Captain Phileas Figg switched on the ship's log recorder. He'd been sitting at the control panel for the past hour or so deep in thought about what his life had been and what it possibly could have been. Now it was time to broadcast his monthly message to Earth. Monthly! It used to be daily! How his routine work on the USS Stargazer had evolved over the years. Gradually, so he had hardly noticed, the subtle changes had taken place. Changes, which had eventually become very decisive. The purpose of his mission had been dramatically reduced to what could be likened to that of a guest at a party who had overstayed their welcome.
'Captain's log, star-date 2028 from the USS Stargazer. Tomorrow, I'll have been in space for fifty years. Fifty years alone on board this spaceship. A one-man crew. I'll have dedicated practically all my life to this, one of the greatest scientific exploration missions in the history of humanity. Yet, I have become not only a nobody, an insignificant passenger on this vast spaceship at the edge of our solar system, but also an annoying embarrassment to NASA. When I joined this mission all those years ago, I realised the sacrifice I would be making. At the time, I believed I was privileged to have been selected to lead this mission to the far reaches of the solar system. To observe, carry out experiments, and send back invaluable information about our planetary system only a visiting spaceship with a human being on board could provide. I gave up the possibility of finding a partner, of having a family, and living the life on planet Earth that most human beings would desire. I gave all that up for the sake of scientific progress.
'Oh, God, what have I done? I loved a girl once, and she loved me too. A beautiful girl from Georgia. We could have got married, settled down near my parents' home just outside Atlanta, Georgia, had a family. I could have followed my career on Earth and have been happy living there. Man was born to live in his home, with family and friends. I should have stayed on Earth. I should have become an old man on Earth. An old man who can look up to the sky and feel the warm sunshine on his face, who can gaze at the myriad of stars in the night sky in the familiar constellations that mankind has always gazed upon.
'Still, and despite all those earthly pleasures, I might have felt a sense of completion of duty to science and mankind if I could have been responsible for this mission's work and achievements. Perhaps happiness and the sense of accomplishment are one and the same. However, we all know what happened, don't we? You sent me those minor changes to the ship's software - almost insignificant at first. Then they started to arrive more frequently. The changes to the software began to become noticeable in how the ship performed, the tasks the ship's computer could carry out. You called them 'helper' software, but now I know it is referred to on Earth as Artificial Intelligence. The programmes have little by little taken over the complete running of the ship. In other words, I have now been made redundant. I am needed no longer. A mere actor upon a stage, working on experiments, sending reports and observations that the ship's computer has already completed and dispatched to Earth weeks before.
'So tomorrow I will have been racing across the cosmos for fifty years. Fifty years of wasted time owing to Artificial Intelligence, which could have carried out this mission not only as well as I could but infinitely better. I am old-fashioned, second-hand, unnecessary, something that just gets in the way and needs to be discarded. I cannot turn back, of course, I am now seventy-five, so I would be long dead before this ship arrived back on Earth. I cannot take over the controls of this ship to direct it towards some asteroid and smash it to pieces in revenge for what you have done to me. The ship has taken over and is in full control of its destiny. I, however, am not. I am merely the consequence of an intelligence greater than my own. I am a frog in a hot desert, a fish on a mountain top, a sparrow in the depths of the ocean, a man lost in space, where no human should ever be. I resign from NASA. To resign; the only respectable action left to me.'
Phileas Figg switched off the ship's log recorder and sent the message back to Earth, where it would arrive many days later. He switched on the screen which gave a rear view of space. There, on the screen, as a tiniest of blue dots, and barely visible, was the planet Earth almost a light year away. He only knew it was Earth because he had carefully researched its location in the black space towards the sun, now also no larger than the smallest pea. Phileas gazed upon Earth for quite a while, and it occurred to him that he was and most probably will have been the only human being to have travelled so far from the state of Georgia.
He then reached into the jacket pocket of his uniform for his harmonica – the only true friend and companion over all these years. And with the vague memory of a young and beautiful girl called Georgia on his mind, he lifted the instrument to his mouth, and began to play. [music]
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