The Warning
The flickering emergency lights cast long, dancing shadows across the control room of the Odyssey II. Captain Eva Rostova gripped the armrests of her command chair, the metallic taste of fear a familiar companion after three cycles of this relentless, bone-shaking chaos. Around her, the crew worked with grim efficiency, their faces illuminated by the frantic glow of dying consoles.
They weren’t just experiencing a catastrophic system failure; they were bearing witness to a cosmic cataclysm. The message had been simple, blunt, and terrifyingly clear: “The Void approaches. There is no escape. We send you this warning. Do not follow our path.”
That transmission, a compressed burst of data encoded with a terrifying urgency, had come from the Pioneers of Dawn, humanity’s first interstellar colonization vessel. Launched a millennium ago, it had vanished into the unknown depths between galaxies, chasing the promise of a new home. For centuries, it had been a legend, a whispered hope, a tragic mystery. Until two weeks ago.
The signal wasn’t just a message; it was a map. A star chart, overlaid with a rapidly expanding, dark red stain that consumed entire sectors of space. And the Odyssey II, a deep-space exploration vessel, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, just close enough to the edge of the galactic rim to pick it up, and just far enough to be caught in its terrifying, inexorable advance.
“Gravitic field generators are failing, Captain!” shouted Lieutenant Jax, his voice strained as he wrestled with a sparking console. “The external stress fractures are worsening. We’re being pulled in!”
Eva knew what “pulled in” meant. The Pioneers of Dawn’s final message hadn’t been a metaphor. The red stain on the map was a literal devourer of stars, a cosmic phenomenon unlike anything humanity had ever conceived. It wasn’t a black hole, not a supernova, nor any known astronomical event. It was… an absence. A region of space where the very fabric of reality seemed to unravel, where light could not exist, and matter simply ceased to be. The Pioneers of Dawn had found it, inadvertently, and in their last moments, they had sent out their dying warning.
“Damage report, full sweep!” Eva commanded, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands.
“Hull integrity at thirty percent and dropping!” came the frantic reply from Ensign Kim. “Shields are fluctuating wildly! We’re losing environmental controls in sections seven through twelve!”
A loud groan echoed through the ship as another section buckled. The gravity stabilizers flickered, sending everyone momentarily weightless before slamming them back into their seats. Alarms blared, a symphony of imminent destruction.
“Captain, the analysis of the Pioneers’ final data burst is complete,” reported Dr. Lena Petrova, the ship’s xenolinguist, her face pale but determined. “Beyond the warning, they sent a detailed scientific observation of the phenomenon. They called it… ‘The Great Unraveling.’ It’s a localized collapse of spacetime. Not a tear, but an unweaving. It consumes everything it touches.”
“And there’s no way to stop it?” Eva asked, though she already knew the answer. The despair in the Pioneers’ message had been absolute.
Lena shook her head slowly. “They tried everything. Every weapon, every energy signature, every known scientific principle. Nothing. It simply… absorbs it. And it expands. Rapidly.”
“How rapidly?”
“Extrapolating from their data and our current observations, it’s consuming approximately one light-year of space per week. And it’s accelerating.”
One light-year per week. That meant the Milky Way galaxy, their home, was living on borrowed time. It would take millennia, perhaps even tens of thousands of years, but eventually, the Great Unraveling would reach Earth. The Pioneers of Dawn hadn’t just sent a warning; they had sent a prophecy of ultimate doom. This wasn’t just their last contact; it was a preview of humanity’s own.
“They also sent something else, Captain,” Lena continued, her voice softer, almost reverent. “A final message. A personal one.”
A holographic projection flickered to life on the main viewscreen. It was grainy, distorted, but clear enough to make out the faces of men and women, huddled together, their eyes wide with fear, yet strangely resolute. They were the original crew of the Pioneers of Dawn, the dreamers who had set out to find a new world.
A woman, her face streaked with tears, stepped forward. She was old, older than anyone on the Odyssey II had ever seen. The effects of extended life support, perhaps, or simply the slow march of time in a distant, isolated corner of space.
“To any who receive this,” she began, her voice cracking but steady, “we are the last. The last of the Pioneers. We found what we sought… but not what we hoped for.”
