The Last Transmission

Maya had always found the university library's basement level oddly comforting. While other graduate students complained about the musty smell and flickering fluorescent lights, she appreciated the silence that settled between the towering stacks like dust on forgotten books. It was here, in the archaeology section's most neglected corner, that she did her best thinking.

She was researching trade routes in ancient Mesopotamia when her pen rolled off the cramped study table and disappeared into the gap between two metal shelving units. Sighing, Maya squeezed herself into the narrow space, her phone's flashlight cutting through the shadows.

The pen had landed next to something that definitely didn't belong in a university library.

It was roughly the size of a softball, perfectly spherical, and made of what looked like polished obsidian. But obsidian didn't usually pulse with a faint, rhythmic blue light from within. Maya's archaeological training kicked in, to document everything, touch nothing, but curiosity overrode caution. The moment her fingers made contact with the surface, the pulsing stopped.

The silence that followed felt heavier than before, as if the air itself was holding its breath.

Maya carefully extracted both the pen and the sphere from their hiding place. The object was surprisingly warm and lighter than it appeared, with a surface so smooth it seemed to absorb her fingerprints. She set it on her study table and stared at it, her dissertation forgotten.

What was it? Some kind of modern art piece left behind by a student? But the library basement wasn't exactly high-traffic. A meteorite? The smoothness argued against that. As she examined it more closely, she noticed hairline patterns beneath the surface—not cracks, but something more deliberate. Circuitry, perhaps, though unlike any she'd ever seen.

The sphere began to warm in her hands.

Maya nearly dropped it as symbols began appearing on its surface, not projected, but emerging from within the material itself like bioluminescent creatures rising from deep ocean waters. The characters were unlike anything in her extensive knowledge of ancient scripts. They seemed to shift and flow, rearranging themselves even as she watched.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her roommate: Library closes in 20 mins. Coming home soon?

Twenty minutes. Maya looked around the empty basement, then back at the sphere. Whatever this was, she couldn't leave it here. She slipped it into her backpack, noting how it seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat.

Back in her apartment, Maya cleared her desk and placed the sphere under her reading lamp. The symbols had grown brighter, cycling through different configurations with increasing speed. She grabbed her sketchbook and tried to copy them, but they moved too quickly now, flowing like liquid text across the surface.

Then, abruptly, they stopped.

A single symbol remained, glowing steady blue in the center of the sphere. As Maya stared at it, she felt an odd sensation in her mind, not quite a voice, but something close. An impression. A feeling that somehow translated to: Ready.

"Ready for what?" she whispered to her empty apartment.

The sphere's surface suddenly became transparent, revealing an intricate mechanism within, impossibly complex gears and connections that seemed to exist in more dimensions than Maya could quite process. At the center sat something that looked disturbingly organic, like a preserved brain floating in dark fluid.

The not-voice returned, stronger now: Record. Remember. Warn.

Images flashed in Maya's mind, not her own memories, but someone else's. A city of impossible spires reaching toward alien stars. Beings of light moving through crystal corridors. And then darkness. Fire. The city crumbling as something vast and hungry swept across the sky.

Maya gasped, stumbling backward from her desk. The sphere sat innocuously under the lamp, its surface once again opaque obsidian.

She spent the next three hours researching online, searching for anything similar. Meteorites, archaeological artifacts, art installations, nothing matched. The closest she found were conspiracy theory websites claiming alien artifacts had been hidden in various locations, but those seemed more fantasy than fact.

It wasn't until 2 AM that the sphere activated again.

This time, Maya was ready with her phone, recording as symbols cascaded across the surface. The not-voice filled her mind with urgent whispers: Probe-unit 7743. Deep reconnaissance mission. Civilization designation: Kepler-442b. Mission status: complete. Data package: ready for transmission.

More images flooded her consciousness. The impossible city again, but this time she understood, it wasn't alien. It was human. Or what humanity might become, given enough time and knowledge. She saw the probe's journey: launched from that distant future city, traveling through folded space to catalog worlds and species, to map the galaxy's civilizations.

Earth had been just another stop.

But something had gone wrong. The probe had been damaged, its memory banks corrupted, its transmission array broken. It had crashed here decades ago, waiting for someone to find it, to help it complete its final mission.

The warning, Maya realized. It needs to send a warning.

The images came faster now, almost painful in their intensity. The things that had destroyed the future city weren't natural disasters or war. They were something else, entities that fed on civilization itself, drawn to intelligence like moths to flame. They moved between stars, patient and inexorable, harvesting entire species.

And they were coming here.

Maya's hands shook as she reached for the sphere. "How long do we have?"

The not-voice carried a weight of infinite sadness: The beacon you call Wow! Signal. First contact protocols. They have been watching for forty-seven of your years. The harvest fleet: en route.

The Wow! Signal, the famous radio transmission detected in 1977 that many believed was proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. But it hadn't been a greeting. It had been a dinner bell.

Help me warn them, the probe pleaded. Help me transmit the data. Your species deserves a chance to prepare.

Maya stared at the sphere, her mind reeling. This was insane. She was a graduate student in archaeology, not a science fiction hero. Who would believe her? Who could act on such information?

But as she held the probe, she felt the weight of civilizations—past, present, and future. She thought of the beautiful city in her visions, reduced to ash because no one had warned them in time.

She opened her laptop and began typing the first of what would be many emails. NASA, SETI, the Pentagon, major universities, anyone who might listen. The probe pulsed approvingly in her hands, already beginning to upload its vast database of knowledge into her computer.

Outside her apartment window, the stars continued their ancient dance, beautiful and terrible in their silence. Maya worked through the night, racing against time she might not have, carrying a message from humanity's future to its present.

The sphere's final transmission would be sent at dawn, a desperate attempt to give her species the tools it would need to survive what was coming. Whether anyone would believe the warning, whether anyone would act on it, that was out of Maya's hands now.

She could only hope that somewhere in the cascade of data flowing from probe to computer to communication satellites, there was enough time left to make a difference.

As the first pale light of morning crept across her desk, the sphere went dark for the final time, its mission complete. Maya sat back in her chair, exhausted but oddly peaceful. She had done what she could.

Now it was up to the rest of humanity to decide what to do with tomorrow.