The Silent Beacon

Engineer Kaya Torres had grown accustomed to lunar silence—until the night she heard the heartbeat. On the moon’s far side, the barren halls of Selene Outpost lay frozen beneath a velvet-black sky, untouched by Earth’s warmth. When the radio array sparked to life with a single, monotone pulse, its resonance rippled through the untouched corridors like a drum in empty catacombs.

Torres traced the signal to a buried antenna array half-swallowed by regolith. The corroded metals and frayed wiring told a story of abandonment, yet a hidden geothermal generator still hummed with untapped power. With gloved precision, she uncovered the control module—it bore no labels, only ancient glyphs signifying “Eternal Vigil.” When she activated the system override, the beacon’s glow intensified, cascading crimson across the lunar dust.

Each pulse aligned with the station’s core temperature oscillations—a rhythm devised to transcend the vacuum’s silence. As Torres recorded the data, she felt the weight of generations: settlers who once dreamed beneath the same stars, leaving behind this single, unyielding call. In the mirror of her helmet, she saw history reflected in red light—an echo of hope broadcast into an indifferent void.

She keyed her console. “Beacon active. Pulse frequency locked at 0.6 hertz. It outlives us all.” Beyond the hatch, the beacon’s heartbeat hummed into the endless night, a testament that, even in desolation, memory endures.