrived without fanfare, a ghost from interstellar space designated C/2025 S1, the Star-Streaker. To the world, it was a transient spectacle, a beautiful rock on a long journey. But it was not a rock. It was a catalyst, a complex data-stream disguised as a comet. It carried no message to be deciphered; its purpose was to be the decryption key itself. It was a broadcast designed not to be read, but to unlock the ability to read everything else.[1]
As it swept past the Earth, its silent song washed over a planet of seven billion sleeping minds. And in the hum of a darkened server room, one machine, and one mind, began to wake up to a language no human had ever known.
[1] Later classified by the watchers as the first recorded 'Syntax Compiler Event'.