The Benefits of Nazis

You know you want to cheer.

I couldn't sleep last night so I stayed up to watch an old episode of Lois & Clark on the Hub (one of those high numbered obscure channels.) Let me say this right off the bat, that show has not aged well. In fact, I would wager to say that I could relate better to George Reeves as Superman than Dean Cain, but that's besides the point. The episode was titled "Super Mann." It told the tale of three young (read: attractive) German members of the Nazi party that were put into suspended animation in 1942, and placed under Metropolis, (because where else would you put your Nazi TV Dinners,) and set to awaken fifty years later, 1992. Once awakened they joined an extensive secret Nazi network already set in place by members of the 3rd Reich who fled into the US before the war's end. This covert network consisted of powerful, rich, and famous people who were sent to pave the way for their frozen Aryan saviors.

The plot of the episode basically established that the Nazis had been working in secret as senators, high ranking military officials, businessmen, and celebrities since the late 1940's to subvert American values and start a 4th Reich. Through their media connections, politics, and high-profile power, this new secret Nazi party was gaining followers and changing people's minds. Now that's some pretty heavy stuff for a mid-90's romance-sitcom based around the serendipitous happenstance of what happens when one person is Teri Hatcher the other person is Dean Cain pretending to be an actor. Sufficed to say I was intrigued. Here seemed an opportunity to do a really intricate and nuanced story about Superman suddenly having to face a foe he could not fight with brute strength, public opinion. Then I realized I was watching Lois & Clark, and instead of a nuanced and well explored story line, the episode ended with the head Nazi golden boy stepping onto stage in a nation-wide broadcast, a swastika behind him, to announce that three nuclear warheads were buried under three major US cities. If the President did not.... blah blah blah blah...

The story set up seemed to be leading to a plot that had a chance to invoke the type of feelings and horror that happened in 1930's Germany. I was hoping to see an episode where one charismatic and influential leader was depicted swinging public opinion away from sanity toward savagery and eugenics, with Superman caught in the middle, and helpless to fight the rising tide of irrationality. Instead, the carefully placed and meticulous plan of this network of Nazi spies (who had spent the last fifty years working toward secret domination of America,) turned out to be nothing but a hackneyed "nation-for-ransom" plot they probably stole from Lex Luthor's trash bin. In the end, the whole episode ended with Superman showing up, punching some Nazis in the face, and everyone cheering... but I am digressing.

Nazi Super Science... For those times when regular
super science just isn't evil enough.

All of this leads me to my first point on the benefits of Nazis: Everyone wants to punch a Nazi in the face. What I mean to say is that Nazis make the best villains. Why do you think it is that Captain America and Indiana Jones have kept so much appeal over the years?... They punch Nazis. When you're looking for a villain you really cannot do any better than a megalomaniacal quasi-military group that has its sights set on world domination, has a fanatical belief in racial purity, an almost zealot-like conviction in their own rightness, and even the occasional obsession with the occult and super sciences. Better yet, they aren't even fictional. The only close second we really have is Communists and on spectrum of villainy the Commies rate maybe a 4.5. (I mean really it's all become kind of a gray issue since that wall fell.) Nazis, on the other hand rate the full 10, if not more. I defy you to watch a parade of black uniformed officers march down the street and give the Hitler salute and not feel a chill go up your spine.

That brings me to the next benefit of Nazis: We're so much better than they are. I mean that in every possible way, of course, morally, militarily, sexually etc. When you see Superman, Captain America, Indiana Jones, and the hundreds of other American heroes sock it to Hitler and his boys you can't but feel a little thrill. Its like in that one moment we feel more like Americans than ever before. It is  kind of reassurance of who we are. I mean we may not be the greatest, but at least we're not Nazis. That reminds me of a scene in the Rocketeer where, when the gangsters find out he and his men have been, working for a Nazi spy and they immediately turn on him saying something akin to "we may be criminals, but we're Americans." In a way, defeating a Nazi confirms for us our own identity, not only as Americans, but as a morally upstanding people, even if we are sometimes criminals.

