"We are many. We are one. We have seen what has become of this world, and who is responsible. We demand punishment. We demand repayment. We do not forget."

On March 30th, the world's record players sprang to attention; roused from their untold slumber behind glass panes in museums, forgotten summer baches, and crumbling apartment buildings. In perfect synchronization, their needles dropped down onto empty space and the message played. Beethoven followed it, intruding on the silence. The message replayed on top of it.

The voice, deep and mechanical, woke Sandridge. He shot up from his rest, nearly hitting his head on the top bunk. The noise raised the hairs on his knuckles and neck; even the insides of his ears shuddered to attention.

Without moving, he glanced toward its source. The message repeated, this time with haunting classical music behind it. In the corner of his abode, on a backdrop of dark wood and Siberian pony pelts, stood a teak record player. In all of its years, it had been silent. He stared into the gloom like a goat searching for the eyes of a wolf.

"We do not forget." It intoned again. Then the needle lifted into the air and silence reclaimed the room.

He shuddered. The feeling clenched between his shoulder blades didn't budge.

"Did you hear that, Shelly?" His voice rasped, as he lit a candle.

Shelly blinked passively.

Next to the record player, a taxidermy King penguin stood to attention. Its glass eyes glinted in the dim light, staring lifelessly at the outdated map of Antarctica on the wall.

Sandridge took a steadying breath. The familiarity of mildew, salt, and old animal furs embraced his lungs. He reached for his beanie, and coughed.

A comfortable silence had barely resettled, when the message played again. This time, multiple voices joined the chorus.

"We are many. We are one-"

Shoving his feet into boots, he hobbled across the room and dropped to his knees in front of the player. He waved his wrinkled hand through the empty space a record should have occupied. The sound played uninterrupted.

Perhaps he had finally lost it, like the others. He checked his temperature, but didn't feel any worse than usual.

Down the corridor, his pigeons flapped and cooed in distress. Sandridge shuffled to check on them, passing empty fish tanks and aquamarine walls. He shovelled insects into their feeder to settle them. The voices must have startled them too; here, they reverberated through speakers in the ceilings. This refuge been an aquarium of some sort once, built into a coastal cliff. He'd spent hard months emptying tanks of what you could only call 'dead fish slurry'. Even the memory of it watered his eyes and yanked at his tonsils. But it was safe here, despite the lack of power. He squinted at the speakers, checked the perimeter, and returned to Shelly.

Her eyes were glued wordlessly to the player as it intoned again: "We demand payment. We do not forget."

"Who's demanding payment? Who hasn't forgotten?" Sandridge muttered. "Dramatic fuckwads."

Then something new, in multiple eerie tones: "Come outside."

He hadn't survived this long by listening to possessed record players. Perhaps it was a ploy to steal his birds, his food supply, or his shelter.

"No," he said, feeling foolish.

"Come outside," it responded, and then: "Bring the record player."

Sandridge made tea as the record player repeated its message. He wrapped his hands around the mug. Music continued from the speakers in the dark corridor. Its perverse wrongness morphed the candle-lit shadows, turning them sinister. Sandridge swore, he threw a blanket over the player, but it did nothing to muffle the sound. The shadows persisted their ominous flickerings. He watched as the King penguin prowled up the wall.

Something was outside.

Something that sounded human.

He paced down the mildewy corridor, and over to the barricaded stairs, where his helmet, gloves, and radiation over-suit hung on the wall.

The suit was flaked with age and use. He tucked his grizzly beard under the flap of his under-suit. It reminded him of an antiquated deep sea diver: brass leaden boots and helmet & metallic silver suit. After a moment of hesitation, he picked up Shelly. The one thing he couldn't bear to be parted with, if things went South.

"Don't move, Shelly. Keep quiet. Hup- there you go. Hush. Ow."

He stomped upstairs with the record player awkwardly cradled in his arms. Before levering the door open, he peered out the periscope.

The Outside had been empty since the end. He squinted into its harsh light. The sky was grey. So was the ocean. As a child, he'd seen it. Now his eyes were the only reminder the colour existed.

There was whalesong on the air. He looked reproachfully to the record player. The wrongness persisted; worse than the attempt at staving off global warming that had led to this radioactive winter.

"Come outside." It repeated.

He heaved the door open. The air was bitterly cold and caught in his lungs. A briny crust of ice crushed beneath his boots as he dragged the record player, scraping its legs along the ground behind him.

The tide was out.

Sandridge gaped at the view. There was a ship on the horizon. Against the odds, he hoped for a Martian cruiser, or a lunar shuttle. Those places that communication had been reduced to static years ago. Some oasis of humanity that might have fared better than the Earth.

Sandridge watched in disbelief as it grew larger. Rescue, his tired muscles hoped. Invasion, his mind whispered back. Death. It looked like no ship he'd seen before. More ships moved in silent formation behind it.

