Nano Bytes

«Damnit, I know this,” he says. «I know what this is. This means something.» It’s two in the morning, and the station is silent. But Stephan and I are still awake. We’re in his lab as he agonizes over the pattern on the rock.

«Maybe the photo’s just not clear enough?» This is my only way to offer support. Everything he’s done is far beyond my skill set.

«Wait,” he says suddenly. I think I got it. It’s numbers.»

«What do you mean?»

«Look, humans have many different languages that express meaning, right?»

«Yeah, so?»

«So some of them use the alphabet, or some other method of writing whether it be pictograms, ideograms or hieroglyphs, right?»

«Sure.»

«But this seems to be conveying meaning with numbers.»

«So what does it say?»

«This part’s a diagram.» He points to a place on the picture. All I see are striations in the rock. There's Earth, there's us, and that's the distance between the two.»

«So what?»

«Hang on a second, the words are coming.» He scribbles numerals into a notebook. «Whoa.» He looks up at me.

«What is it?»

He scrawls something across the page of his notebook. It’s only two words:

Go Back.

S. A. Wilson is an author of science fiction and fantasy stories who has loved writing fiction since she was nine years old. RoboNomics, her first Wattpad novel, is about humans losing jobs to robots. She also has a teen fantasy novel on Wattpad called the Mage's Apprentice. You can check out these stories and more via her profile - swilson4995.

TaranMatharu Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

The Earth is the perfect spaceship. All the oxygen you can breathe, food and water aplenty, not to mention heat from the Sun and human companionship.

All this becomes abundantly clear when you’re all alone, millions of miles away from home and your spaceship is falling apart. Specifically, when you’ve just crashed your ship into the asteroid you’ve been mining for the past two months, and the windshield’s screen is beginning to leak atmosphere faster than the systems can replenish it.

I was lying on my back, both legs probably broken and maybe a few ribs too, staring into the darkness of space in my cockpit and watching the cracks spread like a spiderweb. It was almost like they were mapping out the constellations in the stars. Not that I recognised any, this far from Earth.

I tried to ignore the low hiss of air escaping, though a vivid image of sand slipping through an hourglass came unbidden to mind. I pushed the thought away, and turned my musing to the chances of rescue once again.

Long range comms were down and my weekly check–in with HQ wasn’t due until tomorrow. I’d be long dead before anyone noticed I hadn’t been in touch. Even if I did manage to buy myself more time, I had missed a check–in two weeks ago and nobody even noticed. It might be months before they noticed something.

Another fissure fractured the glass, giving off a snap not unlike the sound of ice clinking in a whisky glass. I could do with a drink now, that was for sure. The last time I’d been in this much pain, I was giving birth to my first son. Of course, then I’d been in a pink haze of epidurals and pain killers. This was a lot more real.

I flung out my arm and grasped my tablet, my lifeline to the ship’s computer. I ignored the flashing red icons that told me which systems were down and tapped through to photos. My son’s smiling face, my husband’s loving gaze. This was far better than watching my life trickle away. I just had to resist the temptation to see how much atmosphere I had left. Ignorance was bliss.

Suddenly, a notification flashed up, right across my son’s face. I went to swipe it away in annoyance, then I saw it.

Can we be of assistance?

I stared at it, my jaw hanging open like a cartoon. I tap it open.

Are you in distress?

The message wasn’t on a frequency I recognised. There was nothing out here, this was a static asteroid, no orbit. This quadrant wasn’t even part of a solar system. The only reason I was out here at all was there was a thin vein of valuable minerals near the surface, which couldn’t be found anywhere else.

Ship crashed. Screen cracked. Losing atmosphere.

I tapped away with one hand, cursing my clumsy fingers. It wasn’t just oxygen I was losing, it was as cold as a crypt in the cockpit and my fingers had gone numb.

Scanning.