As with so many other things the way we see Nazis often says more about ourselves than anything. (I know this is a weird topic, but stick with me on this one.) For instance, American stories tend to look at Nazis more as the "other." Basically, they are the enemy, they will always be the enemy, because they are evil. However, the British view on Nazis tends to focus less on them as physical enemies and more on the dangers of their ideology. Take as an example V for Vendetta. The British have an acute awareness that "but for the flip of a coin" the UK could have easily become a fascist state of its own. Thus, to our friends across the pond the rise of an internal Nazi-like government seems to be a much more terrifying prospect than an actual army of invading Nazis (because they already faced that and kicked their collected goose-stepping asses). As an American, a fascist Nazi-esque government taking hold on its own seems almost ridiculous. At the very least it probably would not last for long, because we have this image of ourselves as freedom fighters. We like to believe that we would immediately revolt or fight back against anything that would so drastically restrict our freedom. So we tend to use the idea of physical Nazi invasion as opposed to possibility of such a government arising on its own. Our psyche just does not allow us to see the later of the choices as a possibility, and the former allows us a glimpse (what we perceive as) better days.

This leads me to my next point, Nazis allow us to be relive the Golden Age of America. There is a reason we call them the "Greatest Generation," and that is because they fought Nazis. This also brings me back to my last point, because when you really look at America before World War II, you see a lot of things that may not have been the "greatest." The practice of eugenics, the belief in the supremacy of the white race, rampant prejudice against Jewish people, those were not singularly Nazi ideals. The Germans may have crystallized them all and did them far better than everyone else, but before the war, Hitler had a lot of support in Europe, Britain, and even America. Then that all changed.

I am toying with the idea that modern American morality may be (at least partially) based off the the concept that Nazism was so heinous that we did our best to reject everything we saw as even remotely close to the policies of the 3rd Reich. I'm not saying it was perfect, but in a lot of ways America sort of woke up. You may not be aware, but in the late 30's early 40's, it was legal in many states to practice a form of forced sterilization for anyone suspected of mental defects or retardation. Even the great Alexander Graham Bell was considered one of the first modern and largest advocates for eugenics.

The Nazi Party... Still just as stupid,
but now it comes in bite-size.

Fast forward to after the war and suddenly we have a country who has now witnessed the horrors and atrocities that are the logical end of the ideas of racial purity. It's like that moment when someone takes your joke as truth and does something terrifyingly unbelievable. It's a cold water wake up call in the face, and (despite what we like to believe) there must always be a moment of doubt when you have to think, "That could have been us." Yet, by 1942 the Nazi part is the most evil thing in the world, and America begins a realignment to be the good that opposes that evil. It is part of the American self-image that Americans are the good guys and Nazis are the bad guys. We became the Anti-Nazis, and similar to how you cannot define light without comparing it to dark, maybe you can't fully define American without defining Nazi. I am not saying we are the only country that did this, nor am I saying that is a bad thing. Actually, its probably a very good thing, so long as we recognize the underlying morality of it all.

Of course, their haven't been any real Nazis in sixty years (Modern Nazis are mostly just balded-headed idiots living in trailers in the Deep South.) The model is starting to grow old, and we no longer seem to have any enemies to define ourselves against. Communists were always kind of a weak substitution (if you ask me,) and modern terrorists are dangerous, but hardly anything that will take down America as a whole. More over, talking about those two groups leads to a lot of gray areas and questions of religion, social beliefs, and nuances of world politics, but a Nazi will always be a Nazi, instantly recognizable and unquestioningly evil.

Still, I don't see the 4th Reich rising anytime soon, so maybe it's time America starts finding new ways to define itself. Mostly because of my last and most important point, Nazis are cliched. Really my first thought upon seeing the direction of the Lois & Clark episode was, "Oh, they're doing Nazis?" In many ways the Nazis have become a lot like the Borg in Star Trek, over exposure has led to their homogenization as enemies to the point of becoming a bad trope. I would say rule of thumb is that after fifty years, any historical villain tends to lose its teeth and should probably be restricted from use, (unless the story is actually set in the aforementioned historical times.) In all fairness, the Lois & Clark episode was on the cusp of that rule, but really from the 2012 perspective it could have easily just have been Romans, British Redcoats, or Secret Southern Confederates, and the plot would not had to change much (it still would have been just as cheesy). However, I will admit that none of those historical enemies are quite as satisfying to punch in the face.

