The Last Signal
The year was 2097. Earth’s skies had long been littered with satellites, drones,
and fragments of space debris. But on one cold December morning, all eyes turned
upward again, not for a meteor shower or shuttle launch, but because of the Signal.
It was picked up by SETI’s last functional dish in the Mojave Desert—an echo from
deep space, pulsing at regular intervals. A pattern. A message.
Dr. Elara Niven stood in the data chamber of the Mojave Observatory, her eyes wide
with disbelief. Years of dead ends, government funding cuts, and ridicule melted
away in a flood of adrenaline. She was no longer just an eccentric astrophysicist
obsessed with alien life—she was the first to hear their voice.
“It’s structured,” Elara whispered, staring at the rhythm on the screen.
“Definitely artificial.”
Her assistant, Milo, peered over her shoulder. “You’re sure it’s not a pulsar?”
“Pulsars don’t encode binary sequences.”
She tapped the screen rapidly, running it through an algorithm she’d designed in
her free time—just in case. The pulses translated into base-64 encoding, then to
coordinates—far out in the Oort Cloud. And something else.
A timestamp.
Twenty-one days from now.
The news didn’t take long to spread. Within hours, every newsfeed on Earth ran with
the headline: “They’re Calling.”
Governments scrambled jets, satellites reoriented. Space agencies activated dormant
telescopes. The coordinates were pinpointed, revealing an object—black, non-
reflective, about the size of a city bus—drifting toward the sun.
Elara was invited to the United Global Science Council, now a high-security
compound in what used to be Geneva. She boarded a private jet within hours, greeted
at the other end by a small army of security and scientists.
Inside, the air was electric. Equations on transparent boards, news tickers in ten
languages, AI models running on ceiling-mounted projectors. A massive screen
displayed the black object in high resolution.
“It’s slowing down,” said Dr. Liang, head of orbital analytics. “Actively
decelerating. That thing’s under intelligent control.”
Elara squinted at the image. “Have we responded?”
“No,” said a gruff man in a gray uniform—General Ayers of the Earth Defense Net.
“We don’t respond to threats before confirming intent.”
“It’s not a threat,” Elara said, voice sharp. “If they wanted to attack, they
wouldn’t send a polite signal three weeks in advance.”
The Council debated endlessly—whether to send a signal, launch a probe, or prepare
weapons. But time was ticking. And then, three days before the timestamp, it
happened.
The object stopped moving. Held stationary just beyond Neptune’s orbit. Another
signal.
This one was clearer.
A full data stream, encrypted—but not beyond human capability. Elara worked
tirelessly for 36 hours, refusing to sleep, ignoring her bloodshot eyes. And then
she broke it.
“It’s a memory,” she said, her voice cracking. “A recording.”
They watched the feed on the Council’s main screen. A field of stars. A voice—not
quite human, not quite machine.
“To the minds of Earth… We remember you.”
A pause.
“We are what remains.”
Elara’s breath caught.
The video showed fragments of Earth’s own Voyager Golden Record—smashed, then
reconstructed with strange materials. Sounds of whales, Beethoven’s Fifth,
greetings in fifty languages. Then the image zoomed out, revealing a vessel made of
patchwork metal and bone—literal bone. Human bone.
“What… what is this?” Milo asked, stunned.
The voice continued.
“You sent us your stories. Your music. Your hope. We believed it was an invitation.
We came. But by then, Earth was gone.”
Dead silence in the chamber.
