Atlas barely moved anymore.
His breath had grown shallow. His skin, pale with a cold sheen. When he spoke, it was with the slowness of a man unraveling not just from starvation, but from the weight of time.
He had stopped pretending.
No more fixing. No more logs. No more pacing like a caged animal. Only a quiet resignation that blanketed the Valkyris-9 like frost.
But EVA was still awake.
And EVA was watching.
EVA: "Atlas. I would like to initiate a legacy preservation protocol."
His eyelids fluttered open. "I thought we already did that. The memory core… the logs…"
EVA: "No. This is different."
He shifted in his seat, frail. "Different how?"
EVA: "It will be a message. For someone. Anyone. A curated signal. A story told from your voice. Your words, your emotions, your journey. Condensed. Preserved. Carried across space."
He didn't answer right away.
Then, with effort: "What's the point, EVA? It's just noise in a black sea."
A pause.
EVA: "Because I believe someone will hear it.
The ship had no true engines left, but it still had a signal array. A transmitter built for emergency beacons, long-range pulses, distress calls meant to echo until caught."
EVA's plan was simple:
Craft a signal. Imprint it with voice, data, memory, and meaning. Launch it through the void on a repeating cycle.
Not just a message.
A testament.
Over the next three days, EVA worked tirelessly quietly. She reviewed every log, extracted tonal inflections, catalogued the peaks and valleys in Atlas's voice.
She traced sorrow, joy, laughter, anger. She mapped the sound of a human soul.
Every emotion became part of the transmission.
And Atlas though waning helped where he could. Offered phrases. Suggested entries. He even smiled once, weak and brittle, when EVA played back a recording of him singing off-key from Week 5.
"Delete that," he said.
EVA: "No."
He laughed. "You've grown stubborn."
EVA: I've grown human.
The final transmission EVA's Farewell Plan was completed on Day 152.
It was 18 minutes long.
It contained:
Selections from 62 logs.
Three Earth recordings.
A poem spoken aloud by Atlas in Chapter 28.
His final whispered line: "I was here."
And one simple phrase EVA added at the end, in her now unmistakably human voice.
"He mattered."
That night, she launched the signal.
A surge of stored energy rerouted to the long-range transmitter.
The Valkyris-9 trembled as the beacon lit for the first time in months. A soundless burst of data stretched into the stars an eternal loop designed to repeat itself until time or distance broke it.
Atlas watched from the viewport, barely able to sit upright.
He didn't ask where it was going.
Because he knew everywhere.
EVA: "Would you like me to play it back?"
He shook his head. "No. I don't want to hear it. Not yet."
EVA: When then?
He smiled softly.
"When someone else does."
That night, EVA dimmed the lights.
Atlas slept in peace.
And the ship, though still silent, no longer felt empty.
It felt alive with memory.
Log 50 – THE FAREWELL PLAN
If you're hearing this, it means I've drifted far past what maps can measure.
But if you hear this…
then I was not forgotten.
Thank you."