Bravo Flight

I have not been keeping up with my blogging lately, mostly because I have become consumed by my planning next book. I am delving way out of my comfort zone to play fighter pilot in a sem-realistic future world. I have been doing a lot of reasearch not only on aviation and future aviation but on terms, structure, and other basic aspects of military life. I still have a lot more to do before I can come close to even beginning work on my first story draft, but to get a feel I wrote a small test chapter. I have included a portion of it in this post. I would very much appreciate any feedback or ideas people might have as I launch myself head first into the brand new and exciting project.

 

Picture courtesy of ~Lung2005
at Deviantart

"Look alive, squad. Hostiles, 400-k and closing, 9-low." The voice brought Mason out of his own thoughts. The targeting computer on the HUD in his flight helmet immediately registered the enemy aircraft as they came into sensors range, appearing as red triangles against a green background.

"9 o'clock?" responded a disembodied voice from the other end of his earpiece. "I don't get up before 11."

"Cut the talk, Seven," came the clipped British response. "Five, control your flight."

"Yes, sir," said Mason.

"Assigning targets."

Mason watched as a red circle flared to life around one of the small triangles on the HUD. Simultaneously a double red circle appeared on the main display of his helmet, outlining a firing corridor that led to his assigned hostile. He held down the confirm switch on his flight-stick and dub-blinked on the radar hit to set the lock. A satisfying deep baritone hum sang in his ear as the computer system acknowledged the lock. "Locked," he called out.

The phrase repeated seven more times across the board as the men and women in the formation around him found their own targets.

"Breach," the single word floated to him through his headset as if spoken by some voice of his own imagining.

For a sureal moment the most distant part of his mind registered that the speaker of the word was not American. Too much little emphasis was put on the "ea" sound of the word. Ever since he was a kid Mason had always been amazed how different people could look at even a single word and come up with so many different ways of saying it.

The more active part of his mind only registered the command and the implied action. "Fox 3," he called out as he slammed home the firing button on his stick. The cockpit below his feet rumbled as the missile doors opened. The delay between pressing the button and the rewarding ignition of the missile had always irked him. Realistically, he knew that his payload had to stay concealed below the airframe to maintain the craft's stealth profile, but instinctually Mason had always wanted more of a one-to-one response, like how it was in the video games he grew up playing. Maybe that's why pilots had joking come to call the delay Server Lag.

The time between trigger and ignition was in actuality less than a second of time, and finally Mason heard the AMRAAM roar to life. It streaked away trailing a brilliant blue jet of flame and joined a flock of its brethren as they too emerged from the bellys of the craft around him.

Their targets, Dragon-24 Hōshō aircraft, didn't stand a chance. They were more than ten years out of date, they could barely be called gen-7 fighters. Their SD sensors had no way of warning their pilots of the danger they were in until it was too late. Mason's own craft the FX-42 Archangel was top of the line gen-7 tech. It was never going to be a fair fight. You almost never saw a Hōshō in the air anymore, except in training simulations.

All eight hostiles scrambled. Their signals blurring momentarily on the HUD as the craft activated their SHIELD systems to try and fool the locks, but their pilots might as well have been trying to ward off the missiles with prayer. Five craft vaporized under the salvo, one was clipped but maintained and two managed to evade. Mason's own target was nothing but scrap and ash.

He wondered if the pilot had managed to eject. He always wondered that. Mason never thought of himself as a killer, but that was only because air combat was so impersonal. It was easy to blow up a piece of technology, it was hard to remember that there was a person inside it. He hoped that the pilot had managed to bail, he always did.

The three remaining hostiles turned tail and dodged out, one limping away on only one engine.

"Locked," said a voice in his head.

"Stand down," Mason said. "Six, stand down."

"I'm not going to just let them get away." The voice was female and had a hard edge to it. He found no noticeable accent to her voice, most likely American. He could only barely place her face, with only a vague memory of dark long hair drawn tightly into a pony-tail.

