That was attempt 259.
He smiled. Then he pressed ENTER .
He wasn't going to send another volunteer.
“Source: Kael, J. Destination: Probe 7, Proxima b. Compression level: Maximum. Redundancy: Absolute.”
Then—nothing. Forty thousand years later, on a beach of violet crystal sand beneath the dim glow of Proxima Centauri, a small archive finished downloading.
The scanner whined. His vision shattered into a trillion tiny squares. He felt his thoughts being folded, like origami, over and over until they were the size of a grain of sand. There was a sensation of falling through a tunnel made of pure mathematics.
And that, he decided, was close enough to a happy ending.