The Last Signal

The Last Signal

Maya's fingers trembled as she adjusted the quantum receiver. After fifteen years of silence, the signal from Earth had finally arrived. She'd spent her entire adult life maintaining the Mars relay station, waiting for this moment.

The holographic message flickered to life. Her brother David's familiar face appeared, but aged far beyond his forty years. "Maya, if you're receiving this, the temporal anomaly worked. Earth is... gone. The quantum storms consumed everything within hours. But we managed to send this warning back through time."

Maya's throat tightened. The strange atmospheric readings she'd been detecting made sudden, terrible sense.

"The storms originated from our quantum communication experiments," David continued. "This message is probably what triggers them. I'm sorry. But you can prevent it all. The attached code will safely deactivate the relay network. You'll never receive this message, and Earth will survive."

Maya stared at the blinking prompt. Implementing the code would create a paradox, erasing this timeline – and her memories of David's warning – from existence. But it would save billions.

With tears blurring her vision, she initiated the shutdown sequence. The hologram flickered out. Maya felt reality shifting around her, memories fragmenting like scattered light. Her last thought was of David's face, and then...

Maya yawned and stretched in her chair at the Mars relay station. Another quiet day of monitoring silent frequencies, waiting for Earth's first quantum transmission.