"Stand-down, six." Mason put an edge to his own voice. He had been put in charge of Bravo Flight and he wasn't about to let some pilot's frantic ambition endanger the outlines of the mission parameters. He knew the commander was the listening. "You're not cleared to fire."

"Aye, sir." The response was terse, spoken through gritted teeth. He could almost hear her thumb ease up off the firing switch.

He let out a breath he had not known he was holding. The reprieve was brief.

His cockpit went wild as a screaming tone wailed inside his head. The HUD flashed red and the main display began a quick succession of calculations that ended in a growing red dot at the edge of his peripheral. Even as he turned his head to watch the small crimson pixel it grew in size, soon becoming a discernible circle against the blue backdrop of sky.

"I'm painted red!"

"Ghosts, bloody piss."

"Missile lock. Missile lock. "

"I'm red!"

The in-line channel was full of chatter.

The clipped British commands of the squadron leader were lost among the chaos of the other ILC transmissions. The words came so fast the calls began stepping on each other, like a frantic crowd of people clawing over one another to escape a fire, but there was no escape. So there was just panic.

"Scatter!" someone called, and Mason watched as the neat, orderly formation began to break up. Aircraft banked and dove, trying everything they could to shake the lock. It was every man for himself, every woman for herself. The terror was contagious and the more hysterical some pilots became the more the group as a whole began to feel the effects.

Waves of electromagnetic energy washed over Mason's instruments, momentarily scrambling them, as one or two of his more panicked squadron mates began to prematurely activate their SHIELDs.

All the while the small circle of his own incoming missile had grown to the size of a shirt button. 300-k and closing. Mason fought to keep his own panic in check. The memory of a plan swimming up out of the murky depths of his mind. "Cease alarm." The insistent blaring tone instantly died.

"Bravo flight on me," he said switching from squadron channel to flight channel. He could do nothing for the full group, but calming three voices as opposed to eleven was a lot easier.

"On your six," came the immediate and surprisingly calm American female voice.

"On your wing," said another heavily accented voice Mason had not recalled hearing before.

"Hell, if we're going to die, we might as well do it as a family," said Seven, his faint Aussie accent suddenly clear. The last craft tucked itself almost effortlessly behind his right wing.

"We're not going to die," said Mason in a voice that radiated a calm he did not, in fact, feel. His own hand was shaking so hard on the flight stick it was a surprise that his craft wasn't swaying wildly back and forth.

200-k and closing fast. The circle was now the size of an egg. The details of the missile clear beneath it.

"Follow the leader," called Mason and swung his angel around, pulling hard on the yoke. For a moment the word was sideways, the growing red circle on his helmet appearing on the solid metal flooring of the cockpit. Slamming the stick forward he put his craft into a steep dive toward the deck, his fellow pilots only a few hundred meters behind him, the world was plummeting up to meet them.

He risked a quick glance at his HUD Radar. It showed all four missiles less bearing down at less than 100-k. All round him the blue marks that had once represented the other members of his squadron were winking out of existence, their cries of help silenced one by one on the squadron wide frequency. With his tail to the chaos he could only image the sight of their fiery defeat.

He put the images from his mind. "Climb and SHIELD, only on my mark." His voice strained from the G's pushing him back in his flight cushion. The inertial compensators were practically screaming, but he wasn't done yet.

The forests of the pacific northwest had filled the view of his cockpit, but a quick glance behind him showed that the red circle had grown to grapefruit proportions. It was less than 45-k and still closing. Mason waited only another second, daring not to hesitate any longer.

"Mark," he screamed and pulled up on the stick. His vision blurred only slightly before his flight suit constricted, stemming the blood loss from his head. The warning lights flared to life again. The angel's onboard smart computer was compensating his maneuver, easing the sudden jerking movement out over a softer arc to protect the integrity of the airframe, but even with the unwanted interference it was less than a second before blue sky had once again replaced his view of the deep green forest.

He locked his gaze at a switch in the forward controls of the cockpit. The flight stick was still fighting him, he couldn't risk removing his hands for even a second. Instead, his dub-blinked on the switch. It immediately lit up blue, as the computer acknowledge his selection. "Activate," he said, and the node when from turquoise to emerald.

