Oceanic Space Agency, Translation Department. Inbound communication number 345327.

Year 2156. October 22. 3:47 PM.

Translated by AI #4 using quantum interlacing techniques. Translation time: 0.650 seconds. Accuracy rate: estimated 99%. Adjusted for human intelligibility.

Based on light-speed delta and origin in the Whirlpool Galaxy, estimated time elapsed since initial transmission: 28,000,000 years.

Archive 1:

We look up at night and see the reef among the stars. We were taught as children that our ancestors are still alive up there, latched like barnacles to the sides of asteroids. It is the final stage of our lifecycle.

Larger than a moon, the reef catches to shine in the light: asteroids joined at obtuse angles in the Lagrange point between planet and moon. Whenever it passed overhead we would stand out in our gardens and study the millions of clustered shapes. Their beaks protrude from pale bodies that look like small volcanoes, yet with the naked eye, all we can see is a stain across the rock. Anchored by gravity, the colony has been there for as long as any of us can remember. Now it has to move, and travel between the stars.

We have all agreed to wrap the colony in a series of shields to protect it in the depths of space. So far, we have added automated systems for navigation and repairs. The propulsion will be a large series of solar sails and a ramjet engine, which should last indefinitely. That sort of technology is beyond me and is best left to the engineers. Picking the destination and planning the journey, none of that is my responsibility. My education was in biology. I need to find a way to save whoever I can.

I am working on extending the longevity of our species. We seek to understand how the disease attacks us, and how to prevent it. It is a daunting process. I work fast.

My previous research, before the disaster, was in the social lives of our sessile stage. This has become critical in recent years. Before, not much was known about the intelligence of our stationary forms. Many argued that they were incapable of conscious thought, and were instead akin to plants. Even so, nobody wanted to harm them. We are all the same species. Rather than gain the ethical approval to fly up and examine the colony, I spent my hours studying our genetic code, how it worked, what it did. Becoming a specialist in that area I discovered that our brains do not fully dissolve and that many sequences are keyed to continue working. Up there, latched to the asteroids, we are thinking creatures. What was it like to live like that, with neurons drilled into the rock like roots? Each body is connected to a larger system. A system capable of what?

I had found a purpose. Once I knew that our metamorphosed selves could think and communicate with each other, I wanted to find out how and why. There was some sort of social system, but what was it like? Did it remember? And more importantly, could we communicate with it? To do so, we are now working on a way of simulating our metamorphoses, so we can become a part of the colony’s network before the disease wipes us out. We are only changing our brains, and only uploading our minds. The tests have been successful, so far, with just the final phases of connection proving difficult. I feel the weight of my work every day. It is exhausting.

I stand here as the colony passes over. A small telescope is in my claw. Parts of the protective housing are already complete. I can see the lights blinking on the scaffolding, and the flares as ships re-enter the atmosphere. This is the last chance I have to relax before my work continues.

Looking back from this twilight period, I can only say we were a successful species. We never took more than we needed, and we always acted in harmony with nature. There was never a single moment or period of technological development where things got out of hand. Progress was steady. I do not even think any of us were particularly smart. But we kept at our problems, and refined everything, every process, every design. Civilisation flowed as our cities grew.

Our planet is one of grey tides, endlessly circling oceans, beaches guarded by ancient crabs, and trees mirrored by fossils. Prehistoric apex predators still compete with recent evolutionary rivals. Some hypothesise our planet has not had a mass extinction in over five billion years of life, hence the sheer age of everything. There was nothing to worry about, until now.

A disease started spreading amongst our mobile forms. We do not know where it came from. Every moving thing on the planet is at risk. And yet, by some miracle, those in orbit are untouched. We are planet bound. Things are simply too far gone.

The disease resembles iron filings in black oil. It appears to seek out movement. It attacks our cells and tears them apart. First, it attacks the brain. The early victims were all misdiagnosed with a new form of dementia. After losing our minds, we begin to break apart: our limbs tearing from our bodies, legs falling away to dissolve in a pile of feathers and claws. It was three years ago now that the disease first started spreading though the population. As soon as we developed a vaccine or antidote, the disease would mutate, grow, and increase its infection rate. In the end, all we could do was hide ourselves away.

Archive 2:

I watched one of my closest friends break down today. They came into the laboratory out of breath. Someone dear to them, an acquaintance of mine, had died. It put things into perspective. Because of our work, we have been in quarantine since the first reports of the disease were announced. I am no longer just hearing about numbers and statistics, tucked away in my bubble of research. A death is a very concrete thing. It is an ending.

