A Busy Day

It was a busy day today at the Astrotarium. Meg laughed to herself. She liked the old name very much-Research centre. Some rich sponsor thought research centre sounded too "boring" and came up with this. Astrotarium- a combination of astronomy and planeterium. Genius! The government agreed and the media went crazy with the name. It was a day when people realised Money indeed is a wonderful thing.

A sudden shake jerked her out of her inner monologue. "Meg, it's starting", James,her colleague of 3 years,said pointing to the artifact they had just found.

Codex A_10 was a highly encrypted sustainable computer. It was made to assist the humans on their space journey and to record the findings of space for further research. She had read about it once when she was a student. She had come across a detailed article about its launch and the people involved. She couldn't care less for an unsuccessful mission when she had a whole project to be done about the first car on space.

Codex A_10 started whizzing . It blinked. Flashed something on the screen and died again. James pulled  the "O" switch connected to the computer. This dang thing was surely old, Meg thought, older than her great grandmother. Older than this universe. She just couldn't understand how people could work on this. It was an object. Waste of space and time. 

The computer started whizzing again. A red light blinking underneath some buttons. Screen flashed blue. Then to black with some codes getting typed continuosly.  And then a loud ping.

"Codex A_10 ready for journey. Welcome Theo.."

Theo must be the guy who we found with it. Every at the Astrotarium had gone crazy when the investigation team had brought him back. They think he should be above 80. But  Meg had seen  him

He doesn't look a day older than 30.

But then again she never had heard of any recent expeditions involving humans since her birth.

Before she could find a reasonable answer, the computer started creating some weird noise. Static noise. " Playing recording 1."

On the screen, she saw a handsome man , early 30s, well built, staring at the screen. He was smiling the most beautiful smile she had ever seen.

"Is this working? " He asked as he pushed or dragged something on the camera. Pulling back, he looked satisfied and stepped a few steps back.

" Hi! I am Theodore. Today is day 1 of our journey. I hope Codex and I can make it through our journey. Any useful  recordings found on this computer should be used for research purposes. Since I will be a bit lonely, and since there is high storage on this ,I might as well keep my personal notes as well. If you come across them, kindly do not feel offended and delete it right away. Ha ha ha!".

Meg stared at the screen. Decoding and researching this stuff is going to be long and boring. What could they be learning from an old machine and a dead guy? Science has come a long way and so have humans. We have discovered a lot more than this guy for sure, so why waste her precious  time on this?

This should be sent to the historians or the archaeologists, Meg thought.

She heard a sigh and looked up on the screen startled. It was faint but she definitely heard him say "I already miss you, Meg."

A dim white spot reflected on the corner of his eye where she could make out a tear. The resolution of the video was the worst ever. But she could see the pain in his eyes.

The computer screen turned black. A faint whizzing noise. Then static noise.

"Playing  Next record..."

This was going to be a really long day. Megan Parker will be pulling another all- nighter again.