The image flickered, then stabilized. “The Void is upon us. Our systems are failing. Our light is fading.” She looked directly into the camera, into the future. “We chose to send this warning, to tell you not to follow, not to seek us. But also… to tell you to live. To cherish the stars you have. To love the home we left behind. Do not waste the time you have left in fear. Live, explore, create. And when your time comes, as it surely will, meet it with courage, and with the memory of those who came before you.”
Her gaze swept over the faces of her crew, then back to the camera. A faint, almost defiant smile touched her lips. “We remember beauty. We remember joy. We remember hope. Go now, and remember us.”
The image dissolved, replaced by static. The silence in the control room was profound, punctuated only by the groaning of the ship and the frantic alarms. The faces of Eva’s crew were grim, tears streaking some of them. They had just witnessed a species’ final moments, a message passed across time and space, not of scientific data, but of pure, unadulterated humanity.
“Captain, the primary drive core is unstable!” Jax yelled, pulling Eva back to the terrifying present. “We’re going to lose all propulsion in less than five minutes!”
They were on the edge of the Great Unraveling, their ship battered and dying, just as the Pioneers’ had been. There would be no escape for the Odyssey II.
Eva took a deep breath, the words of the ancient Pioneer captain echoing in her mind. “Meet it with courage.”
“Alright, listen up!” Eva’s voice boomed, cutting through the chaos. “We have one last task. We are going to send this warning back to Earth. All available power to long-range communications. Overload the primary array if you have to. We need to ensure this message gets home.”
“But Captain, we won’t have enough power for a jump drive attempt!” Kim protested.
“There won’t be a jump drive attempt, Ensign,” Eva said, her gaze firm. “We make sure Earth knows what’s coming. We make sure they have time. Time to live, to prepare, to find a way, if one exists.”
The crew, despite their fear, snapped to attention. They understood. This wasn’t about saving themselves. This was about being the next link in the chain, passing on the grim torch, the legacy of the last contact.
Jax and Lena worked furiously, re-routing power, compressing the Pioneers’ data, appending it with the Odyssey II’s own final observations. The ship shuddered violently, alarms shrieking a death knell.
“Transmission ready, Captain!” Jax yelled. “But we’re losing power fast!”
“Then send it!” Eva commanded, her eyes fixed on the distant, unblemished glow of the Milky Way on the navigation screen. “Send it all.”
A final, desperate surge of energy ripped through the Odyssey II. The main viewscreen flickered, displaying the words: TRANSMITTING FINAL WARNING.
Then, with a sound like tearing fabric, the ship shuddered, convulsed, and the lights went out for good.
In the ensuing, absolute darkness, as the Great Unraveling embraced the Odyssey II, Eva Rostova closed her eyes. She felt no pain, only an incredible lightness, a sense of falling into an endless, peaceful void. And in that final moment, she saw not the encroaching darkness, but the faces of her crew, the determined gaze of the old Pioneer captain, and the distant, sparkling beauty of the galaxy they had fought to warn.
We remember beauty. We remember joy. We remember hope.
She had met it with courage. And the message, a tiny spark of defiance against the inevitable, was already on its way, racing across the cosmic distance, carrying the last contact from the Pioneers of Dawn, and the last contact from the Odyssey II, a final, desperate plea for life, flung into the vast, uncaring universe.
Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there such a thing as a last contact?
That was the question I explored.
It is the last time humanity, or any given intelligent species, makes contact with another intelligent species. It is the end of an era, the conclusion of a cosmic story, and the beginning of a profound loneliness.
Last contact is a one-way street. Unlike first contact, where there is a shared hope and curiosity about the future, last contact is the final message, the dying echo of a species that is either gone forever or so changed that they are no longer recognizable as the beings we once knew. It is the final transmission from a starship that will never return, the last intelligible signal from a planet that has been consumed by its dying sun, or the final communication from a species that has transcended its physical form and left the universe as we know it.
Last contact could be a message of despair, a warning to other species about a cosmic danger that is coming for them all. Or it could be a message of hope, a final gift of knowledge and wisdom from a species that has reached the end of its journey. It could be a simple “goodbye,” a final acknowledgment of a shared history and a shared fate.
Last contact is a concept that is both deeply sad and profoundly hopeful. It is a reminder that we are all alone in the universe, but it is also a reminder that we are not the first to travel this path. It is a concept that forces us to confront our own mortality and our own place in the cosmos. It is the end of a story, and the beginning of a new one, one where we are the sole authors of our own destiny.
This is one of three stories that explore the concept from three different perspectives; Witnessing, Warning, and Transcendence.
