There is something fundamentally compelling about imagining who will find the probes we send into space. This short story tells such a story set in far future that has lost most of advanced technology.

Clarkesworld August 2024

Corrinne finds a fallen probe in the middle of a desert and she is able to activate a video recording from it. A woman appears on screen stating the date as February 11, 2089 and that the probe will go to the Kuiper Belt and she recorded this journal hoping someone will find it some day. The world Corrinne is in is hundreds of years later than that and in a ruined world where people know of this type “old tech”, which can be valuable but should be dealt with caution. Corrinne knows she has something valuable here that could be traded in, but she also comes to feel a connection with this woman on the video recordings.

While there is a plot about what happens to the probe, the real story is about those two futures and in particular what we can deduct about the 2089 world. Corrinne might live in an post-apocalyptically future, but the real tragedy is told in the video journal from the probe.

Read in Clarkesworld August 2024
Rating: 4