Story 2: The Last Signal (Science Fiction)
The year was 2147, and Earth had long been a graveyard. Climate collapse, wars over dwindling
water, and unchecked plagues had reduced humanity to scattered colonies across Mars, Europa,
and Titan.
Dr. Mira Solen, a communications engineer stationed on Mars, lived for the silence between the
stars. Her work was simple: monitor deep-space transmissions, catalog cosmic radiation, and
maintain the massive arrays that listened for whispers from the void. No one expected messages
anymore—Earth’s last signal had been sent 80 years ago, a desperate call for aid that never
came.
Until one night, the silence cracked.
It was faint, nearly swallowed by static, but unmistakably human: “…this is Earth… survivors
remain…”
Mira froze. Every hair on her body stood on end. Earth was supposed to be gone. The oceans had
boiled, cities crumbled, skies poisoned. Colonists spoke of it as myth, a blue marble their
ancestors once walked. But now… survivors?
She reported the signal to Central Command. Their response was swift: “Ignore. Classify as
anomaly. Do not pursue.”
But Mira couldn’t. For weeks she replayed the transmission, isolating the frequencies, stripping
the distortion. Slowly, coordinates emerged—deep in the Amazon Basin, once thought to be ash
and wasteland.
Driven by obsession, Mira hacked the colony’s shuttle registry and recruited two others: Jace, a
disillusioned pilot, and Liora, a cybernetic medic with more machine than flesh. Together, they
stole a craft and made for the forbidden planet.
Reentry was chaos. Earth’s skies were scarred, storms writhing like living creatures, but beneath
the clouds lay something astonishing: green. The Amazon still breathed, a stubborn lung of the
world. And there, hidden beneath the canopy, was a city built not of steel but living vines and
bioluminescent trees.
They were met not with hostility, but with awe. The survivors were descendants of scientists
who had bioengineered the rainforest to resist collapse. They lived in harmony with it, growing
homes from roots, weaving power from sunflowers the size of towers. They called themselves
The Continuum—the last stewards of Earth.
But they had a warning. The signal Mira had caught was not just a call for help. It was a lure.
Another power, from the outer colonies, had already intercepted it. A fleet was on its way,
seeking to conquer the last fertile ground in the solar system.
Mira and her companions had a choice: return to Mars and stay silent, or stand with Earth’s
forgotten children to defend a world everyone else thought dead.
As the stars lit with the fire of incoming ships, Mira touched the soil beneath her boots, feeling
the pulse of life that refused to die. For the first time, she understood—Earth wasn’t waiting to
be saved. It was waiting to fight.
