"The Last Days of Earth"

The Last Days of Earth

by [Muhammad Tauseef]

The stars outside the observation window blinked like distant candles, barely visible behind the heavy, swirling clouds of radiation that had choked Earth for decades. The space station, Eden Arc, floated in orbit, a fragile sanctuary for the last remnants of humanity. Inside its metal walls, the air was stale, recycled, and every day felt like a struggle to maintain some semblance of normalcy.

Dr. Lena Waters sat at her workstation in the observation deck, her fingers absently tracing the edges of the console. She stared at the blinking blue lights of the communication system, waiting for something—anything—to break the silence. The Earth, their home, was gone. The once-vibrant blue planet had succumbed to the ravages of climate collapse, war, and disease. Now, all that remained was Eden Arc—a floating monument to humanity’s hubris and hope.

The station's leaders, the Council of Elders, had declared Earth’s death irreversible. The planet was nothing more than a dying star—its core unstable, its atmosphere a toxic wasteland. All they had left was survival. Their days on the station were numbered, too. Food was running out, supplies were dwindling, and the people aboard had become ghosts of their former selves.

Suddenly, a sharp ping echoed through the silent room, breaking Lena from her thoughts. The console’s lights flickered as a strange signal appeared on the screen—an encrypted message from a distant galaxy.

Lena’s breath caught in her throat. The signal was unlike anything the station’s systems had ever detected. It wasn’t a transmission from another civilization; it was… different. It pulsed with an odd frequency, as if it had been encoded into the very fabric of time itself.

Without hesitation, Lena activated the decryption sequence, her hands shaking as she typed in the commands. The screen flickered once more before revealing a single line of text:

We can fix it. You must come back.

Her heart skipped a beat. The message seemed impossible. How could someone from a distant galaxy, someone beyond their reach, know what had happened to Earth? And why would they say it could be fixed? Was this some kind of cruel joke or an error in the station's systems?

Lena leaned closer, reading the message again. The words hung in the air, heavy with meaning. We can fix it. You must come back.

She felt a sudden pull—an instinctive certainty that this was not a mistake. This message, this cryptic communication, wasn’t just a call for help. It was a lifeline.

Lena ran to the station’s central command room, her mind racing with possibilities. When she arrived, the Council of Elders was gathered around a long table, their faces grim.

“Lena,” Councilor Voss greeted her, his voice tired, “What’s the emergency?”

She didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “I’ve received a signal. A message from a distant galaxy. It says… it says they can fix it. They can fix Earth. They want us to come back.”

The room fell silent. The elders exchanged skeptical glances, their eyes clouded with years of despair.

“Lena, you’ve been working too hard,” Voss said. “It’s been a long shift. Maybe you’re just… imagining things.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Lena insisted, her voice rising. “This isn’t a mistake. The message is from the future—our future! It’s telling us we can reverse time. We can go back and stop the collapse of Earth before it happens. We can save everything.”

A murmur rippled through the room. Councilor Naida, a sharp woman with silver hair, stood up. “Time travel? Lena, that’s impossible. Time has been fractured ever since the event. We can’t go back. We’ve tried everything.”

But Lena wasn’t listening. She wasn’t about to give up on hope just yet. “This is our last chance. If we don’t act now, everything we’ve fought for, everything we’ve survived for, will be lost forever.”

For a long moment, the room was still. Then, finally, Councilor Voss spoke again, his voice soft but firm. “If this message is real, Lena, what do we need to do?”

Lena's eyes sparkled with a new energy. “We need to go back. We need to find the source of this message and follow it to wherever it leads. There has to be a way—somehow, we can fix the timeline.”

The elders exchanged a few more glances, but there was a flicker of something in their eyes—a spark of something they hadn’t felt in years. Hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, the end wasn’t inevitable.

The next few hours were a blur. Lena worked with the station’s engineers to retrofit an old time anomaly generator they had on board, a last-ditch effort that had been abandoned long ago. It was a long shot—a dangerous gamble—but it was all they had.

As the generator powered up, Lena felt a strange sense of calm settle over her. They were going to do it. They were going to travel back in time.

The station’s airlock doors creaked as they opened, and Lena felt her heart pound in her chest. The world outside Eden Arc was a swirling vortex of light and energy. Time itself seemed to bend and warp around them, as if it were alive, conscious.

She glanced at the others—her fellow survivors, the last of humanity. They were standing beside her, ready to risk it all. They knew there was no turning back.

“We’re doing this,” Lena whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the generator.

The vortex swallowed them whole.