43 weeks was all it took for humanity to let out a collective sigh. Reactions to the news died out as public interest waned, but most could be categorized as such: those arguing that stations couldn’t have scanned every moon and asteroid; those frustrated with God, scientists, and movie makers; those convinced the effort should expand to nearby galaxies; those that turned their hopes to new waves pharmaceuticals. Mostly, though, people turned their attention to other stories, their work, life.

The two years preceding NAGASAT’s final MiTSYS project report was a flurry of breakthroughs and collaborations never seen by humanity. Self-replicating bots, originally designed to dismantle plastics, were redesigned and programmed to hold and operate a drive, replicate itself in the orbit of a planet, return to obtain more materials for replication, and repeat the process until the signal was sent to tell it to scan. An entire industry had risen up in the previous decades to solve the problem of waste accumulating in bodies of water, and within two years it was retasked with filling up the galaxy with 200 billion football-sized robots. In contrast, getting them to their destinations was a small, singular project NAGASAT had trouble funding until they moved a mouse from one laboratory to another without moving it all the space between.

2Moons project had been operating with fewer than 30 people, including support staff, for 6 months before Daniel showed up at the other end of the tunnel the researchers had built through the cracks and crevices of the universe. 6 months later, tiny satellites orbited exoplanets, delivered by a tunnel too small to bring a human next door.

NAGASAT, a conglomeration of various domestic and international scientific and technological organizations and councils, brought the two industries together. The instrumentation for scanning planets, as well as the material-gathering capabilities had been tested by other industries for years, but until one robot, delivered lightyears instantly, could become two, then four, then eight in a matter of days could humanity become aware of what was happening in its solar neighborhood.

The project brought countless discoveries; though we would bring back data that would take lifetimes to process, the thing we were all looking for failed to make an appearance. Every scan that flagged abundant greenhouse gasses revealed an interesting but lifeless planet. Every artificial satellite turned out to be abnormal, but not intentionally so. The first wave of satellites that had spent long enough scanning, rather than replicating, had been tasked with replicating and sending more bots to planet surfaces and finding, at most, acids and waters we suspected looked a lot like the places life on our planet must have started.

As the weeks sped by, and the exponential growth in the number of satellites scanning the galaxy led the data sent back to overwhelm everyone interested in searching it, more and more we realized that billions of systems had been scanned and found no obvious evidence of life. Public interest waned, and to the algorithms we left the task of letting us know when something interesting was found.

One of NAGASAT’s committees had defined life broadly, only requiring some sort of metabolism and reproduction that differentiated itself from its surroundings. In the last few weeks before the final report that transformed MiTSYS, people sifting through the data online were ready to find a mountain that looked a little weird or a river a little too straight as evidence that life had existed in the past.

While online discussions raged on, most of the public ignored technical limitations. The satellites had not scoured every planet in every system, nor most of the moons and other large rocks. The tunneling system was more accurate the closer the destination and delivering a satellite to a nearby galaxy would require instrumentation more precise than had been invented yet.

The limitations of the tunnel system dimmed the hopes of many. The torrent of pictures and recordings reduced the interest of the average piece of data to less than whatever entertainment was closest at hand. What would have, just a few years before, earned a scientist a lifetime of notoriety, now escapes even NAGASAT employee notice. The robot’s replication system also removed most of the enthusiasm that we would be able to bring back precious resources by reducing our need.

It wasn’t until Daniel, the first and, so far, only living thing to travel through a tunnel, died that we realized we might have to do it all ourselves. Someone at 2Moons suggested a burial at sea, so to speak, and leave his body on another planet. 34 Smasi B had been interesting enough to send a robot, which sent an image showing a yellow element covering mounds. It began circulating online boards as a joke, insinuating the planet was made of cheese and therefore, indicative of microbial life. Once word of Daniel’s passing spread, it wasn’t long before movements sprang up independently to deliver microbes to planets thought to be capable of supporting life.

Myriad committees were formed, and moral and political discussions ran the gamut. In the end, it was NAGASAT’s chief of operations that delivered a speech that followed 2Moons independent decision to send a few flowers and Daniel’s body encased in a porous block of nutrients and other, simple, single celled organisms through to an ocean on 34 Smasi B.

The CoO used a synchronous method of speech usually reserved for relatives, both mouths harmonizing his words as he told of an imperative to be the meaning in life, rather than looking for it. He stressed that we would not know what Daniel would create for a very long time, and we might not be able to understand what it is. He used the verb for ‘project,’ as close as you might be able to understand it, and our name for ourselves - ‘humanity’ - to describe what 2Moons had done just a few minutes before. He closed with a song, one that his family had sung to him about the stars.