Star Siblings' Echoes Wrought In Gold

20260510

Written for Bradley Ramsey’s “Halls Of Pandemonium”, Day 10.

“This doesn’t make sense.”
While the doctor is doing a good job maintaining a crisp professional front, I have no doubt she’s struggling with a great many emotions right now. She’s spent most of her life working on those alien records. Studying every aspect of both the golden discs and the vehicle used to send them to us - or rather, out into the cosmos. Even personally spearheaded the search for their source, to make true contact with our “space siblings”, as popular culture has dubbed them.
Now, here we are, and… nothing we see is anything like the records contained in those discs. Nothing like the technology which managed to carry the message to us. Nothing like decades of scientists and artists have imagined.
“What could have done this?” Her antenna quiver. Seeking clues. Though of course neither of us can sense anything through the thick protective gear we’ve had to don to withstand the immense radiation coating this planet.
I look down at the scanner readouts. “Nothing in the planet’s geology would explain anything close to this kind of radiation level. Nor would the local star, especially given the atmosphere… It must have been caused by whatever left all those craters. Incredibly radioactive material from space?”
It’s a wild theory. The doctor looks as unconvinced as me.
A polite trill. Our head geneticist. “We’ve finished analysing the remains in those underground structures you located. They appeared to have a sudden, severe genetic bottleneck four generations ago. I believe before then the species was living on the surface.”
“Hm.” I nod. “That matches the extent of artificial materials. A pity so little is left, now. The bombardment was immense…”
I hesitate. The concept is almost too terrible to voice. But it’s eating at me. “Do you think the bombardment could have been artificial?”
“What?” The doctor’s mandibles snap in helpless gesticulation. “That there’s a third sapient species out there, one which responds to finding fellow life by eradicating it?”
“I hate to think it’s even a possibility, but… how else could this happen?” I wave a tentacle at the devastation around us. A lifeless waste, buffeted by weather patterns which might never settle down. “The only other explanation I can think of is some immense natural disaster causing a tragic technological failure. That these weren’t impacts, but ground zero for immense explosions. But if that were the case, if they knew such a risk existed, surely they would have measures in place?”
“There were those underground structures…” The geneticist says slowly. “But, the spread of these surface structures… and the genetic evidence… those can’t have been intended to act as long-term shelters. They wouldn’t have capacity for a fraction of the population.”
“Right.” The doctor rubs her helmet, unconsciously trying to clean her antenna in thought. “They must have been originally intended for another purpose, then when this unpredicted catastrophe hit, those who survived the first wave fled to the best protection they had.”
“What confuses me,” I tap the scanner results, “is all these ‘shelters’ were so far away from the large surface structures. What were they intended to protect against? Surely these heavily developed areas are where the bulk of the population resided?”
“That would explain why the genetic variety was so low in the lingering population.” The geneticist says thoughtfully. “Perhaps the shelters were intended to protect against localised hazards, which were then either set off or destroyed by the cataclysm. The small communities who happened to be nearby, whom the shelters were built for, were able to get there in time. But with nobody left to rescue them, what was meant to be protection became a tomb.”
We shudder. Honestly, those who scraped out a meagre existence underground for, what, three generations? Admirable though their attempts to survive were, they may have been the most unlucky. At least the bombardment hopefully meant most individuals had a quick death.
“If only we had been able to find them sooner…” The doctor murmurs, mostly to herself. “Perhaps we could have helped.”
We all sadly trill agreement.
This tragedy weighs heavy - not only because of the loss of so much life, at least some of which we know had sapience equivalent to, possibly even similar to, our own. It’s also a gutting end to the hopeful stories which had been woven, the dreams our species held about finding our star siblings and travelling space together. Possibly even finding other pockets of life out there!
Now, we have to wonder if such pockets will see us not as far-flung family to embrace, but something to destroy.
“…Let us gather all the data we can.” The doctor lifts her head, her tone resolute. “In memory of our fallen siblings. We will take everything they preserved in those shelters. Find and record everything else which remains. We will carry their ghosts with us to the stars.”
Her speech revitalises us, though this will never feel like anything other than a hollow echo of the first contact we’ve all spent so long dreaming of. We set to work.
~*~
It was decades before one researcher hypothesised that the underwater vessel which had been found washed up on the other side of the planet may have been a military weapon, responsible for launching radioactive warheads.
This was immediately dismissed as sensationalist nonsense. What would possibly possess a species to wipe out all life on its planet?
Many others tried to find ways of softening the possibility. Ways the weapons might have been deployed in a vain attempt to prevent another catastrophe. A desperate last-ditch measure which tragically failed.
After all, nothing that the Voyager spacecraft carried gave them any reason to believe that humans would enact such violence against their own kind.

Prompt was “Write about sapient life elsewhere in the cosmos that stumbled upon the Voyager spacecraft and the records it held”.