How can we go back?

Journal Entry: #286

Date: March 25th, 2027

Location: Mars Orbit, aboard the Apex Observer deployment capsule, drifting further away from home.

My name is Jonathan Kirkpatrick. I have been granted the fortune of literacy and mobility; the ability to observe and comprehend; the means to assist and share. Yet I am burdened with a curse that is only amplified in my given situation: I cannot relinquish the grip of my past, even as I stand poised to propel humanity into its uncertain future.

Which is an odd thing to say, as right now, I am alone, truly alone, and isolated from any known life. I've been out here five months, deploying the new NASA satellite, coded with Superhuman AI that could see millennia into the future.

In the last 0.1% of the entire human history, we invented all technology. In the next four to five years, we will see a hundred years' worth of technological change and the impact it has on the economy. The world is moving fast; everything is moving fast. But I am not. I sit here drifting in space, slowly, slowly away from this fast-changing world. But I am still a man tethered to my past, in a world that I am long away from. But through this journal, never forgotten from. 

As of right now, capsule is my only company, a sound both comforting and maddening. It reminds me I am still alive, yet mocks me with the absence of any other voice, any other presence. Earth is a blue and green marble in the distance, spinning on without me, as it always has and always will. My mission is critical, they told me—a linchpin in humanity's next great leap. But floating out here, detached from the planet that birthed me, it’s hard to feel like anything more than a speck of dust.

This satellite—the Apex Observer—will change everything. That’s what they promised. A machine capable of predicting patterns in human behavior, of seeing the branching possibilities of the future. We’ve handed over our destinies to a machine more intelligent than any of us combined. And yet here I am, its caretaker, its midwife, as alone as humanity has ever been in the cold vacuum. If a machine can foresee every choice we will make, are we still free? Or does the very act of knowing limit us, caging us into a future that no longer belongs to us? Perhaps the Apex Observer isn’t a tool but a mirror, reflecting what we fear to see.

I’ve had too much time to think. Obviously. About the people I’ve left behind, about the decisions that brought me here. They told me this mission required sacrifice, but they never said how much it would demand. My father’s voice echoes in my mind, sometimes as a reminder and sometimes as a schizophrenic crash out: “Greatness doesn’t come without a price, son.” But I wonder if the price is worth it.

Out here, you come to realize how fragile humanity is. Not just our bodies, so dependent on air and warmth, but our minds, so easily fractured by isolation. Our resilience, so often lauded, feels insignificant when faced with the silence of the stars. The satellite’s systems know the future of our species, perhaps even the moment of our extinction. I wonder if, in its cold, logical gaze, it sees me as a relic—a remnant of a time when humanity was governed by uncertainty, by the mistakes and triumphs of flawed individuals.

But is it weakness to hold onto those imperfections? Can progress be meaningful if it erases the very struggles that define us? The Apex Observer is flawless, no doubt in that, yet it will never know the weight of doubt or the ache of loss. Are these not the things that make us human? Or have I romanticized them, clinging to the pain of the past because it is all I have left?

I’ve been writing, a journal of sorts. A tether to sanity, perhaps, or maybe just an exercise in futility. Words on a screen, floating in the abyss. I write about Earth, its chaos and beauty. The smell of rain on concrete after a storm, the unpredictable dance of autumn leaves caught in a breeze, the way sunlight filters through cracks in old shutters. I write about the sound of wind through trees and how it’s never the same twice, always shifting, and alive. I write about the faces of those I’ve loved, though they’ve grown blurry at the edges, like a photograph left too long in the sun. I write because it’s all I have left, the only way to remind myself that I am still human—that I come from a world of imperfection, of life.

The Apex Observer will complete its initialization sequence in twenty-seven days. After that, my part in this mission is over. The return trip is scheduled, but a nagging doubt lingers in my mind. Will they bring me back? Or will they decide that a human isn’t worth the fuel, the risk? Perhaps they’ll leave me here, a ghost in orbit, watching over the world I once belonged to.

To those who come after me: what will you make of the world we leave behind? Will you mourn our imperfections or embrace them? I wonder if you will remember the weight of soil beneath your feet, the sound of human voices in a crowded square, the untidy, stubborn vitality of life. Beware the seductive lure of perfection; it is a sterile thing, offering nothing but order at the cost of humanity.

Our legacy must not be of machines, for machines know nothing of joy, pain, or the bittersweet pull of memory. Understand the past before you discard it. It is in our imperfections, our moments of loss and triumph, that we find what it means to be whole. Perhaps holding on to these things—even the painful ones—is the only way to remain human.

I don’t know what’s waiting for me—back on Earth or beyond. But for now, I sit in this capsule, suspended between the stars and the blue glow of home, clinging to memories and the hope that they’ll be enough to guide me through the darkness.