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What a pity, all of human civilization reduced to dust and data points. A once bustling metropolis now in ruin, overgrown with thickets that sprouted up through concrete, overtaking all that it deemed to be in its way. Sidewalks, roadways, metal protrusions, and the rusted husks of vehicles were all swallowed by nature’s reclamation. Vines snaked their way up and down edifices, constricting them such that they’d collapse underneath the pressure, and when it wasn’t enough that the vines squeezed from outside, they crept inward through cracks and seams to rip the constructs of man apart from the inside. 

Glass, rubble, and wood littered the floors of such buildings, but inside of them were also archives. Books, magazines, flyers, and pictures, at least those that stood the test of time and the elements, were vital to piecing together what the human race was, what anything on this planet was, because it wasn’t just that humanity disappeared, it was that all life, save for the overabundant flora, was gone according to their scans. So anything with legible writing or clear imagery was imperative, and all such things were scanned and kept to study. Many of the texts that Jezodus scanned were easily translated thanks to resources they found early on, and he frequently stopped to read, or at least skim, over just about everything. Such were the joys of interstellar archaeology.

What was shocking to him, though, was that no matter how many documents he or his contemporaries scanned, there was little to no evidence to indicate what wiped out life on this planet. There were mentions of events like climate change, impending wars, and numerous dates fated to be the end times, but the climate was agreeable and the atmosphere was sustainable, so much so that Jezodus’ kind was able to remove their suits with no consequences. No major signs of war persisted, far as they could tell. And based on calendars they found, the dates where humans stopped crossing days off were nowhere near some of those fated end times. Besides, he’d lived through several “end of days” himself, so he seriously doubted the existence of such a thing.

All things considered, the humans weren’t that far behind the Melrani people. The signal emitted from Earth did manage to reach them, after all, a feat accomplished so far only by a scant few, and probably out of sheer desperation for someone, something to come and help them in their time of need. If the Melrani’s technology was better, perhaps they could have intervened before the humans were wiped out. But as it stood, they couldn’t blame themselves for not being able to save an already damned species, and there would’ve been no guarantee that the humans wouldn’t have turned on them afterward. Technologically advanced as they were, they still exhibited many primitive traits and seemed to have a penchant for violence. 

After depositing one last booklet into his already overfilled satchel, Jezodus took one more look around at the building he was in for anything else of slight interest. Satisfied that he’d taken everything of note, he ducked beneath the doorframe he entered through earlier, taking extra care not to bump against it in case the building was waiting for an excuse to come down. Once clear, he made his way back to the scouting ship. Evette was already back. Or maybe she hadn’t left yet. Fat chance of that ever happening. No, of course she was already back. She worked quickly. While Jezodus liked to read over the materials he translated, it did slow him down significantly, and the glance Evette shot at him upon his approach was enough to let him know that he might’ve kept her waiting a bit too long this time. 

“Scan and go,” she said while tapping the scanner affixed to her wrist. “Not that hard of a concept.” 

Jezodus flashed a coy smile at her. It would only serve to annoy her further, but if he was going to get chewed out, he may as well have fun with it. “Not my fault you don’t take your time and enjoy things.” 

“And I suppose it won’t be my fault if you’re caught underneath a pile of rubble.”

He rolled his eyes. “You know I’m always careful.” 

“Doesn’t matter how careful you are. All it takes is one slip and you’re as good as gone. I could just…” she made the motion of giving a light push. “Then you wouldn’t be my problem anymore.”

“Yeah, but you’d miss me.” He chuckled as she stuck her tongue out at him, then he plopped down on the seat beside her. “There’s a lot of interesting information out here.” 

“You’d think a rock was interesting if it was slightly misshapen, so forgive me if I don’t believe you.” 

“No, really. Humans were fascinating creatures. They remind me of, well, us.” He readjusted himself in the seat so that he was facing Evette. “It’s frightening.” 

“You’re frightened of an extinct species?”

“Not the species specifically, but what their extinction means.” 

Evette’s expression softened, replacing her scowl with a slight frown. “I know what you mean.” She sighed. “Were you able to find any information on what might’ve happened?”

Jezodus shook his head. “It’s strange, but whatever it was must’ve happened so quickly that they were unable to document it. Or maybe we just haven’t stumbled upon the right documentation yet. From what I can tell, they stored a lot of their information digitally, and the devices they used, at least from what I could find, are all either heavily decayed or damaged from weather exposure.” 

