Flash SF: The Meme Virus

“Status…”

“Status…”

“Status! Now!”

Chiandrii practically jumped out of her spacesuit, “I-I’m sorry. I’m here. I’m here. I just wasn’t expecting a status update for another ten minutes.”

“I’ve lost three Information Scientists on this expedition all ready,” Director Kawlah’s displeasure was clear. “So when I request status, I don’t care how early it is, you respond. Do you understand me?”

“Understood,” Chiandrii kept her voice cool, but did not cease her efforts with the control board. Sparks flashed and the octagonal door spiraled open, “I’m entering the objective.”

She edged slowly into what they surmised was the power control station, her vision obscured by the censor displays in her helmet. These allowed her enough sight to get around, but blocked her from seeing crucial passages in the alien epigraphics written all over the building. Without those key passages, it was all nonsense, but, as the last three information scientists discovered, reading those final passages led to insanity.

Every centimeter of the entire planet was covered in the scrawl. Even the endless fields of radar dishes the inhabitants had devoted all energies to constructing were covered in it. They had gone so far as to tear down their hive-like dwellings, communications networks, and other facilities too alien to understand, all for this single-minded purpose.

But this epic feat of communal engineering was nothing compared to the solar array they had wrapped their system’s star in, hiding it from the rest of the galaxy. The Planetary Dynamists on the team believed the civilization had actually consumed two whole planets in this effort to harness all of the power of their white dwarf star, all of which was being beamed to this frozen, dead planet.

Chiandrii thought the planet was like Easter Island back on Earth, where the inhabitants became consumed with erecting massive statues in honor of their gods. They chopped down all of their trees, destroyed their environment, turned to cannibalism, and went extinct trying to please their imaginary deities.

Chiandrii surveyed the control room. Piles of dust, the remains of the planet’s inhabitants, were scattered about. A diagram of the system, which encompassed the entire planet, stretched along the wall. She knew the system well enough to know what she had found.

“This is it,” she reported to Director Kawlah. “This is where they were going to turn it on… and begin broadcasting the code to the rest of the galaxy.”

“Thank the Cosmos they never succeeded,” Kawlah replied.

“It was on at some point,” Chiandrii brushed the dust off the frozen gauges, drew a gloved finger along a black scar in the console, and saw similar burn marks around the room. “There was a battle. The system doesn’t appear damaged, but the–OW!”

“Status! N–shhhzzzt!” Kawlah’s voice was lost in static.

“Hold on, I’m… dammit!” Chiandra cradled her hand where the exposed wires in the console, apparently live, had shocked her. She looked around the room, listening to the static, and trying to figure out what was different. Too late realizing that her suit had shorted out, and the vision censors along with it.

She could not erase from her mind what she saw then, could not force her self to not understand it, not even had she wanted to. It was intoxicating, too beautiful to keep to herself, and she immediately set to powering up the consoles to channel the star’s energy to the broadcast arrays.

She had to share this with the entire Universe.