Lost Conversations

Heard on the radio, a transmission from past decades: fragments of a conversation, picked up as the spacecraft travels its uncharted path. “I’ll see you soon, put the kettle on,” then laughter cut off by silence.

“Who were they” you ask yourself but cannot say: trapped as you are on this forgotten mission to a distant galaxy; sent out to explore the universe decades ago, before the Earth was destroyed by meteorites.

“Life on other planets, I hope? ” was all you could think as you turned to look at Greg, the captain of the spacecraft, now piloted without purpose or destination. “Shall I make a note of it” you ask, but he just shakes his head,

For what is the purpose? There’s no one left to talk to, and nothing but these fragments of conversation bouncing round in space to stir emotions. These brief relics of your vanished home, your world, reminders your families have become dust and memory has lost all context.

“Can’t beat the view” you say, trying to keep it light, but routine without purpose drained the magic from this adventure many years ago: silence is your constant companion. Now galaxies pass by unremarked by two souls lost in travelling, robbed of home and context by that catastrophe which destroyed the earth in mid-evolution.

“What does it mean” you ask yourself, but mute indifference has no answer. At some unspecified hour, you accept, some black hole or other matter will swallow this last evidence of man and his ambitions, and suns will rise and planets form without comment or exclamation from this lost civilisation now a particle in space.