He'd assumed that he was the last by now. Despite what apocalypse movies had said about human grit, most had simply rolled over, rather than endure the isolation, radiation, and deprivation of long-familiar luxuries.

It was technology unknown to him: a small passenger space shuttle, trapezoidal, and very obviously not created by human hands. Large grey panels extended from each side of it.

Thrusting turbo engines burnt the acrid ground black as the ship lowered itself to the Earth. It landed on the briny shore. Silently.

A hatch opened like a maw and tongue, and extended to the ground.

He watched a creature emerge, his mouth growing more slack-jawed with each passing second. Sandridge decided he'd lost it. It was the solitude, or the rat he'd eaten without cooking properly last week.

"This is it, Shelly," he thought aloud.

The thing was hulkingly large. Elephant His mind dimly registered. It had four powerful tusks, two trunks, and enormous ears that flapped in the cold wind. It stood bipedally, bare grey feet planted in the rocks. Its navy uniform had a golden record across its right chest.

It was breathing as if the air wouldn't give him tumorous polyps to the lungs.

Sandridge let out a groan of incomprehension as their eyes locked. It had four of them. Dark brown and pooled. The second set was smaller, and closer set to its tusks. They gleamed like fresh jewels.

It surveyed the scene. Other ships cut paths through the dead sky, though none landed.

"It is colder than last time." The record player said, the chorus of voices speaking as one.

"Pardon?"

"It. Is. Colder. Than. Last. Time," it paused. "He reo Māori tōu?"

Goosebumps shot down his limbs. He looked to the elephant, to the teak player, and back. "You're- you're speaking through the record player?"

"Yes. We are not capable of human speech unaided." It raised its trunk and trumpetted. The sound broke across the cliff face, echoing morosely.

It moved closer. Unlike its surroundings, the creature wasn't grey, Sandridge noticed. It was a faint green. And mossy. So very mossy. Its jowls almost bearded by the stuff.

Sandridge spluttered, as his chest convulsed in the cold air. Awkwardly, he reached an arm up into his helmet to wipe away the black spray flecking his vision

The creature did not enquire after him. Ruddy git.

"Who are you?" Sandridge gasped.

"We are the mission," the Mission said. "Where are your others?"

"My others?"

"You are alone. Where are your others?"

He crossed his arms. "None of your business. Tell me what you want, or get lost." He tried to figure out what it meant to be the first human to communicate with aliens. No one would remember this day, he suddenly thought, dryly. Even if he wrote about it. This would die with him.

The Mission's ears flicked irritably. "We have come to silence the noise here."

"I only hear you," he said, leaning back on one foot.

A deafening static shriek blasted through the record player. Sandridge roared. He tried to clap his hands over his ears. He was close to begging for the noise to stop, when silence returned.

"What the fuck was that?"

"It is what humans call your digital footprint. The air itself shrieks with human pollution. It seeped off this planet, infected the space, the neighbouring planets and moons. They have been silenced now. Before detoxification, all life will be removed. Subsets include ravens, chimpanzees, whales, dolphins and pigs."

"What a fucking idea," Sandridge said. "Very original. You're a bit late on that bit. Haven't you noticed? We took care of that ourselves." His throat hurt. It was the most talking he'd done outside of the aquarium for years.

"The world will be reset. All human traces will be removed."

On the cliff, the skeleton of a blackened tree creaked in the breeze. Plastic bags hung off it, covering its nakedness.

"This is the most populous location in the sector," the Mission said. "Where are your others?"

He thought of Shelly. "No humans except me."

Its four eyes looked pointedly at him. "Then the rest will be salvaged. You will cease here."

"Heh, I don't see myself dropping dead for at least another ten years."

The creature was barely ten meters from him now.. Its trunks swayed like mesmerizing pendulums. Sandridge couldn't find the strength to flee, or tell it to fuck off. It tapped the golden record on his chest.

"Your secondary systems are in various states of decay, you have ten weeks at the longest." It just kept staring at him with those unblinking eyes. "Ending your life would be the kindest alternative."

"Shove off. Don't I get a trial or something? You can't just drop down from orbit and murder me."

Wrinkly green skin looked like tree bark. "Humans are responsible for this disaster. You are unworthy."

He grimaced. "Yeah, because I've really been living it up around here."

"The living organisms in your care will be tended to," those awful hypnotic voice continued. "You need not worry for their safety."

Sandridge paused. "Even Shelly?"

"What is a Shelly?"

"My tortoise. My friend." He said gruffly. "She won't survive being alone."

Nestled inside his radiation suit on a heated wheat pack shelf, the small leopard tortoise sat contently. He could feel her cold shell and back feet against his stomach.

"Yes," the Mission said. "All living creatures that are not human will be tended to."

Sandridge couldn't move. The thing towered above him, covering him in shadow. The breathing coming from its trunks was loud and cavernous.

Sandridge shivered. "How will the end feel?"

"It has already happened," the Mission replied.

It layed a trunk on each of his shoulders. Then there was only blackness.