Routine

The station hummed with the ever present sounds of machinery keeping it in motion and preserving what life was in it, yet before it used to also be filled with the sounds of conversation from its crew, a sound now long gone... He pushed these thoughts out of his head, pressed a button and summoned his customary daily coffee.

-Routine-

He made his way to the hydroponics, passing by rooms over rooms of deactivated science equipment, in its heyday most of these would be filled with the brightest minds of Earth working on what they all believed was their salvation... Another suppressed thought... The plants sat under a dead white sun and most days there was nothing to do here, robots kept everything in check... As he looked up more memories of Earth came flowing back, best to keep moving...

-Routine-

He headed back into the hallways and spotted Sophie, she was headed the opposite way, they both mumbled a good morning to each other and kept on their way, as he reached the end of the hallway he thought he'd heard her footsteps stop abruptly but he couldn't care... there was routine to take care of...

The life support room was the loudest, a loud buzzing and humming could be heard coming from the machines that kept both men and plants alive in the station, as for the previous there was not much to do here most days, he checked the station's integrity verifying if nothing had gone through the stations “armor” and pierced something important, checked atmosphere and temperature, checked water supply, checked , checked , checked...

-Routine-

Walking back through the same hallway it finally broke, Sophie and Frank were standing in front of one of the rooms, looking through the door with a dead stare, “this is not routine...” he thought, they jostled when he touched their shoulders. “Hey, what's up?” He asked, Sophie simply pointed inside the dark room. He saw a beeping red light inside a room he didn't remember, wait, no, he did, comms room, it hit him:

Communications worked in a simple way, a message was sent from the ground, if there was someone listening up top it would be heard, otherwise, it'd be stored until someone was available and the console would display a warning... a beeping red light...

The door swished aside as he pressed the pad controlling it, the room felt cold from months of inactivity and ghostly with the red light enhancing that effect with the meaning it carried with it.

He had thought of that possibility of course, they all had, that someone had made it through the hellfire that destroyed Earth six months back, there were plenty of remote places on earth, plenty of paranoid people who dedicated their lives readying for the apocalypse, but to actually be presented with it...

He pressed the combination of buttons that activated replay... nothing... wait no, something, blips followed by silence. “Morse code?” Said Sophie “Maybe binary...” Said Frank. Just like that the old mindset came back, “You work on finding out which, I need to gather the rest of the crew...”

Jack made his way through the station calling out for the others, a few minutes later they were gathered in the comms room “So? Any luck?” he asked, Frank held up a piece of paper with two simple words written on it:

“STILL THERE?”