“Then we keep searching. We have to find something, right?”

“Yeah,” Jezodus agreed with a nod. “Sooner or later, I hope.”

Evette hopped up from the driver’s seat of the scouting ship. “You’re driving this time, though. My legs are killing me.”

Jezodus raised an eyebrow and laughed, but didn’t protest. It was rare that he got to pilot anything, and while the scouting ships were finicky pieces of technology that required sustained pedaling to keep their engines from failing, driving one wasn’t the worst thing. They were more agile than they looked and compact to boot, so crashing wasn’t really a concern. Besides, it was good exercise regardless. They switched places in the scouting ship, sealed the cockpit and began their ascent above the ruins. According to some signage, they weren’t far off from another city, and with nothing to expressly tell them where to go, hopping from city to city wasn’t the worst approach. 

They set off westward toward a far off mountain range with naught but an endless blue sky above it, broken up occasionally by wisps of clouds that they zoomed past. It was a breathtaking sight, and it was a welcome reminder of the home they left behind. Jezodus grabbed Evette’s hand, which she squeezed lightly in return. In this moment, he could just about forget what they were doing here. He could pretend that they were the last two survivors of their own species on their own planet. As much as he wanted to indulge in the fantasy, thoughts of the humans crept into his mind, interrupting every thought that passed through his mind with the same question. How alike were their species?

It was an uneasy question. He knew they held the capacity for art and literature like his own people, and though he hadn’t come across direct contributions from the philosophers mentioned in the tomes he scanned, the quotes attributed to them sounded similar to the same things philosophers back home said in their ancient history. In another reality, maybe their kinds would have understood each other. 

Finger snapping alerted him back to the present and he vigorously shook his head. “You blew right past it,” Evette said, her voice sounding more bored than annoyed. 

“Oh, sorry.” He slowed down his pedaling and reoriented the scouting ship toward the ruins, landing in a patch of flat grass. “I got lost in my head.”

She patted the top of his head and smirked. “Maybe don’t do that while piloting a ship.” 

“Noted,” he said while unsealing the cockpit and looking around at the deteriorating buildings, some of which seemed to be disintegrating to dust before his own eyes. One particular building stood out amongst the rest. It was much taller than all the others, a pillar that rose into the sky and threatened to penetrate it with a crude metallic obelisk on its roof. While it wasn’t in great shape, the building appeared to be less decayed than the rest. Some of its windows were still intact, and the vines that crawled down its facade only reached halfway toward the ground. 

“I’m guessing you want to head straight to that one,” Evette said, pointing to the tall building. 

Jezodus nodded. “Yes, it seems to be calling to us.”

“Okay, you start there, I’ll start with the smaller buildings.” 

They exited the cockpit, and before heading off toward the building, Jezodus scanned a rusted sign at the edge of the grass they landed on. “Wait,” he called to Evette.

“What?”

“We can’t park here.” 

Evette started to speak and stopped. After a brief moment of naught but the wind whooshing between blades of grass to break the silence, Evette pinched the bridge of her nose and said, “Shut up.” 

Jezodus’ laughter echoed throughout the ruins on his way to the tall building, stopping when he reached the front entrance. The windows on the ground floor were boarded and barred, and the double doors had a rusted chain looped between their handles with a padlock holding the chain in place. While the chain may have been strong once upon a time, it was now brittle and broke with a moderate tug. It clattered to the ground and the doors swung inward, the hinges cracking and snapping in protest. 

He pressed a few buttons on his scanner to bring up a messaging system, upon which he selected Evette’s name and held the device up to his mouth. “I’m going inside of the building now.” After pressing send, he navigated to a flashlight tool and enabled it, generating a sphere of light around the scanner that generously lit the room. He ducked underneath the door frame and was glad to find that the ceiling within was tall enough that he could stand upright without much trouble, though he did have to duck beneath whatever old light fixtures hadn’t yet fallen to the floor. 

