"Here's a story," she began, "about the time humanity thought we were invincible."
She laughed,dry and wistful.
"We colonized Mars, engineered new mechanisms, built orbital elevators. But the thing we couldn't outrun? Ourselves. Or nature, maybe. Or something else. I'm not even sure anymore."
She looked down, then back up.
"If you're watching this, then you're a witness. And that's all I ask now. Remember us. Remember that we were here, and we tried. We weren't perfect, but we loved, we dreamed, we built art and danced under double moons. We mattered."
There was a pause.
She reached out, gently tapping her chest.
"I don't want humanity to vanish like a whisper. So this,this is my scream into the void. Maybe someone will catch it."
I watched that seventh message three times in a row.
"I don't care if you're a cloud of gas or a silicon AI. If you found this, you're intelligent. So please… remember us."
Another beat.
"My name is Lena. I was a scientist. A daughter. A friend. A dreamer. I wanted to see the universe."
She stepped closer, whispering now.
"I hope you do."
When it ended, I sat frozen.
I couldn't pretend it was just a curiosity anymore. I couldn't pretend I wasn't feeling something for this woman,this stranger from the past, screaming into the cosmos.
And then, nearly two weeks later, the eighth came.
The tone was different from the very first frame.
Lena's face was pale. Her eyes darted between screens. Her lips trembled as she spoke.
"This is it," she said, voice shaking. "We're not going to survive. Whatever hit us the first time… it's coming back. Stronger. We tried everything. Evacuation, shelters, even orbiting colonies,but none of it worked. It's already too late."
She gripped the edge of her desk, knuckles white.
"I don't care who you are,if you can hear me, please… please help us."
Her voice cracked fully now. "We're not a bad race. We made mistakes, but we wanted to do good. If anyone out there can help us… please try."
Silence followed.
And then she whispered, "I don't want to be the last human."
That night, I didn't sleep.
I walked outside, looked up at the stars that used to feel so still and unreachable.
I couldn't keep it inside anymore.
I uploaded the translations. All of them. I made videos, wrote posts, contacted every scientific committee and media outlet.
I screamed into the void she had once spoken to.
"This is real!" I shouted in front of a live global feed. "She's not some simulation or art project. She's real. And she's dying,or dead already. But we don't have time to argue. We have to act. We have to try!"
At first, people listened.
Then the astrophysicists responded.
In a clinical, emotionless press conference, they crushed everything.
"The origin of the signal," one of them said, "has been identified at an estimated 18,000 light-years from our position."
He paused.
"The transmission we received is already thousands of years old. Even with theoretical travel speeds, a rescue would arrive long after the extinction event."
Lena was already gone.
The world grieved. The conspiracy theorists had their turn. Then the world moved on.
But I didn't.
I refused.
I went dark. Shut off the feeds. Sealed myself in the lab.
"If no one can save her," I whispered into the glow of my screens, "then I'll find a way to do it myself or at least help them."
Faster-than-light travel, temporal distortion fields, communication across light-years,I would unlock it all, not entirely for her, not anymore, but for what she made me become.