The Weight of the Signal

The sun barely pierced the dense winter clouds as Mira trudged through the tundra, her boots crunching on the frostbitten ground. Her wristwatch pulsed faintly—a beacon from an old research outpost. She wasn’t here by choice. The Council had ordered her to investigate, citing “historical significance.”

The outpost was a shattered relic of steel and ice, its walls bowed under decades of snow. Inside, frost coated every surface. The terminal still flickered faintly, and Mira carefully powered it on.

The logs were cryptic:

“Experiment unstable. Halt all testing.” “Reevaluation required.”

Then, a final entry: “Archive successfully secured. All personnel evacuated. Do not recover.”

Mira frowned. Whatever they left behind wasn’t supposed to be touched.

She moved deeper into the structure and found it—a steel pod encased in ice. The Council’s emblem was etched on its side, along with the word: ORIGIN.

Against her better judgment, she activated her data uplink. The pod hissed as its systems rebooted. It wasn’t a weapon, nor a lifeform. It was a recording—images and audio of the planet as it was centuries ago. Lush forests, teeming oceans, and skies unmarred by smog.

A voice spoke, calm but firm: “To the inheritors of this world: we left this for you to remember what was lost, and what might still be regained. Do better than we did.”

The terminal beeped. Her transmission to the Council was complete—they would know about the find soon. Mira’s fingers hovered over the pod’s controls.

She had a choice: destroy the pod and leave the past buried or let the Council take it.

She thought of her people, struggling to survive in the wastelands, and of the power the Council wielded over them. With a trembling hand, she shut the pod down and buried it deeper in the ice.

Some things, she decided, weren’t meant to be claimed.

Micro stories are a content feature offered by $TIME's dev Woj. Handwritten and accompanied by art, they serve to deepen the story world we're creating here. Enjoy!