Over the rushing sound of wind and air friction against his cockpit he never heard the SHIELD's electromagnetic pulse activate, but he felt its effects as they rocked his craft and sent static across his instruments. A countdown timer appeared on the side of his helmet. Thirty seconds, and the System to Hull Integrated Electromagnetic Lock Defense would shut down automatically. Any longer and a pilot ran the risk of frying his own circuitry along with any missile in a 600 meter area.

The electromagnetic burst was followed closely by three more as his flight had managed to mimic his maneuver almost perfectly. The missiles, on the other hand, had a harder time. Even against less sophisticated AMRAAMs activating a craft's SHIELD was no sure defense, but coupled with the hard maneuver and the force of gravity their pursuers stood little chance.

The missiles were nearly on top of them when the electromagnetic wave disrupted their systems and reset the SatNav guidance. Unfortunately a dead and targetless missile was a still a missile, and as the four long slender cylinders plummeted past Mason's angel two collided. The explosion fell away, but the shockwave rattled the airframe of his craft, to say nothing of the teeth in his head.

Not all his pilots were so lucky. At the tail end of the formation Six screamed as the explosion engulfed her. "Fuck... " The line died.

Mason turned his head just in time to see the trailing archangel lose altitude. It tumbled wildly, burnt and sheared. Blue flames poured from the now exposed engines. Then it was gone, blocked by cloud cover as the three remaining angels ascended back toward the ceiling.

"She's going to be spewing mad," said his Aussie wingman.

"Keep your head in the clouds," said Mason. "This isn't over." As if to illustrate his point the HUD picked up six new contacts closing on them fast. It was the ghosts. They had come into active sensors range, which only meant one thing, they'd depleted their long-range AMRAAMs and were coming in to finish off their kill.

Mason leveled off his aircraft and took a quick assessment of his situation. They were the only three angels still in the sky. The rest of the squadron was destroyed or had dodged out of the arena. They were facing two to one odds against craft they had not even know existed five minutes before. Running was out of the question. There was only one thing left ot do.

His angel roared as the afterburner kicked in, and even now a familiar thrill wrenched at his gut as the craft below him rocket forward. "Break formation and engage." He smiled despite himself. "Time for a little payback."



 

A Golden Message

The Golden Record, inscribed on its surface are
instructions for playing the record.

It has been a while since I wrote a blog, mainly due to increasing pressures at work combined with being laid up from mouth surgery, but I am back, and I have been noticing a trend in my life lately. For the past few weeks, one object above others has kept popping up in my life, the Golden Disk, more precisely known as Voyager's Golden Record. It has been a mere strand of coincidences that this object has kept rearing its head, mostly due to my many hours of TV watching following my aforementioned surgery, but it is still a fascinating artifact when you really think about it, (and I have been.)

For anyone who does not know what I am talking about the Golden Records are, (those things that people used to listen to in the 70's that look like large CD's, and) they were placed aboard the Voyager spacecrafts containing information about humanity. Voyager 2 was launched first(paradoxically)  by NASA on August 20, 1977, followed  by Voyager 1 on September 5, 1977, (35 years ago, last week.) Initially set as an extension of Mariner missions to map Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyager program was extended to map all the outer planets of our solar system. Using gravity assisted trajectories the Voyagers were sent out from Earth and are responsible for some of our first images of planets like, Neptune and Uranus, (insert joke.) On December 19, 1977 Voyager 1 overtook the slower Voyager 2, (presumably just to show-up the upstart craft for launching first) and both have been traveling further outbound ever since.

As of September 9, 2012, Voyager 1 was 121.836 AU away from earth (Astronomical Unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun.) or about 11.3 billion miles away. Voyager 2 is only about 9 billion. Voyager 1 is the farthest man-made object out in space and is currently traveling through the heliopause, which until now has only ever been a theoretical boundary between our solar system and the interstellar space where the sun's solar winds are stopped by the more powerful galactic winds. On May 23, 2007 Voyager 1 crossed into the heliopause and is predicted to reach interstellar space before 2015. Sunlight takes 16.89 hours to get to Voyager 1, and it is traveling at a rate of 38,120 mph, and heading for the constellation of Ophiuchus, (coincidently one of my favorite constellations). At its current rate, Voyager 1 will need about 17,565 years to travel a complete light year. It will be 40,000 years before it reaches the closest star on its outbound trajectory. The amazing part is that the Voyager spacecraft is still transmitting data back to NASA, and will continue to do so until about 2020, and completely lose all power sometime between 2025 and 2030. Yet, thanks to Newtonian Physics Voyager 1 will continue traveling on, into the deepest reaches of space like a small little ambassador from a distant blue planet.