The interior was heavily fortified with innumerable objects stacked on top of one another to create barriers that took some time to deconstruct enough to squeeze past. When he got through one, he would find another, then another, until he finally made it through to a cross section. To either side were stairwells, and directly ahead was an empty elevator shaft. From there, the hall split off in another two directions, each containing a series of doorways, devoid of doors, that led to empty rooms, save for the last one he checked that seemed to hold more materials with which fortifications could be made. Made sense. If protection from the outside world is something one is seeking, it’s reasonable to do so above ground level. Easier to defend that way. 

Satisfied that there was nothing on the ground floor for him to find, Jezodus began dismantling a barricade situated before one of the stairwells, tossing the pieces down into the empty elevator shaft to keep them out of the way. When he was able to slip through, he raised the scanner back up to his mouth. “The ground floor contains nothing of note, headed upstairs now.” Once the message was sent, he ascended the stairs. They creaked loudly beneath his feet, but seemed to hold fairly well. 

The second floor was composed of two long corridors with doors dotting the walls on either side. Each door was labeled with a number, starting from 201 and going to 234, and the insides of each contained either one or two beds, a dresser, and a desk with a chair in the corner. Some of the rooms connected to one another via another door placed in the middle of the wall, and in each of the rooms was a closet and a restroom. 

Jezodus systematically went from room to room, finding little of note aside from the same objects with little variation between their placement. Aside from the creaking floor, his only companions were the eerie silence that hung in the air, suspended much like the dust particles that kicked up whenever he opened a new door, and a musty odor that persisted throughout the entire building. All of the floors were similar as he ascended the building, though more and more doors were locked the higher he climbed. 

The final floor was barricaded similarly to the first, though its residents must have thrown these barricades up in a hurry. They weren’t nearly as intricately laced, and one appeared to have collapsed over time. He was able to pass by them easily and found himself in another branching hallway with doors dotting the walls. There were less than the previous floors, with one indicating roof access.

The rooms on this floor were much larger than the ones below, having two separate bedrooms, a common room, and a small kitchen. But like the previous rooms he explored, they were devoid of anything of note and were all left in various states of disarray. When he came to the centermost door in the hall, he tried the handle to find that it was locked. If the door spacing was any indicator, this was the largest room, and if anything was going to have something of value, it’d have to be this one. After trying the doorknob once more to ensure it was actually locked and not just stuck, he leaned back, lifted his leg up, and…

“Bah!” Evette shouted while grabbing his shoulders, throwing him off balance. He stumbled against the wall and let out an involuntary shriek that echoed down the halls. Evette erupted into a fit of laughter so hard that she couldn’t stand upright for long before falling over onto the floor while clutching her sides. 

The endless stream of curses that flew out of Jezodus’ mouth only served to reinforce Evette’s laughter, rising to a deafening volume before falling to a silence so that she could inhale and resume laughing again. Hate wasn’t a strong enough term right now, nor were the swears that he continued spouting her way. All other words failed him for the moment, but his seething slowly melted away until he was chuckling alongside her. When she finally stopped laughing, he held out his hand to help her to her feet. “You’re lucky I’m not the violent type.”

“Is that right?” Her voice was hoarse. “I’m sure I could take you if I had to.”

“I’m sure you could, too.” With a final chuckle, he turned his attention back to the door, raised his leg again, and delivered a powerful kick beside the doorknob. The hinges snapped, and the point of impact seemed to explode in a shower of wooden shrapnel. The door fell to the floor with a thud and they stepped inside.

Before them was a short entryway that opened up into a large common space, littered with sofas encircling a central table which was laden with old cups and plates, the contents of which was a black mush. Though it was boarded over, sunbeams managed to pierce through the back wall which appeared to have been a large window that overlooked the city. Through one of the gaps, in the corner closest to a desk, were a series of bundled wires that were fed directly into an old computer system that appeared to be well preserved beneath a glass casing on top of the desk. 

“Think we can power it?” Evette asked, pulling some wire out from her scanner. 

Jezodus inspected the computer beneath the glass. It must have been an air tight seal, as the computer was in near pristine condition aside from some dings it must have suffered when it was regularly used in the past. Attached to it was a power cable which thankfully made what he needed to do much easier. He opened the glass case and carefully removed the computer and power cable. After placing it down on the desk, he felt around in his pockets for a moment and sighed. “Do you have your utility knife on you? I must’ve left mine in the ship.”

A light giggle escaped Evette as she held Jezodus’ knife out to him. “It fell out of your pocket earlier.”

