Chapter 406: The Message

The metal plates were unfolded one by one. Aside from the first plate, which depicted the artistic mural of the starry sky, the rest were densely packed with exquisite, microscopic text and accompanying diagrams.

The tightly woven script possessed a flowing, alien beauty, somewhat reminiscent of ancient Arabic calligraphy.

"With over two hundred plates of images and text, plus a massive amount of cross-referencing data, you should be able to compile a highly accurate translation, right?" Head of Security Austin asked.

"Absolutely!" an IT specialist replied without taking his eyes off his terminal, his hands flying across the keyboard as he transferred the data.

The Federation had been studying alien linguistics for centuries, and they were well past the era of making amateur translation errors.

With the steady advancement of their artificial intelligence networks, the Federation had already successfully deciphered multiple extraterrestrial languages.

Several senior scientists who had been in stasis were urgently woken up and rushed straight to the lab on empty stomachs.

Seeing their groggy, half-asleep expressions, Jason gently reprimanded them, ordering them to go hit the mess hall first and come back when they were fully fed and awake.

"Looking at these text strings... their numerical system is strikingly similar to our Arabic numerals. Wait, their base mathematics actually relies on binary?! That’s incredible... and are these symbols for calculus?"

"It certainly looks like it..."

"These are coordinate axes and trigonometric function graphs... And look at these biological diagrams—single-stranded genetic structures? These plates detail their entire evolutionary biology... the data is incredibly comprehensive..."

"If a less advanced civilization found this, it could easily propel them into the industrial age."

As the scientists typed furiously, they were able to draw immediate conclusions just by analyzing the diagrams.

In truth, a simple glance at the visual data told them almost everything they needed to know. Images were universally understood, and mathematics was the foundational language of natural science.

A species incapable of grasping mathematics would forever remain primitive.

"Wow! What are these? Are these portraits? They look a little like... it’s hard to describe. They look a bit like owls," one scientist exclaimed, immediately drawing a crowd around his monitor.

"...That cylinder in the background must be a scale model of the probe itself. If the proportions are accurate, they stand about two meters tall... I wonder if they had the ability to fly..."

The information etched into the gold-anodized aluminum plates was heavily compressed. A single image often contained layers of data that required intense human interpretation.

For example, to provide a universal measurement of their height, they used a binary scale based on the wavelength of the 21-centimeter spectral line of hydrogen at 1420 MHz—the most abundant and widely distributed electromagnetic radiation signature in the universe.

Without a sufficiently advanced technological foundation, deciphering these hidden physical constants would be impossible.

It felt like participating in a grand, interstellar archaeological dig, or cracking a cosmic cipher straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. It was a conversation reaching across the great river of time.

Jason listened with intense interest as the scientists rattled off their various discoveries. "It looks like the Federation’s interstellar history museum is about to receive an incredibly ancient artifact."

What had happened to this civilization over the past 150 million years?

Did they continue to develop? Or did they fall into decline?

Looking out into the dim, indifferent starfield, the latter seemed far more likely...

The universe had moved on. Perhaps their entire empire had crumbled to dust; perhaps their home planet didn’t even exist anymore. This solitary data cache was the only remaining testament that they had ever existed at all.

The inevitable decline of a civilization was the cruelest reality of the cosmos. Whether a society was built by visionary leaders or ordinary citizens, they all eventually turned to dust.

In the sprawling vastness of the starry sky, all traces of their existence would be scrubbed clean.

This cruelty defied words; it was the ultimate extinction of a species, leaving them with no one to remember their legacy.

Whether a fallen empire would ever be discovered by those who came after was entirely up to chance.

But what did their existence matter to the universe as a whole?

Whether an empire was a fledgling Tier 1 civilization or a hyper-advanced Tier 2 powerhouse, the creeping law of entropy ensured they would all eventually age, decay, and die. Nothing was eternal.

Many aboard felt a profound sense of existential emptiness pondering this. They had already witnessed the rise, glory, decline, and destruction of civilizations firsthand.

Everything slowly decayed, aged, and died.

Someday, humanity would face the exact same fate. It was the eternal, inescapable theme of the universe, applying to everything from a single individual to an entire galactic empire.

Thanks to the sheer processing power of their artificial intelligence networks, the translation algorithms were no longer a major bottleneck.

Three days later, with all the raw data fully uploaded, the core documents had been successfully decrypted and translated.

The two hundred thin metal plates served as a highly condensed encyclopedia, detailing the civilization’s culture, history, and scientific achievements.

The data inscribed on the metal phonograph disk consisted of a simple, easily decodable analog format. The engineering team quickly fabricated a specialized analog reader to extract the data and project the translated text onto the main monitors.

The contents were deeply moving.

"This is a gift from a faraway, tiny world. It contains our language, our science, our art, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings..."

"We are trying our absolute best to cast the traces of our existence out into the dark, to you, the unknown..."

"This message has traveled through immeasurable time and space to reach you. We wonder if you will appreciate this gift."

"If you are a more advanced, powerful civilization... we apologize. In our ultimate despair, we have chosen to pour out our grief to an unknown peer we will never meet."

"If you are a younger, weaker civilization, we hope that this spark of our wisdom can be passed down through the universe, so that it may never be extinguished... At the very least, we hope it can accelerate your development."

"We are the Tark Empire of the Sagittarius Arm. We do not know if we will have already been destroyed by the time you, the unknown, receive this message."

"In all likelihood, we have been eradicated; in the rarest of miracles, we have been reborn."

"We have observed a hypergiant star, roughly 168 light-years from our home, on the verge of a supernova event. Tragically, its rotational axis is pointed directly at our planetary system."

"Sometimes, ignorance truly is a blessing. We struggled for millennia to develop modern astrophysics, only to uncover a reality that shattered us.

We would rather have never developed science at all, for then we could have faced our annihilation in blissful, euphoric ignorance..."

"Unfortunately, when this supernova detonates, our home will be bathed in a sterilizing gamma-ray burst. No life will survive. We do not know exactly when the detonation will occur.

It could happen a thousand years from now, or it may have already happened, and the light simply hasn’t reached us yet."

"We could all be vaporized in the next fleeting moment."

"We do not have much time left..."

"The biological spheres within this vessel contain our simplest, most resilient micro-ecosystems. The microorganisms inside share a genetic structure that is over 95% identical to our own."

"Due to our limited technological capabilities, our physical bodies will never be able to reach the stars. Our lifespans and propulsion systems fall agonizingly short of true interstellar travel. But our genes can make the journey..."

"We have placed our genetic legacy into a glass bottle and hurled it toward the dark, aiming for a planet that appears capable of supporting life.

Perhaps... we will hear an echo. Perhaps there will only be silence, but that does not matter... In the grand scheme of the universe, we are not just individuals, nor are we merely a species. We are a unique set of genetic code, an unbreakable cipher of life."

"This genetic code will adapt, multiply, and evolve. Over an infinite span of time, we may be reborn in a new form, on a new world."

"Of course, that relies on the desperate hope that these microorganisms can survive the journey..."

"In the end, we have done everything we can. Whether this probe is intercepted by another intelligent civilization, or crashes onto a habitable world, our legacy will have been preserved... whether in spirit, or in blood..."

"We look to the stars with hope."

"Unknown civilization, if you are reading this text, it means you possess a high level of intelligence. If you found this artifact buried on your own homeworld... then we smile upon you, for perhaps you are our descendants..."