Little Animals
Novelette 8,700 words Recommended by 4 award/anthology sources
"I’ve got a signal,” Cora said. “Elena, come look!” I rushed to Cora’s bank of computers. For six long, working-into-the-evening days, we’d gotten only the faintest of quantum signals, nothing usable. Our grant only gave us three weeks on the TU Delft equipment. Cora complained that Americans somehow seem to never get as much quantum-tech time as anybody else..."
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Quasar links out; the story lives on Clarkesworld, where the author gets the click.