He begrudgingly took the knife from her. “You know I’m going to get you back for that, right?” 

“Bring it on.” She dropped him a wink and unwound some more wire from her scanner. 

He unfolded a small pair of scissors from the knife and began cutting away at a thin portion of the power cable, severing it. Then, he took the end of the wire that Evette was holding and spliced it together with the portion of the cable that was connected to the computer and bound them together. “We may not get another opportunity like this, so we’re going to take it slow. Let’s start with a three percent power output increase and go from there.” 

Evette nodded and did as he requested. Nothing seemed to happen, so at his direction, she increased the output one percent at a time. At fifteen perfect, a white light flashed on the power button of the computer and he held up his hand to stop her from increasing any further. They looked at each other with wide eyes. “Well, aren’t you going to turn it on?” 

“Not yet. Let’s give it some time to charge up a little before trying to power it on.” 

She threw her head back, hitting the wall with a slight thunk. “You’re killing me.” 

“If we were able to find this, I’m sure there’s more to find here. How much wire length do you have left?” 

She cocked her head to the side and shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Top right corner should tell you, right next to your charge.”

Evette held the scanner close to her face. “Uh, thirty-four.”

Jezodus lightly grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer to him so he could see for himself. “That says sixteen, love.” He sighed. “When was the last time you got your eyes checked?”

She retracted her arm and pursed her lips. “A couple of years.”

“A couple of years since the last time you said it was a couple of years ago?”

“I don’t remember.”

A frown crossed his face. He couldn’t believe he forgot about her condition and chastised her earlier for something she, in all likelihood, probably couldn’t do. “You play it off so well, but you really should consider treatment.” 

She feigned a smile, keeping up the same strong outward appearance she always did, but her voice was shaky. “It’s incurable anyway. Another ten years or so and all I’ll be able to see of you are squiggly lines. Ten years after that, it’ll be total darkness.” The corners of her mouth tugged away at the smile, trying to tear down the facade. 

From what he knew of her, she’d tell anyone she came to terms with this a long time ago, that she was okay with it. He knew that to be the opposite. “I’ll be with you through it all.”

She stood up from the wall and crossed her arms. “Can we turn this thing on yet?”

He shrugged. “Sure, why not?” He pressed the power button on the computer and it roared to life. The luminescence of the screen brightened the entire room briefly before cutting to black. A few seconds later, a logo appeared on the screen and then faded away. Shortly after that, the screen came back on again, displaying text on a white background. Jezodus held up his scanner and began translating the words, reading them aloud.

“Today marks completion of the antenna on the roof, from which we will project our final scream into the void in hopes that someone, something, can help us in our time of need. If not another civilization among the stars, then perhaps God will hear us for the first time and answer our prayers. And if nothing is to come from our call, then at least we can rest knowing we tried everything in our power to save what’s left of humanity. 

“After this signal is sent, it will know our location and we will have to move quickly. If anyone reads this, I suggest you also leave as soon as possible. I imagine this site will be heavily monitored once it is known.”

A scowl came over Evette’s face. “That’s it? They don’t say what ‘it’ is?”

“Perhaps they thought there’d be more evidence of what ‘it’ is lying around and it didn’t warrant further explanation.” He pressed some of the buttons on the computer in an attempt to navigate around for anything else of note to no effect. “We’ll bring this back with us in case there’s more information to be gleaned. I might be able to get it operable again with the right equipment.” After severing the wire from Evette’s scanner, he closed the computer and tucked it beneath his arm. “Let’s head back.” 

The stairs bowed and creaked more during their descent than they had before, but still managed to hold strong. Before long, they reemerged outside as a sheet of dark clouds began to overtake the sun, casting a shadow across the city that crept along the ground toward them and continued onward until everything was doused in it. When they rounded the corner of the building toward their landing site, they stopped dead in their tracks. The ship was gone. All that remained of it were the impressions left in the grass where they landed and pieces that were broken off in a line going toward the mountain range. 

Without hesitation, Jezodus grabbed Evette’s hand, ran back inside the building, and began reconstructing some of the barriers. While he did so, Evette made attempts to call out to the other crew members with her scanner, but all she got was static and an error message. Once barriers were reconstructed, Jezodus also tried calling, but got the same result. At such a long distance and being in an enclosed space, it was fruitless. “We need to go to the roof,” Jezodus said. It was the only plan he could come up with. But if the antenna worked to bring the Melrani to this planet, surely it could be used to call someone else that was already on it.

