'Cavatina'- A Short Story

The darkest space. Ultimate blackness. Vast expanses of nothing, the earth completely invisible now, the sun but a speck in the distance.

Voyager 1 soars through space, an expensive wreck of 'state of the art' metal, now dulled and chipped over 560 years of flying through the cosmos, half of it unworking or defective but still faithfully beaming back information with its tiny processor. Completely unknowing that it had lapsed into the legendary stuff of science textbooks, with only a handful of part time engineers still monitoring the signals that take 272 hours to reach Earth, even though they travel at the speed of light.

Beaming back information. Beaming back information. Beaming back information.

Ever transmitting, its 68 kilobytes of memory being utilised to the maximum available, sending back information on the stars, the extra-solar space that has never been properly observed by a man-made craft before.

Slowly drifting, the golden disc on its side is pure and untouched, the only thing still radiant about the space craft. A disc that took months to prepare, painstakingly planned and made. A disc that features the most important things ever to be produced by Mankind, a picture of the diversity on our tiny corner of the universe. Covered in dust but yet still somehow glinting in the starlight. 

Beaming back information. Beaming back information. Beaming back information.

The Golden disc. Aluminium, coated in pure 24-karat Gold. Radiant in itself, in both appearance and conception. A pure example of the human races best intentions and works. Wars and hatred all placed aside, here was a project designed to showcase us in our best light, the contents of this disc including images of our earth and our people, and of the greatest artform of our kind.

Music.

Music, that celestial form of art, with the power like no other to rip straight to the centre of your being and incite your emotions to the heights of euphoria, the depths of misery, the passions of anger. The ultimate expression of a persons distaste, pain, glee and anguish.

The most prominent example being the Cavatina from Beethoven's last String Quartet.

Beaming back information. Beaming back information. Beaming back information.

Flying through space, the collective dreams of mankind contained in one raggedy space probe, 722 kilograms of metal, circuitry and ingenuity. 

Beaming back information. Beaming back information. Beaming back information.

The Cavatina, a piece truly like no other, Beethoven is at his most deathly moments as he writes this beautiful lament. It screams silently, the most beautiful music he possibly ever wrote. A cry of pain, raging at his life yet silently appreciating it as the most beautiful thing we could have. He mourns the loss of his nephew, who deserted him to go and join the army, despite Beethoven's fears of losing him. He mourns the loss of his hearing, utterly deaf after so many years. He mourns his ailing health, regretting that he will not be able to deliver his gift to humanity any more. Within those softly swirling and haunting chords is the most profound of all the thoughts-

Mortality is a very real thing. 

Bea  m ing back information. Be___---aming back information. B eami **£@ ng back information.

The Voyager Probe is ailing, it may not survive much longer. It is slowly degenerating into a pile of space junk. The pride of mankind is falling into disrepair.