“The Last Transmission”
The quantum receiver spat static for 47 years before the signal cleared. A single sentence looped in binary: “They buried us upright. The trees here sing in ultraviolet.” My fingers hovered over the delete key—until the transmission appended itself: “Don’t trust your own carbon.” The screen went dark. My reflection grinned back with too many teeth.
Martian winds carved sermons into the rover’s hull. “We were wrong about water,” it scratched in rust. By sol 3,000, the words became a chant. Then the drill bits started turning themselves.