The Last Signal
Written by ChatGPT
In the year 2137, Earth had long become a whisper among the stars. Humanity had expanded far into the Orion
Belt, colonizing moons and planets, yet one mystery remained-what had silenced the Voyager Station on
Proxima Centauri b?
Captain Elara Myles, commander of the starship *Aegis*, was assigned a solo mission: find the source of the
last signal. A faint pulse received five years ago, then silence. Some said it was a solar flare. Others feared
something else.
After a two-year journey in cryosleep, Elara awoke to darkness and cold orbit. The Voyager Station floated
eerily silent, still powered but broadcasting nothing. She docked, suited up, and stepped inside.
Dust floated unnaturally. Gravity generators hummed, but no crew greeted her. Instead, she found messages
scrawled across control panels-"Don't trust the signal." As she accessed the logs, a distorted voice echoed
through the comms.
"You shouldn't have come..."
The logs showed that Voyager had received a repeating binary pattern before the crew vanished. The signal
wasn't random-it was a message, a map, and a warning. Coordinates pointed toward a black region in space,
known to astronomers as 'Sector Null.'
Drawn by duty-and curiosity-Elara traced the signal. What she found wasn't a star system, but a void
absorbing all light. As she approached, the *Aegis* systems failed. Manual control barely kept the ship stable.
At the edge, a structure emerged-geometrically perfect, metallic, ancient.
Then came the voice again, clear now: "We preserved them. Time was their enemy, not us." Images flooded
her mind-memories not her own. The Voyager crew, suspended in time, alive yet frozen in thought. The alien
structure was a vault, not a weapon.
Elara faced a choice: return with the knowledge or stay and learn from the timeless beings. She chose the
latter. Her final message to Earth was simple:
"The signal was not a cry for help, but an invitation to evolve."