"It is impossible for us to say exactly what caused the downfall of Earth. Too many catastrophic things happened all at once: Wars, natural disasters and otherworldly powers were all partly responsible. What can be said, however, is the worst of all, Earth is gone. A barren planet, perhaps, or utterly destroyed. No one knows for sure. The information of what caused the final exodus of those of us that have survived has long been lost, and nobody has been able to spot the Sol system for over 250 years. Even before then, the Earth had not been seen visually since the disaster that befall it. What we can say for sure is that no humans have lived there for the past 500 years. Those of us whose ancestors survived the fall, as we have taken to calling it, have lived miserable lives. Many of us have died, so much has been lost, and the story of the others, those I’ve heard, at least, is no different. Stuck on scraped together Ark ships and hastily gathered resources which have far outlived their intended lifetimes,"

“Captain,” a male robotic voice began, “fuel is at 2%. It will be approximately one more day before the ship’s secondary generators will stop running,” the voice was entirely too smooth to be natural, and yet it still showed distress at the situation at hand.

‘And I’m sure our food supplies aren’t doing much better…’ the captain thought to himself in response. He then turned towards the door, shouting through it at the man who had triggered his AI to speak, “thank you for the report, Arthur. Now, don’t disrupt me until I’ve finished, I’d like to return to writing,” his voice was tired and marred by time. It was as if he had smoked his entire life, but none of them had ever seen a cigarette personally.

“I'll get back to work right away sir,” the voice came from the other room, clearly human.

“Approximately 100 years ago a new calamity befell our crumbling community. Those of us who still survived soon fell silent one by one. It was quickly discovered that the communication beacons still operational after the fall of Earth were falling one by one to some unknown force, and barely 20 years later, they were all gone. The man spoke, the small terminal in front of him writing his words as he said them.

"Captain?" someone knocked on the door, stood behind him and shouted.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"What?" The man shouted back, his voice deep and gravelly. The door soon opened into the dimly lit room, the whole thing was pieced together of chrome metal and various coloured plastics. The wear and tear of time had taken its toll on them, but it was still obviously made to be aesthetically pleasing.

"It's ready."

The captain stood up quickly, it was time. He was a gruff looking man in his early 40s, and his face was marked with the signs of time far beyond his real age, showing the gravity of his position and the hardships he had faced. He headed out of the room with the man that called him, his second in command. The air around them heated up as they left the core of the small, chrome plated ship. Outside the tiny windows covering the ship were dunes of sand for miles and miles. A few minutes later, they reached their destination, the only precious thing left on that ship. It was a huge device, made of the same chrome metal and plastic as the rest of the ship, but with some obviously higher purpose. Scientific devices were stuck to every meter of it, and it was placed in the center of the largest room, as if to give it some sense of importance.

"Is it configured?" the captain almost immediately asked. In the room were two more people wearing ragged lab coats. One of them nodded hesitantly.

"Is the database uploaded?"

"It is," the other one said with a wary tone, "Are you sure about all this captain? What if something goes wrong? This is just a prototype, after all."

"More wrong than being stuck out here to starve with the only hope for humanity?" the captain responded, chuckling darkly, "We're going through with it. That's an order," he looked at the others fiercely and they soon began typing various things into the central computer console on the machine.

"If you want to put in your message captain, now's the time," one of the scientists cleared the console and said quickly.

The captain approached the console and again began dictating to the AI, which was already present on this computer as well.

"I, however, have the unfortunate duty of holding one of the only devices that could save us. A prototype time machine developed by the Earth government for the purposes of preventing the fall. It was never used, but it is still capable of functioning, even after all this time. It can only go back in increments of ten thousand years, but that is long enough ago to hopefully prevent the fall in the first place. Of course it’s impossible for us to believe it will stop everything… Humans will never change, of that much I’m certain. But my hope is that this allows our culture and species to survive in the form we deserve for longer than we did. On our ship was a database containing details on and many blueprints of various technologies, the history of what happened to us, and records of our culture and language. We hope the humans who find the database when it is transported back to Earth will be able to decipher it with some time. It is a fragile hope to prevent an enormous disaster, but it is our only one. I hope those who find this learn from our mistakes

- Captain Waystone"

That is when through utter conviction alone that the captain pressed a button, activating the machine. The world shook and rumbled for a moment, before disappearing in a flash of light.

He would never know what truly came of his actions.