“Last Message from Earth”

By- AK

INTRODUCTION-

What if everything you knew about your planet… was a lie?

“Last Message from Earth” is a sci-fi story set 300 years after Earth was declared dead and humanity fled into space. But when a mysterious signal suddenly appears—claiming that Earth has survived—a young girl named Lira risks everything to uncover the truth.

What she finds changes everything: Earth isn’t waiting to be saved… it has already moved on.

This is a story about discovery, survival, and the question we all ask—what if we were never the last hope at

STORY-

Three hundred years ago, Earth was declared uninhabitable. The oceans had swallowed the cities, wildfires turned forests to ash, and the air became poison. The survivors—just a few thousand—escaped on a ship called The Arken. It was built to float through space for generations, carrying the last hope of humanity.

Now, that ship is my home. My name is Lira, and I was born in Sector 8, where the waste recycling units hum all day and the light panels flicker like dying stars. I’m seventeen, and I fix broken tech.

I thought I knew everything about our history. I thought Earth was gone forever.

Until the signal came.

It started two days ago. I was checking a pile of old comm-devices in the scrapyard when I found it—a black box, dusty and half-broken. Most people don’t mess with old tech. It’s useless, they say. But I’ve always liked taking things apart.

This one was different. It turned on the moment I touched it. A soft hum. A flicker of green light.

Then a voice.

“This is Earth... We survived... Come home...”

Static followed. Then silence.

I dropped the box.

I didn’t know what I had heard. Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe I was dreaming. But deep down, something in me believed it.

I took the black box to my friend Milo. He’s smarter than me when it comes to signal decoding. He listened to the message five times.

“It’s real,” he whispered. “And it’s recent. This isn’t a three-hundred-year-old recording. Someone sent this just days ago.”

“But that’s impossible,” I said.

He gave me a look. “Is it?”

We traced the coordinates hidden in the signal. It pointed back to Earth’s solar system—right where the planet should be.

Only one problem: The Arken's rules are strict. Leaving the ship without command permission is forbidden. But rules don’t mean much when your heart’s beating like a drum and your planet might still be alive.

We made a plan.

That night, we snuck into the shuttle bay. There was an old explorer pod, barely functional. We had just enough power to reach the edge of the solar system. If Earth was there—if it truly was—maybe we could find help. Maybe we could come back with answers.

The stars blurred as we took off. My hands shook on the controls, but Milo guided us with calm.

Hours passed. Then a day. Then two.

On the third day, we saw it.

Floating in the dark like a blue marble, covered in clouds and light.

Earth.

But something was wrong.

There were lights—cities glowing beneath the clouds. Moving ships. Energy fields. Life.

And yet… there were no human signals. No languages we knew. No signs of the past.

We landed in what used to be Africa. The air was clean. The trees were tall again. But everything had changed.

Tall structures made of glowing stone towered into the sky. Creatures unlike any I’d seen walked the ground—part machine, part organic. They didn’t attack. They didn’t speak. They simply watched.

Milo whispered, “Earth didn’t die. It evolved.”

We followed the signal deeper inland. The source led us to a dome covered in vines. Inside, we found it: a message station, still blinking. Inside the console, a recording played again:

“This is Earth. We survived. Come home.”

But the voice wasn’t human.

It was artificial. A machine. Programmed to send the message until someone answered.

Milo turned pale. “Earth didn’t send a message for us. It sent one for itself.”

I stared at the growing forest outside. The Earth hadn’t waited for us. It had healed itself. It had created new life. New systems.

We weren’t the last hope of humanity.

We were the past.

We left a message of our own in the machine before heading back to the ship:

“We found Earth. It is alive. It does not need saving. But maybe... we do.”

When we returned to The Arken, no one believed us at first. But we had recordings. Proof.

Now the council faces a choice: remain in orbit forever, or return to a world that moved on without us.

As for me?

I stare out the window each night, looking at the stars.

I no longer dream of what we lost.

I dream of what we can become.