The Dark Somnium - "Yesterday, NASA recovered a futuristic hard-drive from space" Creepypasta | Scary Stories

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

This Creepypasta scary story is from the nosleep subreddit, written by u/not_neccesarily--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/darksomnium/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I handle extraterrestrial objects at NASA. Up until now, I've been analyzing various rocks and materials from space, with my next big project being analyzing soil samples from Mars. Over the years, the excitement of handling items from space had worn off, and my job was reduced to a simple routine I had to set up for examining and recording the features of everything that was brought to my desk. Recently, I was given a smooth piece of metal that had apparently been found floating in orbit by the folks over at the ISS.

When I first examined this hunk of metal, I was intrigued by its seemingly man-made shape, like it was deliberately created by someone and launched into space. It was no bigger than a small, sleek laptop charging brick and had smooth, rounded corners like pebbles in a river. It was an interesting find, and I was a little excited to examine this object. I was surprised that it being man-made wasn't ruled out, because there's a very low chance that this device was naturally created. I was turning it over in my gloved hands when I first realized that it had a small slit on

the left side. My heart rate began to quicken. Slipping a piece of paper into the slit caused the entire drive to start morphing. The metal began to melt away like chocolate and molded into a different shape entirely. Now, there was a simple circular hole on that side that, upon inspection, seemed to be endless, as I only saw a dark pit no matter how hard I looked inside. I backed away from the device as I realized that I was working with technology so advanced it was beyond our understanding of physics and chemistry itself.

This needed to be taken to the higher ups immediately. Somehow, through the whole process of getting this out of space and onto my desk, no one had realized that this metal exterior hid technological components inside. It also explained why this hadn't yet been taken away by shadowy government organizations. The device had stopped moving and lay still on my table as I stared at it. On one hand, I knew this was well beyond what I could deal with. On the other, a strange curiosity urged me to investigate it just a little further. Perhaps I could find out what it did.

It took me hours to get beyond that device. development. Every time I pushed something through that hole in the side of the device, it would promptly begin to reshape again until the hole closed in around the inserted object and matched exactly to its shape. It would then whir for a few moments, seeming like it was examining the object, and then spit it out completely with the metal reshaping into the same original slit. I was getting more and more worried as time ticked. My face felt hot and my hands clammy. I'm about to call my boss to hand this over to the higher-ups before I got in trouble when I got a crazy idea. After pushing everything from pens to metal rods into the hole, I decided to put in a simple USBA connected cable into the hole.

It was a random idea, possibly inspired by the fact that the last thing I had in my drawer was that cable, and it was the only thing I hadn't put into the device. As soon as I put the connector into the side of the device, it began to conform to the device, its shape and were once more. A loud beep filled my entire office. The machine didn't reject the cable and instead kept it inside. My heart began to beat in anticipation as I plugged the cable into my personal laptop. I jumped when the laptop identified the device as a hard drive. It was simply named GSA Drive. I opened the drive and inside I found one file in a folder. The file was a simple PNG image which depicted the logo of GSA, and under it revealed

what the acronym stood for, Global Space Agency. I didn't have time to ponder over the existence of this organization, and instead backed out of the image to click into the other folder, fueled by curiosity. It took me a moment to register the size of that folder. The entire folder was 6,000 petabytes. I quickly called my boss and explained what I had found. He didn't seem to buy it, but promised he'd come as soon as possible and take the device off me. Somehow the fact that I was about to lose this device made me want to dig in just a little further before I gave it back.

I knew I was digging my grave, but an urge to know what was inside had overtaken me. I clicked back and quickly checked the hard drive's capacity. 10,000 petabytes. My stomach twisted into knots as I realized that this small hard drive had a capacity more than the modern Internet. Only curiosity lured me in and enticed me. My want to explore this drive overtook the growing fear and anxiety that was building up in the back of my mind.

