To boldly go

How does a mortal explore the universe?

This is the problem every civilisation has when it looks up at the stars and contemplates exploring them.  The distances are just too great, and their lifespans too finite.

Some have looked in vain for wormholes, handy secret passages to other parts of the universe that cut out the need for actually traveling there, but they exist only in fiction. Some have tried cyrogenics, freezing their travellers, to be thawed out on arrival at the target star, but this is high risk. In fact, it's nearly impossible to re-awaken any life form the required thousands or millions of years later and all these civilisations achieve is sending frozen corpses on a tour of the universe.

But the people of one planet found a solution. Immortality, or as close to immortality as could be achieved. Replacing the dead, damaged and amended cells of the traveler at the end of every day, meaning that the travelers' body and mind never aged, they stayed the same from leaving the home planet to jouney's end thousands of years later. 

There were a few problems inherent in the model. Firstly, the sheer scale of physical manipulation on a daily basis, not to mention the materials that would be needed to achieve such manipulation, meant that the transporting ship could only contain one passenger, so there would be no means to colonise alien worlds, merely to go there and say "Hello". 

The other problem was memory. As all the cells in the brain were rebooted at the start of every day, there would be no means to retain memory, the brain would remain a blank slate, in the same state it left in many thousands of years into the journey. Yes the passenger could leave notes for themselves, but only brief summaries of key events, given the time and distance travelled, as there would be no time to read a thousand years' of notes in a single day, and no benefit in doing so. 

Thus we join Eric. Eric is one of  the first of his species to set out to explore brave new worlds. He has been travelling for just over seven thousand years, yet he remembers not so much as a single second of this time. 

"Good morning Eric," the ship's computer said, as the night-mode was replaced by the day-mode and Eric's eyes opened.

"Where am I?" he said, then realising where changed his question to "When am I?"

"You have been travelling for seven thousand, four hundred and twenty seven years and thirty-six days," said the computer. 

"Anything interesting happen?" 

"To date the mission has had zero success in terms of alien life forms. We have visited three planets with seemingly habitable atmospheres and taken samples from each."

"Great, let me have a flick through the mission log then slap on a movie."  Eric had, of course, watched every film ever made many hundreds of thousands of times, but because of the mind wipe couldn't remember any of them. 

The day seemed likely to be a day like any other, but suddenly Eric found his film cut off half way through. 

"What's up computer?" he said.

"We have found life sir.  The solar system we are approaching, I have analysed the planets within it and one is showing a gas combination that is only possible with the existence of living organisms.

"Were we expecting it?"

"No sir. The planet is outside of the assumed-habitable zone."

"Then let us be the first to encounter alien, no matter how small, even the smallest bacteria would be an amazing find." 

There was a short pause while the ship changed course to enter the solar system. 

"Do you know which planet it is computer?"

"I believe that it is the third planet from the sun, the blue-green planet with artificial lights blazing from the surface. The one surrounded by man-made satellites."

"You mean we have found intelligent life?"

"It is certainly an advanced civilisation."

"This is amazing. Prepare the universal greeting and broadcast it through your translation circuit."

"A highly sensible suggestion. There is a minor barrier to that plan but it is easily navigated and I will carry out your orders."

Eric started to prepare his speech. It was what he'd made the journey for. He'd rehearsed the speech a million times, but of course his memory of all these speeches had been wiped. 

'Take me to your leader'.  No, too corny. 'Take me to the one in charge'. No, not dramatic enough. 'Who's wearing the trousers?' No, a bit obscure, we don't know whether they have developed trousers yet, plus they might be a very literal species.

His musings distracted him and when he next looked at the screen he was surprised to see that they had left the planet's orbit and were no longer in the solar system.

"Why have we left the planet, computer?"

"I am following your orders, Mr Eric."

"My orders were to prepare the universal greeting and broadcast it through your translation circuit."

"Exactly. I realise that we have left without the translation circuit or the universal greeting, I am returning to fetch these so I can complete your order."

"What, no. Turn around, we'll do the 'Hello' without the translation circuit. I'll just smile and wave."

"Negative, I must follow your initial instruction which is in accordance with the official guidelines."

Eric tried to manually turn the ship around, but he was overridden by the computer. He tried to go to the main control panel to revert to manual, but found he was strapped to his seat unable to move.

He fought valiantly for the next thirteen hours, after which he remembered nothing about the day's events. It would be another fifteen thousand years before he saw the planet again, by which time life on the planet had changed dramatically.