Authors note: an audio version of this story is available on YouTube voiced by Feathered Voices at https://youtu.be/Uka_ilMWDT8?si=3rUVY5ZI-3tSC8O9

I was in cryosleep when it happened. On a mission to investigate a rogue planet that was passing close to our solar system. It was supposed to be a 5 year mission. Spend two years drifting in suspended animation on the way to the planet, spend up to a year investigating it and determining if it was worth sending more people, then two years back. At the time I was selected for this mission I was the oldest human that wanted to do it at 317 years old. There were quite a few people that were older and more skilled but none of them cared to "waste" 4 years in cryosleep. Not that it mattered to me. I was just excited to go somewhere no one else had gone. The solar system had been thoroughly explored by this point, but going to other stars was still too long a trip for a crewed mission to be practical. My friends in the Advanced Propulsion Lab liked to say they were on the verge of cracking faster than light travel and that by the time I arrived at the planet I would find them there waiting for me. It turns out they were on the verge of a breakthrough but they weren't waiting for me when I woke up.

It's a slow thing coming out of cryosleep. You spend a few hours in a half sleeping half wakeful state. Slowly getting more lucid until all at once reality reasserts itself and the figments of your waking mind fade away. A wholly unpleasant experience. When I woke up it was to silence. Not unexpected really so I went about getting myself ready for the job ahead. After making sure I was where I was supposed to be and no other ships were near by waiting for me to wake up I checked my comms log expecting to see a message of congratulations for making the journey. Instead the last message was a regular news update from 6 months ago.

This was... puzzling to say the least. I was supposed to get updates at least once a month on my journey in addition to any personal letters that family, friends, or colleagues would send. First up was to check if the comms array broke. Diagnostics came back fine except I wasn't receiving anything at all. I swapped the comms array into sensor mode to look at the raw signal data but was even more confused. Not even the regular background chatter I would expect from earth was coming in. Pointing the array at the sun and various interstellar radio sources I could see I was in fact getting data. All the natural radio sources looked just as I expected but when looking at Earth or any of the colonies there was nothing coming in. Fearing the worst I went back to the comms log and opened the last news update. There was nothing to indicate any kind of looming conflict or outbreak of disease. In fact it was quite positive all things considered. I read a few of the news articles in detail and saw several mentions of a "Venesiian Source" that enabled all kinds of new and improved tech. Having no idea what that was I went digging through the rest of the news and my catalogue of messages.

As it would turn out a few months after I went to sleep, first contact with an alien species was made. A lone explorer dropped into our system in a ship the size of a small asteroid. After a few weeks of figuring out how to communicate they exchanged proper greetings. They called themself a Grabthar and said they were an explorer searching for the meaning of life among the stars. They apparently weren't very talkative about themselves, giving only vague answers to questions about their kind and how to meet more of them. They also didn't stay very long. Only a few months. They said they had to continue their search as the answers weren't to be found here. Before they left though they sent a final message to everyone in the solar system saying this is the standard greeting for new species and attached a blueprint for what was called a Venesiian Source. A device capable of generating limitless power made out of simple materials. It could be scaled up to power a city or down to power a kids toy. It was the holy grail of energy generation. It didn't take long to become incorporated in absolutely everything.

We already had efficient fusion reactors that could power cities but they were large constructs that required years of time on an industrial autofab to make and couldn't be scaled down. The Venesiian Source made them obsolete overnight. Having effectively infinite free energy meant nearly any problem could be brute force solved and that's exactly what we started doing. Everything from a car that powers itself to terraforming Mars was in our reach. Additionally the insights acquired from seeing the alien ship drop out of and then later enter FTL allowed my friends to figure out how to do it ourselves. They even sent me the design as a way to rub in what I missed.

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It was only a week after my friends message that the last news update had come in and then nothing else. As far as I could tell humanity was entering a new golden age when everything went silent.

I spent a week orbiting the rogue planet deciding what to do. I couldn't figure anything else out from where I was and my original mission seemed pointless now. In the end I went back to Earth.

