re: #62 RealityBasedSteve

I once read (but I’ll be damned if I can remember where or by whom) a sci-fi story about an astronaut alone on a research station on the dark side of the moon. One day, he loses all contact with Mission Control. He soon realizes that there’s nothing wrong with his broadcast equipment. He gets in his lunar vehicle and drives where he can see the earth over the horizon. To his horror, he can see flashes popping all over the globe. He knows that for whatever reason, a global nuclear war has happened, and he will never be returning home, because there’s no more home to return to.

He eventually gets the idea of trying to preserve something of human history, so in desperation he turns on his transmitter and points it towards the distant stars. He begins broadcasting every fact he can think of. Every bit of trivia, every scientific fact he knows. The last thing he broadcasts before his oxygen runs out is a knock-knock joke.