It traveled across the darkness, hurtling at speeds faster than the eye could see along the strands of dark matter that makes up the hidden universe, expanding, rolling, silent as the grave on an every expanding wave of sound that was too hidden to hear.

Until something did hear it.

A relic of a forgotten age chirped, buzzing as old gears shook off the silky fine stardust clinging to its static forcefield as it powered up, recording the message that came in barely coherent bursts and fits, the words a jumbled whine that spoke of signal decay; a result of both distance and time. The relic cataloged the disturbance, parsing out the code into a coherent whole as it translated electric currents into voices, into words that bespoke a dead language.

Message

Received

As the electric storm passed in the blink of an eye, the relic chirped again, attaching a string of numbers to the digital code, waiting for the next messenger relay ship to pass by before info dumping its cache. And then it powered down, hunkering down for the long years between ships, experiencing time differently then those who zipped across the universe at speeds faster than light. It was good at waiting, designed to withstand the cold, empty vagaries of space.

It was not alive after all.

None of them were.