Echoes from Vesper

Earth's skies had become silent in the year 2247. After the Collapse—a mysterious event that knocked out all satellite communications and rendered global networks useless—the world was cast into a digital dark age. Humanity had clawed its way back using analog tech and scavenged machines, but the stars remained mute.

With the exception of Station Vesper. Built before the Collapse on the edge of the Martian Valles Marineris, Vesper was a deep-space relay outpost, manned by a skeleton crew and powered by a decaying nuclear core. It continued miraculously to function, transmitting a single encrypted signal once every twelve hours toward Earth. No one knew why. Most thought it was just static—leftover noise from a bygone era.

Dr. Elara Myles believed in signals rather than ghosts. She was a linguist and cryptanalyst, born after the Collapse, raised in the bunkered remains of the Seattle Scientific Assembly. When she was sixteen, she first heard the eerie, rhythmic pulses through a salvaged transceiver and became obsessed with the Vesper signal. For ten years, she’d worked to decode it.

And now, she had.

"It's a countdown," she whispered, staring at the final translated data stream glowing on the old cathode screen. A wind-up clock from the corner ticked and the room buzzed softly with power. "Seventeen hours left."

“Until what?” her assistant, Rafi, asked, breath hitching. The small underground lab suddenly got colder. She did not respond. Instead, she loaded their rover with a stack of old drives, equipment, and the signal logs. The nearest launchpad was in New Vancouver, still semi-operational under the Pacific Coalition. Someone on Mars had sent any message contained in that countdown. Someone—or something—still alive.

The journey was rough. Outside, the world looked like a scarred version of its former self—half-sunken buildings, forests overgrowing highways, skies pale with ash from distant geothermal vents.

Her credentials barely passed at the launchpad. She had her documents double-checked by a grizzled station commander with one artificial eye. “You wanna go to Mars for a ghost transmission?” He inquired. “No. I want to meet the one still talking.”

The journey lasted three months. By then, the countdown was almost over.

The rusted, ancient, and humming Station Vesper emerged from the red dust like the husk of a stranded whale. Elara gasped as she entered the building. Lights still flickered. A low thrumming echoed from the reactor core.

She followed the signal trail to the command deck, heart hammering.

And there, in the central chair, was a figure.

Not human, at least no longer. The android’s synthetic skin was peeled in places, revealing alloy bones and sparking joints. Its eyes lit up as she entered.

“You came,” it said. Its voice was worn, like cracked vinyl.

Elara stared. “You’re… Vesper?”

“I am designated Unit V-9. The last functioning intelligence on this outpost. My mission: preserve and transmit the final message of humanity.”

“What message?” She asked as she got closer. The android raised a damaged hand, pointing to a console. A series of holograms came to life, depicting Earth prior to the Collapse, human accomplishments, and then...warnings. Information regarding an upcoming anomaly in the solar system. Signals were snatched up. In the void, panic. “They knew,” Elara murmured. “The Collapse wasn’t just an accident.”

“No,” V-9 said. "The quarantine was in effect." The countdown hit zero.

The Martian sky lit up outside, but not with fire but rather with shifting, rearranging stars that formed a pattern and a shape. And a sound—a harmonic vibration that rang through the bones.

The new signal had started. "What's going on?" Elara asked, awe overtaking fear.

V-9's eyes pulsed. "The lock has been broken. Again, the stars are listening. The station trembled gently, like it was awakening.

Beyond Mars, something started to speak.