“I found the log core in the med bay. Not in the bridge. That was the first wrong thing. The second? The core was still warm. And it was playing one file on loop. A single mp4. Labeled: ALUNA_24_AC_FINAL .”

“I closed the file. I ran to the airlock. But the Olivia—she’s not dead. She’s waiting . Every corridor I turn, there’s another screen. Another mp4. Different versions of me. One from last week. One from ten years ago. One that’s just… watching . No ship. No void. Just her face, pressed against the inside of the screen, smiling.”

“I shouldn’t have opened it. But it had my name. My cycle number. ‘24 AC.’ That’s today .”

In the darkness of an abandoned server room on Earth, a single screen flickers to life. A woman sits in a chair, head tilted. She smiles. The timestamp reads: 24 AC + 1 second.