SHIP-TO-BROADCAST EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION TRANSCRIPT (AUDIO)

Source: HOUSE OF WISDOM, SPEC RESEARCH (INACTIVE)

TimeDate: 02:37:29 01.26.404

HOUSE OF WISDOM: This is . . . this is House of Wisdom. For anybody who can hear me. There are people evacuating from Homestead. I know your ships are tracking them. You need to know that those people mean you no harm. Some of them are children, and right now they need your help. Please do not blame them for what we’ve done. They only wanted a better life. They only wanted—and tell them I’m sorry. Nadra, Anwar, I’m so sorry. You deserve so much better. I want you to remember what Mama and Dad used to believe in. They used to believe in the Councils. Not the Councils as they are now, with their secret programs and closed borders and empty promises, but the Councils as they were meant to be. I remember Dad telling me about the First Council, when the people who survived the Collapse came together. The world was dying all around them, people were dying, they barely had food, they were living in a wasteland, the sky was falling, but they came together to promise each other humankind would never make the same mistakes again. They had no reason for hope, but they found it anyway. For a long time I’ve believed I would gladly condemn the Councils to the second Collapse they seem so determined to achieve. But Dad never wanted that. Dad liked to quote what Leung Ma-Lin had said: “The day we believe ourselves immune from the cruelties and atrocities of the past is the day we commit them again.” He believed that. He wanted to prove that the people who had fled before the Collapse were wrong about humanity’s fate. He would never, ever have done what he was accused of doing. Whatever his flaws, Gregory Lago believed in doing better than the past. The Councils can prove it now. SPEC can prove it. Don’t let them hide the truth. Nadra, Anwar, I love you. I love you so much. Be safe.

Fragment

I’m alone. I’m certain of it now. There’s been no response from orbit for ten days [data corruption] so quickly up there. Even faster than here. There’s nobody left except the dead. I’m going to try one last time to launch the craft remotely. I can only hope somebody receives this warning someday. They told us Earth was dying, but perhaps they were wrong. They told us we came into the darkness to save humanity from extinction, but perhaps that is somebody else’s burden to bear. Whoever you are, whatever you have done to survive, this is Mournful Evening Song, and this is our final transmission. Our mission is over.

—FRAGMENT 7, MOURNFUL EVENING SONG VIA UC33-X

JAS

I woke in darkness, at the birth of the universe.