Author: Nathan Matthew Edmunds

The spacecraft ascended the purpose of its creators’ intention like most of their labors before it. On November 5, 2018, the Voyager 2 probe broke through the heliosphere of its home system and hummed through the blind and deaf cosmos. By the time the craft’s instrumentation failed, it had exceeded the reach of its makers and existed only as testament to them through the gold record that was secured to its exterior. Bound to drift the galaxy of its origin planet, a satellite among satellites, its wanderings did not seem to invoke fascination from the star systems on its trajectory, though who knew with the vast web of space what might awaken in the far beyond from the craft’s gentle tugs against the elements which made up that void.

When the beings detected the Voyager 2, the miraculous journey had long tattered the spacecraft into fragments of its original delineation. Even the miniscule density of the void carried with it the inescapable agonies of transformation. It must have appeared to them as cave paintings did to its creators. A mere rib bone in the design of the creation. Though they could not unlock the meaning of the probe’s instruments, the beings were able to decipher the remnants of the gold record and bridge the Rubicon. The travelers charted the origins of the satellite’s creators and set on their own journey.

Somewhere in the southern constellation of Pavo on the moon of a gas giant, light from the system’s blue-white binary star glimmered off small rocks at the rim of the crater where the creators labored. Even this distance from their origin star, the creators’ machines must have appeared as rudimentary as bone tools to the beings who hovered before them. The site marked first contact. The creators called themselves seekers of knowledge though their tracks revealed they often dug for more than these noble intentions. They were unable to decipher the beings’ transmissions. If they had, they may have excavated some understanding of the fascinating travelers, though no doubt they would have overlooked the gold in that streambed; The chance to comprehend their own nature.

They drank naked with cupped hands at the rim of the watering hole, covered in the warm yellow light of their home sun. These early vessels of consciousness, epochs from their inevitable creations, witnessed the visitors through the simple gaze of wonder and fear, or perhaps thought them remnant visions from their digestions that seemed to bring dreams to life. In many ways, these makers possessed greater wisdom than their later iterations, though seemingly less refined in their methods of seeking.

These curious fumblings unfolded across great distance as each pressed their thumb on the scale of understanding. Some reckoned the only true knowledge extracted from the encounters found that curiosity may be the most ancient revelation of consciousness in their galaxy.