Every Tuesday, the town gathered to watch the same window light up at exactly 9:17 p.m. The adults called it tradition. The scientists called it interference. I called it Morse code. No one else noticed the rhythm changing. Long. Short. Long. Pause. By sixteen, I'd translated enough to realize the light wasn't coming from inside the house. It was coming through it. The building stood directly above something buried deep underground. I dug. Thirty feet below the cellar, I found polished metal untouched by rust. When I brushed away the dirt, lights rippled across its surface. The Tuesday signal stopped. A hatch opened. Inside sat a single chair. Beside it lay a leather notebook. The first page read: "If you're reading this, you're the first person to answer." The final pages explained everything. The signal had been a test. Not for intelligence. For curiosity. Civilizations worth meeting were the ones that asked questions long after everyone else accepted mysteries as entertainment. I climbed back into daylight carrying the notebook. The town expected aliens. Instead, they got instructions for building better telescopes. The news spread around the world. Book deals arrived by the dozen. Until researchers confirmed every page was authentic. Then fiction became history overnight. Now that his identity was revealed, there was no point in selling books anymore.