Rockets and Things

The first rocket was found entirely by accident.

A deep space exploration probe just happened to pick it up during one of its routine scans. Despite returns indicating an artificial object, it was some time before anyone was sent to investigate. Likely it was just debris left over from some forgotten colonization effort and of no real interest to anyone.

What they found instead was a ship. A rocket of rudimentary design, sporting chemical combustion engines that were a full century out of date by the standards of the time. It was a complete derelict, fuel tanks long emptied, systems little more than fused slag. Dead and adrift in the void, likely destined to have been lost forever had blind chance not intervened.

Though its hull had been battered, a sealed capsule at its very heart remained intact, untouched by the ravages of time or cosmic tide. Opening it was harder than expected, requiring careful application of a cutting laser to break the near perfect molecular seal. Whoever had launched the rocket had wanted to ensure the object would survive to see its destination.

Within the capsule lay, of all things, a record. A simple metal disk that the retrieval team didn’t immediately recognize as an audio recording device. If the rocket was obsolete, its cargo was ancient, a technology that hadn’t been used for over a millennium. It was so old that they had to custom build a phonograph just to see what was on it.

Ides of Yesterday, as the song would later come to be known. An orchestral piece with full choral accompaniment, sung in a completely alien language and performed with instruments never heard by any living soul. Many of the original team commented that listening to it reminded them of childhood. A sentiment shared by many others as it was transmitted across known space, many eager to hear the song from the stars.

The second rocket was found less than a standard month later. Knowing what they were looking at this time, the retrieval effort was mounted immediately, managing to recover the hulk mere days after it had been detected.

This one contained seeds. Hundreds of them preserved inside vacuum sealed containers, genetic testing confirming dozens of distinct species. They were packed together with a book, its pages filled with drawings and dried pressings of what each seed would become once germinated.

The discovery of a third rocket sparked the beginning of the great hunt in earnest. Explorers from across known space set out into the void, searching for more rockets. They found them in spades, first tens, then dozens, then hundreds, all drifting silently through the void.

Each one found revealed another sliver of the people that had launched them. Art, literature, music, fashion, food, and technologies in abundance. Maps of their home, land, sea, and sky. Samples of stone, dirt, sand, and water taken from all corners of their planet. Children’s toys, uniforms, coins, charms, jewelry, weapons, instruments, books, and photographs of places no one had ever laid eyes upon. An entire culture in snapshots.

Humans, they called themselves. Or at least that is our best guess. The exact translation of their language remains contested.

As more and more rockets were discovered, the explorers began to trace them back to their point of origin. They had come far, further than we ever would have gone looking otherwise, finding more rockets along the way. Though not nearly so many, and not nearly so well built. Fewer and fewer they found, until at last there were no more at all. Just silent, empty space stretching out before them as they arrived at the rocket’s home system.   

There was nothing left. Nothing but scattered dust and the embers of a star that had burned itself out long ago. Whatever worlds had once been here were gone, consumed as the sun had flared and died. There had been no act of hubris, malice, or foolishness here, simply the effect of a cause set in motion at the very birth of the universe. A sad but inevitable fate.

To this day, some still ask why. If they had the means to escape their fate, why send things and not themselves? Easy, say I. It’s one thing to put a machine into space, quite another to send a living creature into the harsh, unforgiving void. Far harder still to keep them there for any span, let alone a lifetime. It took us centuries to crack the problem, and we didn’t have the spectre of extinction looming over us. They simply hadn’t had enough time.

But then why bother at all? Why spend the effort to launch pieces of themselves into the void if they were doomed either way?

Well, that answer lies with the very last rocket we ever found. Likely the last ever launched, drifting a mere handful of light-years from home. Within it was found only a simple stone, two words carved deep into its surface.

Remember us.

And we do. We remember them in the trees that still grow across known space. We remember them when we listen to the strange music that reminds us of good times. We remember them as we carry on through those same stars they chose to cast themselves to in their final moments.

Though we never knew them, we remember them.     

We can only hope that is enough.

END