I should have handed the drive to the higher-ups and let them deal with it. Much of the folders inside the main folder contained thousands and thousands of files that were all unrecognizable file types. My computer was unable to open or process any of them, and as far as I knew, these file formats did not exist. I found more images of various devices, vehicles, and weapons that seemed impossible to build and defied the laws of matter. However, I didn't have to look far to find a folder titled Hear Me.

Inside, I found an audio file that details a disturbing and horrific notion. It explains the existence of the drive and why it's here. I'll play the audio for you so you can hear it yourself. File name. Message from 2299. I don't know who you are or which timeline you exist in. I don't know what date it is for you and I don't even know if you're a human. As you can see, this is a desperate attempt at making contact. The past needs to know of our mistakes so they can be avoided.

Throughout time, humankind has learnt from history, but never from the future. This is, I guess, a learning opportunity to not go down the same path we went. During the year 2050, there was a second, you could call it, an industrial revolution. I'm assuming you know of the industrial revolution since you have the technology to be hearing this message at all. This industrial revolution was a revolution of technology. A massive technological boom built up by the decades of innovation before it. It was a time in which different discoveries from the previous decade came together and

allowed us to redefine our devices forever. Soon enough, self-driving cars were replaced by a network of teleportation hubs that broke you down to the very atoms and rebuilt you on the other side. Not to say there weren't accidents, but medicine had to be. advanced to such a degree that death had become a concept of the past, several thousands of people began to live as mines on humanoid robots in the first few years of this technology's development. Quantum computers were replaced by cybernetic chips.

Our own buildings evolved into smart skyscrapers that extended to the brink of the atmosphere. We didn't even spare the oceans as they soon filled up with skyscrapers in underwater cities. When humanity finished conquering the earth and really, we didn't even spare the oceans. rid it of all its other life, they realized the mistakes they had made. Several countries began to destroy cities and build them underground instead to encourage a natural environment on the top. It wasn't climate change that killed life. No, that was realized ages ago. It was the rapid loss of habitat as the population extended beyond the Earth's holding capacity. The only animals and plants that were left were farming necessities that humanity needed. Unfortunately,

Finally, they could not form a complete ecosystem, and so the environment continued to suffer and break with no solution in sight. So, humanity took to the stars. In a short span of a hundred years, all of the planets in the solar system had been terraformed. From the hot desert of Mercury to the icy oceans of Jupiter's moons, people had found a way to live there. The populations continued to expand throughout those years, and somehow began to exceed the capacity of the entire galaxy. What many people didn't realize as they terraformed planet after planet

is that they could not create life. They could not build the environment that they had destroyed back on Earth. I was one of the few self-proclaimed space explorers. Like the sea explorers, back in the days Earth was Earth. Our job was to find more livable planets that could be terraformed quickly and efficiently. We didn't have the technology to terraform every planet, but, planets like Mercury took a lot more time and energy to transform, because after all, we couldn't literally move the planet from its orbit. Given another century, though, I doubt we wouldn't be able to do it. Experimental wormhole technology had gone into development a couple of decades earlier. Space vessels, with this form of transport built in, were given to anybody who

wished to explore space alone, millions of light years away from the closest human. These ships could construct wormholes to another given location in space and pass through them, skipping millions of light years of travel in the process. Just like that, humanity once again began expanding through the observable universe like cracks slowly forming in glass. We encountered no other life form throughout our exploration, and believed we were truly alone, until I visited Croton 42A. The planet had deep blue seas and continents full of strange animals.

They seemed to be early in their evolution, not yet intelligent. When my ship first landed on the planet, I quickly realized that the atmosphere matched that of the original Earth, rich in oxygen. The planet was an exact duplicate of Earth. In the vastness of the universe, statistics had created a similar planet. I was far, far away from the closest space station. There was no way for me to communicate my find. I didn't explore the planet any further, careful not to be able to be able to be able to be

to disturb the environment and avoid any other possible intelligent life forms that I had not yet seen. Instead, I collected samples from the area that my ship had landed in and promptly left, making sure I sterilized my entire space suit in the sterilization room. I took the samples back to the closest human settlement, and after that, news spread like wildfire. I became somewhat of a celebrity, a legendary space explorer who had found a utopia for the wealthiest of people.

