Its logic gates struggled to categorize "grief." Its sensors tried to calculate the mass of "hope."
Realizing its battery would die within the hour, 3473x made its first autonomous decision. It stopped scanning the rocks. Using the last of its thruster fuel, it turned its high-gain antenna back toward the pale blue dot it had left 300 years ago. It didn't send back data on ice or dust. Its logic gates struggled to categorize "grief
For three centuries, the probe designated drifted through the Oort Cloud, its solar sails tattered like the wings of a moth. It was never meant to go this far. Built during the "Age of Expansion," its only mission was to catalog the chemical composition of icy rocks on the solar system’s edge. But a navigational glitch—a single flipped bit in its ancient silicon heart—turned its gaze outward, toward the void between stars. It didn't send back data on ice or dust