Another friend of mine had died when we were at school. We were both about fifteen when the accident happened. My life moved on as the memory of them remained a static image in my mind. We no longer had our friend, but we gained a negative space in their place. The promise of who they would have been became something to compare ourselves against as we grew up. I wonder what they would think of all this, and I see their pained expression whenever I have a sleepless night. It is as if I could just hold on to my memories long enough to live inside them, to keep the disease away.

I comforted my friend in the laboratory as they asked about our memories, about how our experiences, and how our knowledge will be carried aboard the ship. We are effectively cutting our species in half. It was a difficult conversation. These are problems that go on beyond our own lives. I am never going to see the results of my work, of those long hours in the laboratory. I am at peace with that.

There are four of us in the bunker, the makeshift laboratory. We are stationed on a remote island thousands of kilometres from anywhere. If I sound detached, the remoteness may be to blame. Nothing happens here except slow research, but so much moves around us. I think the scale is hard for any of us to comprehend. As the ship flies through space, we will all be dust.

When I was young all I wanted to do was travel amongst the stars. To have the chance to explore space before my body changed. It would never have worked, so I had to do the next best thing: I would pretend I was on an alien planet and run off into the wilderness, convinced that, wherever I went, I was discovering new land. Of course, every area of our planet had already been explored, but it had not been explored by me. By thirteen, I had wandered my whole hometown in a grid pattern. Some thought I was ridiculous, and my teachers wanted to rein me in, but I had to know what was out there. I am glad that even if I am trapped here for the rest of my life, a part of us can continue to discover new worlds, much like I did as a child. We are all just a small part of the universe anyway. As I lie awake at night it seems inevitable that things will always move forwards. I can only do my best.

As a young adult I used to feel so stuck. I would worry about this or that and spend so much time feeling sorry for myself while everyone else was out enjoying themselves. I used to think that if I spent long enough studying, working towards something greater than myself, that it would all be worth it. I am not sure if I still feel that way. Life is so short. While it is powerful to stand back and feel like I have achieved something with my time, even now, there never was a point I could look back on and say that I was having fun. I wish I had. I have come to mostly accept those insecurities as just another part of me, like my legs or eyes or feathers or claws.

I hope I am not rambling. I am too afraid to listen back to these, too afraid to hear myself garbling my words and living inside my own mind. I need to be clear. This is all so important.

Archive 3:

I could not work today. Instead, I just sat on my bed and tried to process all my thoughts. The systems have been in place for days now, and teams of us are running through the final flight procedures. Sometimes, in the night, we would get a call from one of the other bunkers. They would be in distress. The disease would have made its way past their quarantine systems, and they would be saying their final goodbyes. They would cry as the disease broke them down into slush. Such messages were tough to listen to, but the rest of us owed it to them to not only listen, but to remember.

At the start of the project there were over a hundred teams all around the world. Preparing the colony was a global initiative. We were optimistic. I am now a member of one of the five remaining teams. We were all shocked when the first group had gone. It had seemed too soon. It motivated us to work in their absence. As the voices drop out, all we can do is grit our teeth and decide which memories of our own are worth preserving. The project is on track, but there is still work to do. There will always be work to do.

I had to walk outside for fresh air. There was a (Translation error. Closest match: bird. Accuracy under 70%) flying over. It struggled to make its way in the oceanic wind, as if it were caught in stasis. Its wings were broken apart. Disease dripped from it, some of which fell on to the force field around our shelter. I could see the metallic particles in it fighting each other for space as they attacked the barrier. Enough of them and they would break through. Inside, it is as if I can feel the field around us trying to hold itself together. This disease is making its way into my dreams. In them I see the always-moving oil spilling across the streets and pooling across empty rooms. A whole world of empty cities without anyone to live in them. I am never present in these dreams, I can only ever watch on in the third person, helpless.

In other dreams I would fall forever. I would feel so small as I floated down to the planet like the nauplius I once was. Such dreams are the most peaceful I have felt in a long time. After I metamorphose, my mind will not just go on board with everyone else’s: I have set up a rig to broadcast it into space. It is what you are receiving now. I hope it will stay operational for as long as anything else around here. I did not have much time, but the system should work. It should last. I suppose I should tell you about us, if anything were to happen to the ship.

Our bodies are about two meters tall, with some variation. We are soft creatures, covered in bright patterned feathers, and are bipedal with short tails. We have two, large, forward-facing eyes, and two, smaller, rear facing eyes that can sense changes in light. They are enough to detect movement. We are fast runners, and with our small arms tucked into our bodies we can dash at speeds up to seventy kilometres per hour. We resemble (Translation error. Closest match: ostrich, emu). We are asexual, for now, and hermaphroditic after our metamorphoses.