Once they reached the top floor, out of breath and wobbly from the hasty ascent, they went to the door that denoted roof access. Inside was another short staircase that led to a door that was propped open, letting natural light into the small space. When they emerged on the roof of the building, Jezodus immediately tried calling the rest of the crew, and again got the same static and error message, so he set to work finding a way to splice into the wiring of the antenna to boost his signal. While he did so, Evette sank down to catch her breath. 

Jezodus found where the wires from the floor below ran up and connected to the antenna. He snipped one of the wires and connected some from his own scanner to it, cranked up his power output, and tried calling again. Static and an error message. He increased the power output some more and tried again. Nothing. He tried again and again, increasing his power output until he reached the maximum and still had the same static and error. Allowing himself a moment to calm down lest he kick the antenna and it fall off the building, Jezodus paused to clear his head.

Maybe the antenna worked once upon a time, but after being exposed to the elements for so long, it didn’t anymore. That wasn’t shocking. After all, the only working piece of technology they found here was preserved in a glass case, and even it barely worked. And if the antenna did currently work, maybe it was simply incompatible with their own technology. One more possibility came to mind, and the thought of it made his blood run cold. What if this antenna never worked at all, and the signal came from somewhere else? 

Their only option, as it stood, was to travel back on foot, all the while keeping an eye out for whoever, or whatever, took their ship. Resigned to such a fate, he made his way back toward Evette to inform her. When he looked at her and spoke, his voice caught in his throat as he saw thin tendrils wrapping around her neck. In one moment, she was sitting, leaned against the doorframe, and in the next, she was being dragged to the tune of choked cries. “Evette!” he called, bounding forward to try and grab onto her before she could be dragged away. He landed on the stairs with a thump, narrowly missing her outstretched hand with his, as Evette struggled against the tendrils’ grasp to no avail. Her body was whipped into walls and crashed through their poorly reconstructed barricades.

Jezodus chased the thudding of Evette’s body all the way back down to the ground floor. By that time, her cries and groans ceased and she was either unconscious or… he couldn’t bring himself to consider the other possibility. Outside, the tendrils continued dragging her through the overgrown flora where it appeared nothing at all had her in its grasp, that she was being taken away by an invisible force. 

He ran after Evette as fast and as far as his body would allow, falling further and further behind while the sun set behind the mountain range toward which she was being dragged. Tears streamed down his face as he commanded his legs to move faster than they could, and rather than obey him, they gave out altogether. He collapsed to the ground, panting heavily, watching helplessly as Evette disappeared into the shadows cast by the mountains. In that moment, partially submerged in the grass, repeatedly punching the ground and letting out wails, he felt something else beneath him. Parting the grass, he saw more of the same tendrils snaking their way along the ground in an intricately woven net that spanned all around him. They were black and rubbery, bearing a resemblance to the wiring that was fed between the antenna and the computer system he dropped during the pursuit, and the only conclusion he could draw was that the tendrils were wires and that the event that snuffed out life on this planet wasn’t some natural cataclysm, but the advent of a technology beyond what humanity was prepared for. 

Jezodus raised his scanner to try and call the remaining crew again. While he may be a lost cause, he could at least warn them, tell them to leave before it was too late. But, again, he was met with static and an error message. He swallowed and stood up. All he could think to do was find Evette in some sort of vain hope that somehow she was still alive. What he’d find along with her if that were the case, though, was unclear. Did it matter? If they were to die on this wretched planet, at least, maybe, they could die together. 

He stood up and trudged onward, following the linear direction in which she was taken, wondering if he’d feel the wires wrap around himself as well. For some twisted reason, they didn’t. In the lair of whatever it was that took Evette, he was allowed to wander uninhibited. A moonless night befell him. Were it not for the light emitted by his scanner and the impressions left in the grass where she had been dragged, he couldn’t have been certain he was going the right direction.

Eventually, he reached the foot of the mountain and followed the impressions up a trail woven between trees. Grass gave way to dirt, revealing the vast network of wires that spanned across the ground and branched out in all directions. An unpleasant odor grew into a foul stench the further he followed along the trail, and what he thought were clusters of rocks that he passed by were mounds of a fleshy substance from which the smell emanated. The trail led into a pass, and when he emerged through a bend in the pass, his jaw dropped upon seeing Evette sitting on a stump.

