Discovered someday too distant for any of us to imagine in dunes of radioactive dust by curious interplanetary explorers on what once was Earth, a single stone monument broke the endless sands and piles of tangled synthetic artifacts. The monolith’s sun-bleached surface was scribed with a simple message in dozens of languages. From what could be pieced together out of faint subaspace echoes of electromagnetic communication and odd bits of print (mostly on yellowed drink containers), the visitors’ portable devices were able to get the gist of the inscription.
“You had to be there.”