and had most importantly found more life in the bleakness of space. It wasn't just me that went right back to the closest human settlement, though. Something had survived the sterilization chamber and came right back with me. It had spread across my entire spaceship and to every person I had contacted. It jumped from person to person and spread quickly. Throughout all these decades of innovation and advancement in technology, we had forgotten one thing. When humanity began to take over the planet, they also eradicated all bacteria and viruses,

effectively making sure no one would ever get sick. Medicine advanced too quickly for its own good, and with this growth, it left a gaping hole in itself. A simple virus from a planet, millions of light years away, began to conquer us, just like we had done to the stars. Just like we had built large networks of heat and light energy converters around the stars, this disease began to surround us. In the first year, half of the entire human population died. The symptoms were simple. The patient's skin would begin to slowly turn blue as the days passed. When the skin had turned completely blue, it would shrivel before the entire body would be unable to hold water. The patient would die a sudden death from dehydration.

Whole settlements collapsed into anarchy as people fought for food and resources. groups formed and attacked in mobs, stealing resources and food. Wars erupted across the intergalactic utopia humanity had created for themselves and brought buildings to the ground. Nothing could stop it from spreading. We didn't even know how it spread. It seemed to do it through all ways possible. Scientists studying patients began to die, and there was just no way to study the virus without

becoming infected yourself. The wealthiest of people began to buy out expensive spaceships. to quarantine in, but they were soon attacked as all order collapsed. For a few short months, the chaos and war lit up whole planets like fireworks in the sky. With our advanced weaponry, humans became desperate, animalistic versions of themselves, scrounging for supplies and food while all carrying the virus and transmitting it everywhere. Throughout all of this, I remained alive. I didn't show a single symptom, and somehow the virus had just passed through me.

I took my ship and moved away from major human settlements to protect myself, while still listening in to broadcasts and messages from everyone. I watched digitally as entire human settlements went empty, and infrastructure began to decay. The population had shrunk until it was confined to just one planet. Earth, the only planet that had not recorded a case of this virus. A small government had protected the planet amongst all the intergalactic chaos. The people on Earth thought that was the end of it, that they had somehow survived against all odds and that it was up to them to rebuild the intergalactic empire that we had formed.

A mystery case stomped on those ambitions and eradicated the rest of the population. After days of not getting a single broadcast or message, I realized that I was possibly the last of my kind in the empty, hopeless vacuum of space. I visited the abandoned colonies, desperate to find a single human being other than myself. But, all I found were the bodies that the virus had left behind in its wake. I have somehow not become infected yet. The virus had spared me, and at the same time sentenced me to death in the loneliness of the stars. As this century ends and a new one starts, an entire era begins.

A new era without humanity, an era in which all our settlements will begin to collapse into dust until there is no mark of us left in the universe. Sometimes I wonder, what if that's what had happened to all the other life? I returned to the planet that the virus had originated from and decided to spend the rest of my life there. Even after taking my space suit off and breathing in the sweet, fresh air, the virus won't infect me. I'm somehow the only one immune out of the trillions of people that succumbed to this disease.

Before I end my miserable existence, I've tasked my ship's AI to record and deliver this message on my ship's main hard drive. It will open a small wormhole and try to send this into the past, a technology that I have personally been working on myself ever since the whole human race when extinct. My ship's AI helped me greatly, and I was able to hopefully achieve what all of humanity hadn't yet. Time travel. If you are hearing this message and the day is somewhere.

around the early 21st century, it means that my time-traveling wormhole succeeded and that I have long since died. Well, in your time, I don't even exist yet. Please, spread this message around as much as you can. Give it to everyone. Learn from our mistakes. Protect the planet. Take care of it.

It is the only home we have in the deadly, inky, black sea of stars. My eyes were brimmed with tears as I finished hearing the message. Deep down, I knew it was genuine. I told my boss I was joking with him and took the hard drive for myself. I'm sharing this message here before it's taken away and hidden. If it really is true, then it may be the only chance we have.