__Transmission__ by Hari Kunzru, "Beneath it he [Darryl] was staring fixedly at his SETI belt buckle and swiveling himself to and fro by pushing his hands against the top of his desk. " (89)

SETI (pronounced “se-tee”) stands for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The acronym is often appended to efforts aimed at finding intelligent aliens. Projects bearing the SETI name range from those orchestrated by the US government to more grassroots efforts such as the SETI Institute and the distributed computing project SETI@home, the latter of which remains very popular in the geek subculture as it allows anyone with an internet connection to dedicate idle process time toward analyzing radio signals.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI%40home

SETI@home screen saver