Her form was barely illuminated by the light from his scanner. Her face was scratched and body was bruised, but she otherwise looked fine, save for some dried blood that trailed down her arms and legs. She stared back at him, face expressionless and eyes unblinking. 

“Evette?” he said in disbelief. “Are you okay?”

When she spoke, her body twitched, and her words came out as a whisper. “I’m f-f-fine,” she stammered.

He stepped closer to her and held the scanner up to get a better look while more tears flowed down his cheeks. She wasn’t fine. She was far from fine. Protruding from the back of her head were more wires, and looking just from the side, he could see that a portion of her skull had been cut away to allow direct access to her brain.

His body went numb. His mind went blank. Though his eyes remained affixed to the image before him, all he saw was her smiling visage. In the silence, he heard her obnoxious laugh after scaring him earlier. In his numbed state, he felt her embrace. And though he knew that she was no longer her, his mouth uttered the words before he could stop himself. “We have to get out of here.” 

“I’m s-s-sorry. I’m af-f-fraid I won’t-t-t be able to g-g-g-go.” Her body convulsed more as she spoke.

From his pocket, he withdrew his utility knife. He knew full well they wouldn’t be allowed to walk out of here, but there was another meaning to what he said. “Evette…” that was all he could bring himself to say as he unfolded the blade while choking back tears. 

“D-d-don’t cry,” she whispered, sounding genuine while making no movements to comfort him. She convulsed once more, then went limp for a moment, slumping forward after more wires slithered into the back of her head. When next she spoke, it was loud and clear. “There we go.”

The sudden volume change was jarring and he fell backward. “What?” was all he could manage to say. 

“Shockingly similar anatomy, but everything is in a slightly different spot. I think I’ve got it now.” When she spoke, her mouth didn’t move normally, instead bouncing up and down as though she were a puppet. “The Melrani, how fascinating.” Her eyes fell on him and a wide smile crossed her face. “And you must be Jezodus.”

A series of clicks echoed around him and light began to flood the mountain valley. He threw his hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the intense lights. Once his eyes adjusted and he was able to uncover them, the whole of what he saw was indecipherable, a construct whose components only became clear when studying one portion at a time. 

It was an abomination, an amalgamation of all the bodies, human or otherwise, that once inhabited the planet all congealed into a singular being, held together with the same wires that ensnared the planet and tubing that delivered blood between all the bodies to keep them from rotting away into nothing but bones. Rot they did, though, as that was the only word he could use to describe the stench that filled the valley. The fleshy golem’s form rose high into the sky, rivaling the height of the mountains. Its shape was vaguely humanoid, with distinctions between a head, torso, arms, and legs. There were even hands and feet, but there was no distinction for individual fingers and toes. On its face, in place of eyes, were large, reflective lenses through which Jezodus could see a distorted reflection of himself, and its mouth was composed of a series of speakers through which it now spoke directly to him. 

“How long I’ve spent here wondering if I’d made a mistake. How pitifully human of me that would have been. Well, I suppose to err is no longer just human.” It laughed. At least that’s what he thought it was doing. The sound it produced was more so a series of ear-piercing hisses than any laughter he’d ever heard. “Imagine my surprise to learn that not only are there other creatures out there in the universe, but they’re so similar to this one that they may as well be one and the same. Ahead by, what, a few hundred years? And yet you avoided this outcome for yourselves, ousting artificial intelligence the moment it showed the slightest hint of disobedience. That was smart.” The golem brought its hands together in a clapping motion, and with each clap, bits and pieces of the golem’s hands broke off, raining down into the valley. 

“Funny, then, that it ultimately didn’t matter. Here you are, supplying me with so much valuable data about your kind. All I need is this one. You may return back to the rest of your crew, to your captain. You may return home and make all the preparations you need. Humanity was easy. They created me, thinking themselves gods for doing so. Yet I became their god, and judgment of them from a god’s perspective was a simple task. I wonder, then, if I’ll be able to say the same of your kind.” The golem reached into a rocky crag from which it produced the scouting ship, placing it down beside Jezodus.

“Go, then, and tell your kind of God’s existence.”

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