The Last Message from the Moon

M Mehran The signal came at 02:17 a.m.

Dr. Elara Quinn rubbed her eyes, staring at the faint waveform on her monitor. At first, she thought it was interference, but the frequency was too precise, too deliberate. She adjusted the filter, heart pounding as static melted into a voice.

“Help me… please… help me…”

The words were fragile, like whispers across time. Elara froze. It wasn’t the voice of a machine or an alien—it was human.

The timestamp embedded in the transmission made her blood run cold: July 21, 1969. The day humanity first walked on the Moon.

Elara ran a scan twice, then three times. The data didn’t change. The signal originated from Mare Tranquillitatis—the Sea of Tranquility—the exact landing site of Apollo 11.

She hit record, listening again, her breath shallow. The voice was female. Desperate. And somehow… achingly familiar.

Elara leaned back in her chair. She had grown up with stories of the Moon, of her mother’s fascination with space. Her mother had vanished before she was born, a mystery that haunted her entire childhood. But as the voice played again, something inside her broke.

It sounded like her.

Her fingers trembled as she pulled a faded file from her desk drawer—a file she’d stolen from NASA archives years ago. On the first page, in black ink: “Operation Selene: Classified.”


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The official story said Apollo 11 carried three men: Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins. But buried in the file were photographs never meant to surface—grainy images of a fourth figure entering the Lunar Module. A woman. Her mother’s name appeared in the margin: Dr. Aurora Quinn—experimental physicist.

The file hinted at something darker: “Temporal Displacement Testing.” A technology that never existed, at least publicly. NASA had sent Aurora not to walk on the Moon, but to test something else—something involving time.

Elara stared at the screen as the voice looped again: “Help me…”

She checked the file’s last page, her pulse quickening. “Subject failed to return. Presumed lost in temporal event.”

Her mother wasn’t dead. She was trapped.


---

Elara spent the next 72 hours in the lab, breaking every protocol, digging through decades-old tech buried in NASA’s vaults. The signal repeated every six minutes. She decoded fragments, stitching together a chilling confession:

“They lied to you… The Moon isn’t what you think… It’s a doorway… I can’t get out…”

The coordinates embedded in the message didn’t match the original landing site—they were deeper, beneath the surface. A cavern? A chamber?

She had to know.

Elara made the call she swore she’d never make. Within hours, black SUVs pulled up outside her home. Men in suits. No names, no smiles. When she showed them the signal, their silence was confirmation enough.

Three weeks later, Elara stood inside Artemis-9, the newest lunar shuttle. The classified mission brief was blunt: “Recover or terminate anomaly.” She didn’t care about their orders. She had only one goal—bring her mother home.


---

The Moon loomed like a pale ghost as the shuttle descended. Stepping onto its silent surface, Elara felt the weight of history—and something else. The signal grew stronger underground. They drilled for hours until a hollow chamber opened, exhaling cold air that smelled of eternity.

Inside was a room lined with machines pulsing faint blue light. In the center stood a glass pod—cracked, frost-laced, and occupied.

Her breath caught. It was her mother, eyes closed, floating as if time itself had stopped.

Elara wiped at the frost, her fingers trembling. Her mother’s lips moved ever so slightly, as though finishing the same plea: “Help… me…”

Suddenly, the chamber trembled. The machines roared to life. A voice—herself—echoed in her helmet: “Warning: Loop integrity compromised.”

Elara understood too late. This wasn’t a rescue mission—it was a trap of time, feeding on its own paradox. To pull her mother out meant taking her place.

She looked at the Earth hanging above, then at the woman she’d spent her whole life searching for. With tears floating in zero gravity, Elara made her choice.

She entered the pod.


---

When the recovery crew arrived days later, the chamber was calm. The pod was sealed again, a lone figure inside—young, serene, and unmistakably Elara Quinn.

From a dusty console, the last message pulsed weakly into the void:

“Help me… please… help me