There are many stories of first contact, what about a last contact? When a species is so doomed that no technology could help them recover? -- Alex
We are the Elm, and we are dying. We have accepted this, and send this to you. By the time you translate this message, we will likely be gone. Do not mourn for us, as we have had enough of mourning.
No grand mistake has caused this end. We have merely reached the end of ourselves. All things must end. Civilisations, empires, species... everything that begins comes to a close. Soon, perhaps very soon for you, you can say what we were.
Do you believe, as we do, that a thing is not dead so long as the name is spoken? Be it a person, an empire, or a peoples? We can only hope you do.
If you do not, we cannot convince you, and that gives us a little more sadness in our last days. We ask, please, say our name. Keep us alive even after we are gone.
We leave you our worlds, and our knowledge. We have done what we can to preserve it. We have done what we can to be sure it is found.
Do not mourn for us.
Celebrate, instead, what we were. What we built. These worlds were once ours, and now they are yours. We give them with benevolence in our souls, and ask only that you share them with benevolence in yours.
We are the Elm, and we are gone.
May you greet our memories with joy.
The message was signed Nasyr, last of the Elm and included an image of their handprint. There were co-ordinates, of course, of all the Elm caches, stellar systems, and installations. All of them made to last. All of them ridiculously easy to restore.
The oldest, and most common message. Most of the time left on walls or furniture by idle hands, but this time writ large across a stellar cluster.
I was here.
We will remember them.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Cebas]
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