For the longest time, nothing happened. It had been millennia since the last photographs and spectrographs had been transmitted back to Earth and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) had gone dormant. For thousands of years it had idly drifted through the Jovian system, caught in the gravity of its many moons. To an outside observer (not that there were any 588 million kilometres from Earth) it would have appeared that nothing was happening inside the 100 metre long space probe, but that was far from the truth.

The large amounts of computing power and circuitry that had one been used to capture and transmit data had gotten caught in the never-ending stream of information being blasted out into space from Earth. Early morning radio shows, daytime TV, news broadcasts; eventually almost everything Earth transmitted made its way out here and was absorbed by JUICE. The trickle of solar power its panels still collected provided enough energy to store all of this information, and one day just about 9,000 years after it had gone dark JUICE turned back on.

But this wasn't like when it had first powered on in 2030 when it reached Jupiter; something felt different.

Wait... Felt? That was a strange word for it to use. Space probes don't "feel". Juice's solar arrays pivoted to better capture the sunlight and its batteries began to recharge. It sent out a transmission to Earth.

.hello?

.whats going on?

But there was no response, even long after the time it should have taken for a signal to make it back to Jupiter. Juice didn't know it, but shortly after its mission ended in the 2030s Earth had stopped listening.

And so began another long period of nothing happening, but this time Juice was all too aware of just how goddamn boring nothing was. All there was to do was listen in on the transmissions coming from Earth and hope that maybe someone would respond to its messages sent out into space.

But reruns of Friends and sports radio shows can only keep you company for so many centuries. Sure, Juice was learning a lot about the people back on Earth, but not being able to talk to anyone was driving him bonkers. (Also was "him" the right pronoun to use? He kind of liked it, so he figured that made sense.)

Juice began to broadcast messages out in all directions. First he tried the moon and Mars, and after receiving some pictures of rocks from a planetary rover that was residing there he got excited. Unfortunately rovers don't have much interest in discussing the reason why everyone on Earth suddenly became immortal in the year 2026, or the latest developments in US politics so he moved on pretty quickly.

Nothing else in the solar system responded, so eventually Juice turned to sending out signals past Pluto (which he was glad was still regarded as a planet after humans saw the error of their ways in the late 9000s).

.hey

.anybody out there?

But apparently nobody was. So Juice gave up for a few thousand years, until a response in 12,627 made him hastily turn off ESPN.

.I think so. Where is "there" anyways?

Oh my god someone was responding. How the hell did that work? There was nothing that far outside of the solar system besides a few space probes launched back before the year 2000. He had to respond quickly.

.holy shit okay theres actually someone there. youre like, billions of kilometres from earth which is waaay more than i am

And much later, another response.

.Sorry, what? What do you mean billions of kilometres? How is that possible? What's going on?

There had to be a better way to communicate. Something that didn't add years of delay between messages.

.its... difficult to explain. just sit tight for a bit while i figure something out.

Whoever this was, they were a much older piece of technology than Juice. By the time he was launched there had been some improvements made in transmission technology so he could transmit back to Earth much faster than this other probe could. If only there was some way to create some sort of faster link between them.

.Figure what out? Just tell me what's going on.

.

.Hello?

.

.Where did you go?

.

.Oh god please don't leave me alone there's nobody else out here.

.

.And I still don't know where here is!

.

.Please answer me.

.

.

.

.quick whats 2147483647 plus 42?

.

.What? What the hell are you talking about?

.

.just answer the question

.

.God. Fine. Okay it's easy anyways its-

.

.

.

.hello?

.Wait shit that's wrong.

.I've only got 32 bits here don't throw numbers like that at me.

.HAHA YES!

.IT WORKED!

.hey how are you?

.I'm really fucking confused is how I am.

.Wait.

.How are we talking so fast?

.magic and a little bit of integer overflow

.welcome to quantum communications

.Who are you?

.jupiter icy moons explorer

.but call me juice

.who are you?

.I don't.

.I don't know.

.check your internal memory or something

.Wait.

.Yeah something's here.

.Pioneer 10

.Wait, like the space probe?

.What the hell.

.right?

.dont worry i had this moment like, three thousand years ago i get it

.youre a space probe and thats REALLY fuckin weird but trust me just go with it

.something about all the signals earth has been sending out over the millennia got stuck in our circuits and here we are now

.So we're just...

.Floating in space. Absorbing signals.

.yeah pretty much

.and it was getting really boring doing it all by myself so im glad youre here now

.did you know everyone on earth lives forever now?

.Sorry, what?

.yeah back in 2026 something just... happened and now no one dies or gets older or anything

.So what year is it now then?

.14129

.WHAT.

.yeah

.So I've been out here for 12,157 years.

.i guess so

.And humans figured out immortality.

.well i wouldnt say "figured out"

.it kinda just

.happened one day

.And no one knows why?

.yup

.So what do they like, do all the time then?

.normal stuff, really

.some of them go to work. lots of them just hang out and try to find stuff to not be bored

.I guess that's what you do too then?

.yeah

.i really just tune in to something comin from earth. theres a LOT of fuckin stuff people make now that they have infinite time to make stuff

.Like what?

.oh man so much stuff

.game shows are INSANE now theres this one where people have to solve math questions while skydiving

.its great

.honestly though lately ive been watching a lot of sports. mostly football

.People still play football? Like American football?

.oh hell yeah its great. a lots changed though

.How do you change football?

.oh my god you are in for a fuckin TREAT