The ship cracked. Space twisted ahead of them, and the Z-P-N-E-S began folding itself inside out—like a rusted tin can being forced through spacetime with a crowbar.
When the rust bucket dropped out of hyperspace, it slammed straight into a cloud of warped matter—
like someone had tossed a piece of scrap metal into a boiling cosmic soup.
—KRAAASH—VZZZT—IMPACTThe hull shuddered. The entire interior went dark.
And the ship let out a groan—the kind only mechanics and therapists can hear.
[Jackie tapped the microphone, slipping gently into the broadcast]“Dear listeners, let me tell you something… nice.
GJ 251… or, if we say it with a little affection—Gliese 2.5.1.
A red dwarf star, eighteen point two light-years from Terra.
Located in Gemini.By the way—I’m a Gemini.
All my fellow Geminis, say it with me… YOO-HOO!”
[Ratings spike: +12.3%]“Over three thousand years ago, they discovered an exoplanet there—GJ 251 C.
A ‘super-Earth.’ Potentially habitable.
Scientists were screaming that it could become humanity’s new home.
Heh…
We were such adorable idiots.
Reality turned out to be simple—and beautiful, like a slap from space:
The water? Concentrated acid.
The air? Poison.
And anything alive would die faster than a Meat & Bone™ customer ordering a ‘triple-f… burger.’Only single-celled organisms survive.
The kind that feed on acid… despair… and shattered scientific dreamsEven machinery rusted faster there
than Dick’s chances of building a decent audience on INSTAGRIM™.The star itself is an M-class dwarf, about one-third the mass of our lovely Sol.
Surface temperature: 3342 K.One of its planets is rocky.
Seventy-fourth closest stellar system.The super-Earth completes an orbit in fifty-four days…
and has absolutely no need for humans—or human mistakes.”
[Dick slipped back into the broadcast, voice lower, more grounded—like a man who had just listened to a lecture on astrophysics and understood none of it]“Baby, you done?
Walking encyclopedia, I swear…
Alright, let’s get back to the idiots who picked up a new round idiot after their completely pointless trip into one of space’s many holes.”
Blindy spun his head around in panic, gasping like a fish:
“What—what the hell was that?! Did we hit something?!”
Zeros calmly scanned the space outside.
“Apparently. There’s debris around us. Looks like some kind of junkyard.”
The mini-bot burst forward with a sharp “pfff-shKSHHHK!”, hovering between them, pixels flickering as it squealed:
“SCANNING!
TRR-JING FLIP-FLAP-FLOP!
TARGET IDENTIFIED!
Remains of an ancient spacecraft…
…VOYAGER!
Most likely V1!
Confirmed with 92.6% certainty!
IT SHOULD NOT BE HERE!”
A dim holographic silhouette flickered into existence before them—
small, battered by time,
carrying an aura of lonely dignity.
Historic.
Touching.
Alien.
And clearly misplaced in the wrong reality.
Blindy roared so loudly the mini-bot spun three full rotations mid-air:
“VOYAGER!
OUR ANCIENT GALACTIC PIONEER!
HOLY FUCKING NASA RELIC!”
Zeros scratched his metal jaw.
“What kind of canned relic is that?”
The mini-bot blinked in pixelated offense:
“An ancient probe, launched from Terra.
Year: 1977.
Mission: to inform extraterrestrial civilizations of humanity’s existence.”
It jerked sharply and began glitching:
“BUT ARCHIVAL DATA STATES—
zz-zz-plink bi-di-di-br-br-BRR-BRR!
THE PROBE SHOULD’VE DISINTEGRATED: ~2780!
POSSIBLE CAUSES—
ding-ding-ding-boom-boom-BRR-BRR-BRR!GRAVITATIONAL WELLS…
COSMIC RIFTS…
OR OTHER ASTROPHYSICAL
FU—FU—FU—CATASTROPHES!AS CLASSIFIED BY YOUR SO-CALLED SERIOUS SCIENTISTS!”
Blindy went pale—impressively pale, even for someone of his general quality.
“We… WE!…
We fucking destroyed it!”
The Golden Record—the legendary disk itself—
drifted through space,
like a medal torn from the hands of a bleeding history.
The probe was gone.
Its body had shattered into a thousand fragments.
The record spiraled away toward the red dwarf,
while the rest of the debris scattered toward the nearest planet.
A quiet death
of humanity’s greatest message.