Last Transmission

A single-sitting story built around one constraint: a countdown that never pauses, not even while you decide what to say.

You are the last technician awake at a polar survey station, the relay has four minutes of power, and there is a message you have not finished sending. Find the carrier by ear — the whistle drops as you close on it, the scope cleans up into a sine — and hold the dial on it while the message goes out word by word, in real morse. Interference throws the signal elsewhere, ice builds on the mast, and the log the last crew left you is there to read, if you can spare the time the transmission will not get.

The message forks twice. There are eleven endings, and the one that costs the most is the one you will want.