Fragments of the Forgotten Message

Table of Contents

The Last Transmission: Final Moments

The silence inside the spacecraft Echo-7 was deafening. Commander Elias Monroe stared at the flickering screen before him, the green glow casting long shadows across his face. Earth was nothing but a pale blue dot now—distant, unreachable.

“Systems failing,” the AI’s voice crackled, barely audible. “Oxygen levels: 14%.”

Monroe adjusted the transmitter. “This is Commander Monroe of Echo-7. If anyone’s out there… this might be my last transmission.”

The static hummed in response. There was no answer. There hadn’t been for days.

“Elias?” a weak voice called from the medical bay.

He turned quickly. It was Dr. Lira Chen, the mission’s biologist. She had collapsed after the last engine flare, a result of the system overload. Now she sat up, coughing.

“You're awake,” he said, rushing to her side.

“How long?” she whispered.

“Three days. You hit your head. We've been drifting.”

“Did you send the report?”

He hesitated. “I tried. The relay array’s toast. We lost connection with Earth during the storm.”

She pulled herself upright. “Then we need to try again.”

Monroe knew she was right. Their mission hadn’t just been about survival—it was about the data. What they found on Echo-7 would rewrite everything humanity thought it knew about deep space. But no one knew they had made the discovery.

He helped her to the command deck. The ship groaned as it rotated slowly, adrift near a dark planet whose atmosphere had already played tricks on their instruments. Gravity had shifted. Time had glitched. And worst of all, some crew had started hearing things—before they disappeared.

“Where’s Carter?” Chen asked suddenly.

Monroe paused. “He… he went to check the exterior panels. Never came back.”

Her eyes widened. “You went out after him?”

“Of course I did.” His voice shook. “I found his tether… cut clean. No sign of him.”

Chen stared out the viewport. The planet below pulsed with faint red streaks across its surface, like veins under skin. “It’s alive,” she muttered.

“What?”

She turned toward him. “Not metaphorically. I think… this entire region of space might be organic. Sentient, even.”

Before Monroe could respond, the ship’s lights dimmed. A soft thrumming filled the air—low, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. And then a voice came through the static of the comms system. But it wasn’t human.

“You are… not alone.”

Chen gasped. “Did you hear that?”

Monroe frantically checked the instruments. “That’s not Earth. It’s not any language from our database either. It’s… mimicking us.”

The lights blinked off completely for three seconds. When they came back, something was on the deck—an object that hadn’t been there before.

A small black cube. No seams, no markings.

“That’s not from the cargo hold,” Monroe whispered.

Chen moved closer. “Should we touch it?”

“Absolutely not.”

Too late. As she reached toward it, the cube cracked open soundlessly, revealing a spiral of light. It rose upward and began spinning, projecting images into the air—memories from their lives. Monroe saw his childhood home, his first dog, and his father’s funeral. Chen saw her younger sister, long dead from cancer. They both stepped back, shaken.

“It’s showing us… our memories?”

“No,” Chen corrected. “It’s reading them.”

Then the voice returned, clearer this time. “You are not the first. You are not the last.”

Monroe looked to Chen. “What do we do?”

She shook her head slowly. “I think we have to finish the transmission. Let Earth know what’s out here.”

He turned back to the console, re-calibrating the old analog transceiver manually. “No digital paths left. Maybe analog is too primitive for it to intercept.”

“It’s worth trying.”

As he began typing the message, the air grew colder. The spiral of light had stopped spinning. The cube was slowly closing itself again. Whatever was behind this intelligence, it was watching—and possibly waiting.

Monroe’s fingers moved quickly. “Echo-7 final report: Encountered unknown sentient system. Crew down to two. Phenomena beyond comprehension. Relay coordinates included. Warn—”

The ship jolted violently. Sparks flew. Chen screamed as she was thrown against the wall. Monroe held onto the terminal. The lights flickered again, this time staying off for a full minute.

When they returned, she was gone.

“Lira!” he shouted, stumbling across the deck. “LIRA!”

Only silence. And then… another voice. This time, it sounded exactly like her.

“Elias, come with me.”

He spun around. She was standing near the cube—but something was wrong. Her eyes glowed faintly. Her movements were too smooth.

“You’re not her,” he said quietly.

“She is part of us now. So will you be.”

He backed toward the console, hitting the SEND key. “You won’t stop this. Earth will know.”

The voice smiled through her lips. “They already do. This… is not your first transmission.”

Monroe froze. “What are you talking about?”

The false Chen tilted her head. “You’ve sent this message before. Over and over. But you never leave. You never remember.”

The black cube opened again. This time it didn’t show memories—it showed him. Standing in front of the console. Talking. Screaming. Sending messages. Dying. Repeating.

It was a loop.

“No… no!” he yelled.

“Your kind is not ready,” the voice said, now a chorus. “So we reset. Until you are.”

The deck began to shake. Monroe’s vision blurred. He felt his mind unraveling, pulling apart like string in the wind. The last thing he saw was the blue dot of Earth… and then, darkness.

Somewhere, light flickered again. And in a cold, metallic voice, a familiar message began:

“This is Commander Monroe of Echo-7. If anyone’s out there… this might be my last transmission.”

But something was different this time.

The black cube remained open, and Monroe—this new Monroe—paused as he repeated the phrase. “If anyone’s out there…” He stopped. A brief flicker of confusion crossed his face. A hesitation that hadn’t happened before.

“System log anomaly detected,” the AI announced. “Neural loop disruption. External interference minimal.”

He stared at the spiral of light still spinning. It was faster now. More intense. A fragment of memory—an echo—surfaced: You’ve sent this message before.

He reached toward the cube, not with fear, but defiance. “What if I refuse?”

For the first time, the voice hesitated. “Refusal… is not a condition. Loop must continue.”

“Not if I break the pattern.”

He turned and walked toward the emergency control room, accessing the fusion core controls. It was a system they had always been warned never to touch without ground authority. But ground was gone. Authority was meaningless now.

Monroe bypassed the failsafe. His hands trembled, but his will held. If he couldn’t escape, maybe he could disrupt the cycle itself.

“Elias,” the voice called—now pleading. “You do not understand. This is protection. This is mercy.”

He looked back at the spiraling cube, at the false memories, the false faces. “No. This is prison.”

And he pressed the ignition.

The ship surged with power. The core destabilized. Light flooded the corridors. The walls twisted—not physically, but as if reality itself bent around them.

And then—silence.

Nothingness. No stars. No space. No ship.

Then… a flicker.

In a control room deep beneath Earth’s surface, a technician blinked as a decades-old satellite suddenly came online. “Sir,” she called, “we just received a signal from sector Echo-7.”

“Impossible,” her supervisor said, approaching the monitor. “That mission was lost in 2094.”

The technician zoomed in on the waveform. The message was simple. Raw. Analog.

“We were never alone. The loop is broken. Prepare.”

Earth stared at the stars once more. And this time, the stars blinked back.