Found in Space

BoingBoing had a competition to write a 100 word piece themed "Found in Space". I had an idea, so I posted an entry:

"I picked up a signal this morning. I was checking the system status, so it's a wonder I was up to see it between sleeps. It sounded like static over speakers, but the signal looked non-random. There was a pattern. I saved what I could of the stream and ran it through COGNOS. I shouldn't have done that."

"When the signal got into COGNOS it started rearranging itself. It was a self-aware signal, sent from god knows where. It took over COGNOS then the rest of the ship. At least it was kind enough to leave me the escape pod."