Sam Houston (not the President/Governor of Texas) is like a more Ted Talk-friendly Musk, who has a secret project up his sleeve. He recruits Annika Kask, because she developed an algorithm to detect dark matter. It sounds like his venture searches for aliens, but he assures her that isn’t the case, at least not as she conventionally understands aliens. Yet, it soon becomes clear he told superstar electrical engineer Charlie Kaminsky the exact opposite. Regardless, both Kask and Kaminsky immediately agree the project director, Perry Glassner is a bitter nihilistic drunk.
And yet, it seems Glassner has not only detected dark matter-based life. He has devised a method of sending crude messages. Kask, essentially agreeing with the Dark Forest hypothesis, advocates caution, but Glassner and Kaminsky charge ahead anyway. That turns out to be a mistake.
The repercussions of their message are globally catastrophic, but it is not necessarily the recipients’ fault. Either way, they revealed humanity’s existence to other potentially Dark Foresting aliens.