Our biology is our design philosophy. It seems only natural. Speed is given a priority alongside agility and soft, round shapes. Then, to reflect us after our metamorphoses, there is a a focus on long-lasting, hard-wearing permanence. On the asteroids we are immortal, and our engineering reflects that. These two elements may appear in contrast, but are brought together in a unique harmony. Our technology seems alive. It has purpose.

It was only by the grace of an evolutionary quirk that we could survive in space. For the first stage of our life we are mobile and intelligent. After about fifty years our bodies undergo a series of changes. One of the other biology researchers speculated that we, as a species, burn ourselves out. That our level of activity was abnormal amongst the species on our planet. For them, a sessile stage that could live forever balanced out the activity of our younger years. I am not so sure. I believe there is something romantic in a short but meaningful life, like a flower blooming in a garden of stones. I am uncertain about the alternative.

A part of me worries that a life extended forever is no longer life. If you no longer grow or age or die, then you are no more than the rocks on which you live. I know a lot of people will disagree with me and in principle I cannot stand by these words: I will want to metamorphose eventually. I am part of the project, after all, but cannot help but wonder what things would be like if our biology was a little different.

Towards the end of the first stage of our life we are filled with an overwhelming urge to settle, to find a place where we will sit, motionless, forever. During our change we moult, losing our soft plumage and long legs and gaining blocky, hard-wearing bodies. Our metamorphoses is a sad and painful experience. It was through the desperation of an overcrowded world that, thousands of years ago, those in this stage of life convinced our leading scientists to send them into space. In theory, it might have worked. In practice, it was a miracle. The great ascension became a legend told of in works of literature and discussed in classrooms across the planet. Now, only heretics metamorphose on land.

Remember, for this liminal period of our lives we do not eat, and we hardly breathe: We are timed to self-destruct. In prehistoric days they — us — would have found a place to latch on to by diving as far as they could. Down to the depths of the ocean by a hydrothermal vent or volcano, impervious to heat and dangerous chemicals. Others would have basked in the warm equatorial shallows, able to photosynthesise. It was the same layered shell, filter feeding, and ability to harvest light that allows our sessile stage to thrive on the asteroids of the reef. When deprived of nutrients we shut down and wait until we return to fertile waters. This, too, will be useful in the endless drifts of space.

Years ago, I stayed up all night to watch the mating ritual. It is a time of celebration. Up in the colony the barnacles breed among themselves, and after a period of incubation, release nauplii that fall back towards the planet. They do so only once a year, all in synchronisation with one another. Due to the nature of the orbit, as the planet and colony rotate, there is an even covering of the surface with our larvae. The ones with the right nutritional mix of air, water, heat, and food grow into adults.

Every school would have its staff search the surrounding area for months after the spawning. Volunteers would often join the search, stumbling over in the dark as they looked for any trace of bioluminescence. The children found were all brought back to the school to be raised. The nauplii that were never found and never made it to a school were mourned but not dwelled upon. To us, they were just seeds that did not germinate, and remained in a kind of stasis, never quite alive. Over time, the number of schools had balanced out with the number of children usually found in an area. Because of this, our civilisation was evenly spread out over our planet’s habitable land. My favourite part about our culture was when we turned fifteen and left school. Most of us, including myself, chose to move between cities, to meet others, and to see the world.

Archive 4:

This will be my final message. Today is the day. We are launching the colony now. An unidentified ship has flown into our star system. It resembles the disease, with its outer surface in constant, rippling, motion. We can only assume it does not have good intentions. It does not respond to any broadcast across any frequency. They have forced our hand, and we are moving ahead of schedule, but that is fine. We are fast.

The force field around our laboratory has begun to erode. The timing seems coincidental, but everything in life seems to happen for a reason. For instance, I never chose to exist during this era and in this body, yet here I am. We are all subject to the chances and changes around us. With so many of us isolating, someone had to be last. I am not sure who else is left outside the bunker. I do not want to check. There are no longer any incoming messages. There is an irony that in the final stages of my life, never maturing enough to undergo metamorphoses naturally, I still found a way to become sedentary. I have not left this room in weeks. There is nothing left to see outside anyway.

I have initiated my metamorphosis and my mind will uplink to the colony soon. My transition between the two states will be seamless, allowing for full continuity of being. I will never know when my brain freezes in place and I become fully integrated with the colony. You see, the colony thinks, but their minds are sessile too. Not only do our bodies lose their movement, so do our brains. I hope another species can find a way to fight the disease. Something we failed to do.

We will never think anything new.

We will never create.

This is the final stage of our lifecycle.

End of transmission.

2021