Legacy

"What do you want your legacy to be?"

"That's a rather odd question," I replied. "Right out of the blue, as you might say. Or out of the black, to be more accurate."

"What's so odd about?" Nina asked, a bit sulkily, I thought. "It's a straightforward question. Ought to be right up your alley."

"Isn't a 'legacy' what politicians start worrying about, one month before leaving office, after screwing you over for seven years?" I asked. "Just in case someone might remember later on?"

"You can be sarcastic if you like," sulked Nina, "but don't you ever wonder if you're having some positive effect?"

"Like ... is anyone going to remember me when I'm gone?"

"More like, have you made the planet a better place," she said. "Have you done anything to advance your species? Or any species, for that matter."

"Oh, I don't know," I temporized. "I kind of think this is my legacy. Yours, too, if you want it. You know, 'boldly going,' like they used to say. Space exploration, right? We're among the first to do it. Who knows? We may be the first to discover another intelligent life form!"

Nina frowned. "Ye-es," she said slowly, "but it seems so sterile, in a way. It's exciting, sure. And not many get the opportunity to do it ..."

"Damn right!" I said.

"But what are we passing on to future generations?" she persisted. "Are we doing anything to ensure the survival of our kind? Or promote peace among us?"

Females! I snorted sarcastically. But only to myself.

Then I saw it. The sensors indicated that we had picked something up, a bit of space detritus. This was a rare event. It never turned out to be anything interesting, but the event itself was welcome. It was, at least, a different shade of boring against the otherwise unrelieved black of boring. So we went to see what kind of asteroid flake the ship had sucked in this time.

And this was different.

"Odd material," I observed cautiously. "Could be an artifact. Irregular shape. Looks ... torn."

"Whoa!" gasped Nina. "Look at that! It has markings on it. It looks like a script."

"Not any that I've seen before," I said. I was starting to get a little excited. "Any ideas about place of origin."

"There is a sun system a couple of parsecs away," said Nina. "A star and seven planets. Well, seven or eight. The eighth one is open to debate. Oh! And some debris that might have been another planet once."

"Doesn't sound like much," I shrugged. "But I guess we ought to take a look. Any luck with the little fragment?"

"No," she admitted. "I ran it through the translator, and it doesn't match anything. But it could be all that's left of a once-great civilization."

"Ok, let me take another look at it," I said. It was utter gibberish, but for posterity, I will preserve it here, whatever it is:

"For the prevention of disease only."