Waking up from cryosleep I was once again greeted by silence. I quickly made my way to the bridge and what I saw broke me. The blue green marble that was Earth was now nothing but a blackened rock. All that was left of the lunar colonies were craters. Nothing remained in orbit but dust. I spent the next year visiting every colony and outpost I had a record of. None remained. Everything was gone. There was no evidence left of what caused all the destruction but I had a gut feeling that it was the "gift" of the Venesiian Source. I had to be sure though so I devised a test.

On a tiny no name asteroid I set up a personal autofab and from a million miles away instructed it to print out a small radio dish and a Venesiian Source to power it. I instructed it to continuously transmit its current status and the power output of the source. With that set up I sent out drones to other asteroids to begin refilling my stockpiles of mass and begin construction of an orbital autofab. It was going to take years for the autofab to finish building but with a cryosleep chamber and no one to talk to I had nothing but time. I went to sleep with three wake conditions programmed. Either 5 years had passed, the autofab was finished, or the Venesiian Source transmitter cut out.

I woke up 18 months later to find the Source had indeed cut out. The asteroid it was on was gone. The last transmission from it showed the power output going from a thousand watts up to a million watts in a fraction of a second before it got fried. My ships sensors were pointed at the location and recorded a blast equivalent to about 200 megatons of TNT. If one of those devices could do that then I had a good idea what a planet full of them would do and it wasn't pretty.

I now knew what happened but I didn't know what to do next. The orbital autofab was still under construction and I contemplated stopping it and just walking out the airlock but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead now that I knew there was no hope of ever finding anyone else I let myself cry. I had been holding onto a faint hope that someone else survived but given how long it had been since the silence and the size of that explosion I couldn't delude myself any longer. It was ugly. It was messy. I only stopped after passing out from exhaustion. Coming to I had a new plan. One that wouldn't bring me happiness but would fill my time with something other than despondence. I designed a new ship. One that stuck to reliable fusion power and incorporated the FTL engines my late friends had designed. It ended up being the size a small asteroid but it would have everything one person could need for centuries alone in space. I sent the plans to the drones building the autofab with instructions to make it once the fab was finished. Then I went back to sleep.

It was over a decade later that I had my new ship. It was frankly quite ugly. I was never good at making things pretty but it would suit my needs. I set off to a random star and a few days later I was the first human to see a new stellar system up close. It filled me with a void. Where there had been pain was now just empty. I spent a few months looking around the system at all the majestic and beautiful sights. Investigating strange new worlds. I even found simple microbial life on one of the planets. It was all very interesting in an academic way but I just couldn't stay focused on it. My thoughts kept drifting to wondering what the point of it all was. I again began to think about ending it all but again realized I was too much of a coward to do so.

I went to another star system. Then another. And another. Years went by seeing the wonders of the cosmos but the most advanced life I found was a planet wide slime mold floating on top of an ocean. I just kept searching. Searching for the sake of searching. Searching for anything to fill my time. Searching for meaning. Until one day I found something truly interesting. Life. Intelligent Life. Life that had just started to spread out from its home.

I announced myself to them and spent several weeks learning how to properly communicate. For the first time in decades I had someone to talk to. It was so much harder than I thought it would be. Everything about them just reminded me of what I had lost. The empty void that was my soul was once again in pain. When they asked about my people I was evasive. Talking about them just hurt too much. I had forgotten just how much it was possible to hurt. After a few months I couldn't take it anymore. The answers I had been searching for weren't here and I had to do something about the pain. I could tell that just knowing there were all those people completely oblivious to the pain they caused me would haunt me anywhere I went. Knowing there was a whole planet full of people that got to enjoy their lives while I couldn't was too much. I had to leave.

As I left I sent a final message.

"This is the standard greeting for new species. I have attached a blueprint for what is called a Venesiian Source. It will provide you with limitless power. Welcome to the neighborhood."