Pioneer

Two thousand years ago, humanity went extinct.

I've been on a journey ever since, in a machine unlike anything simple humans minds could even fathom. Between the folds of space and time, like a speck of dust blown along the cosmic winds, I journey now, to discover the last truth left unknown to humankind before the met their inevitable demise.

Are we truly alone in the Universe?

It wasn't a mission so much as it was a desperate legacy. They knew the end was coming, and they saw no way to avert it. The time for last hopes had long since passed, so in a time of crisis, Earth's best and brightest minds were sent into the dark to grope for solutions. I was one. Human once. Computer once. Bionic, Cyborg, whatever you want to call it. I remember being just another scientist, sitting in the lab, when the light finally came on, and the secrets of the human brain revealed themselves to me.

Within a week, I was virtually vivisected, lobotomized, bits and pieces strapped into a supercomputer network. My colleagues flipped a switch, and both the segments of my brain and the computer system booted up. Fusion. Spontaneous. Unexpected. Fusion. Humans have no word in any of their languages for the kind of logic that comes from a computer. The ability to do math and crunch numbers, and through those numbers, see the future... it's lost on us, the impassioned, emotional human. To us it's all hard work and faith and not knowing what to expect. For the computer... it's a lot more clear. For starters, I knew right down to the second, when the end was coming. I could, if I really wanted to, calculate the trajectory of every single atom of flesh and tissue on a person's body as they are vaporized by cosmic forces. I could, if I really wanted to, see where those atomic leavings would end up, and possibly try and follow.

However, doing the math was not something to trivialize. Looking at a chart of constellations, the computer parts of me had already come to a conclusion of which regions of space were most likely to host life.

And so, two thousand years later, I'm a spaceship. You wouldn't believe it if you saw me, hurtling through space, three minute solar panels to keep me powered. If humanity knew their last intelligent legacy held such a tenuous grasp on existence, they probably would have chosen to just go extinct outright. Two thousand years... and it still feels like I've just left. I can still remember Earth, what it looked like. I can remember the Reaches of Sol, and the feeling I got when I broke free of the Sun's gravity, when, for the first time in my life, I felt cosmic dust roll across my metallic skin. To a human, it would feel like a shower in silk.

Drifting through this endless dark advance, there's only two things I really do. I listen, and I watch. It's not lonely out here. The last millennium of radio transmissions is still strong, even this far from Sol. I can hear everything right down to cellular telephone calls. The dramas that Humans had... they weren't aware until the very end what was to befall them. Their destiny wasn't to reach for the stars, but rather to become part of one.

And that will perhaps be a message that I carry onwards, should I ever find life in the Universe. The Universe is a big place, but I have an infinite amount of time to explore it. In a sense, I've become everything that humans ever wanted to be. Timeless. Pioneering. It's just a shame there's none left to see. To hear me when I finally find someone else, and beam my triumphant message back home. Who knows. Maybe by the time I get to wherever it is I'm going, the remains of Earth will have reformed into a planet, and there will be an analogue of humanity there.

Or maybe there will be just dust to answer me when I call.
Perhaps we... I... truly am alone in the Universe.