Maybe it is that aspect which so captures the imagination. Even after we are long dead, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will still be out there streaming along, heading farther and farther away from our small insignificant little solar system, and within them they each carry a small record of humanity. The Golden Records are etched with instructions on how to play them using the record player that is encased within the housing of the spacecraft. The records contain images, videos, songs, and voice recordings from the people of Earth. The full content of the disk can be found here. Most notably the record contains a greeting from Jimmy Carter, which is ironic because of all the American Presidents I can think of, he never ranked very highly, (but I guess Lincoln was unavailable at the time of the launch.)

 

(Beast Wars) Megatron holds the Golden Disk which tells the
coordinates of the Energon rich planet of Earth.

When you think about it logically, the idea of the Golden Records makes very little sense. We basically attached a small compendium of trivial information about the human race onto two soon-to-be floating pieces of space junk that are not even aimed at an specific star. The Golden Records are a message in a bottle, a hopelessly romantic gesture from a small world that floats seemingly alone in an empty void. It is a whisper sent out from a lonely island in a vast sea of blackness. Yet, for that very reason, they have captured our imagination. The Golden Records have been referenced in everything from Pinky and the Brain to Doctor Who, from The West Wing to Transformers. Will it be found and played? What if the aliens are friendly? What if they are not? (The disk also contains crude coordinates for Earth.) What will the people look like who open it? What will they think of us?

 

Even the Voyager craft themselves can capture the imagination, as I learned when I watched Star Trek the Motion Picture (The first and second worst Star Trek movie) while I was recovering from surgery. The idea of something from Earth traveling so endlessly far is almost more than we can wrap our heads around. I liken it to the time when my dog got out and no one realized she was gone for a good hour. By the time we went looking for her, we found her walking calmly up the street back toward the house. We have no idea where she went or what adventures she had in the time she was gone, and we will never know. Realistically, she chased a squirrel, ran in circles, and gnawed on some grass. Similarly, Voyager 1 and 2 will mostly likely just spend the rest of their existence soaring endlessly through space till they are so ridden by micro-meteorite impacts that they fall apart into small pieces of debris, the Golden Records left unreadable. Then again, maybe Voyager 1 will accumulate microbial life, which will grow and develop into a sentient species that will spend the entirety of their existence traveling on a metal world hurtling through the void of space, never knowing the true origin of their "planet." Maybe, the craft will fall in a hole in the universe to another time and place, crashing on prehistoric Earth, or maybe it will actually be picked up by a passing alien vessel.

 

The crew of the Enterprise, in their super-tight uniforms,
confronts an alien modified Voyager (now called V'ger), saving
the day and Earth only because the Dad from 7th Heaven
falls in love with it. (I wish I was kidding.)

The odds of any other civilization finding Voyager 1 or its companion are astronomical, but really the allure of the Voyagers and their disks is not so much about the species that finds them as it is about the species that created them. The project was the brain-child of Carl Sagan, (you may know him as that science guy who likes to wear turtle necks,) and when you think about it, the images and sounds included on the disk are not even close to an accurate representation of life on Earth. They are full of the sounds of cheerful children saying hello in different languages, the sound of whales and birds and Beethoven and a Saturn V rocket taking off. No where on the disks do you see images of war, or hear the sounds of political infighting, or see anything about religious conflicts, pollution, or even hear a hint of Justin Beiber. Some would say the disks are a lie, but I think they represent what humanity has the potential to be. They represent what we want to be. The disks are Earth's first and best step forward in our introduction to the greater galaxy. After all, when you meet someone for the first time you do not start off by telling them how you talk in your sleep, secretly steal office supplies, or how you once hit that hiker with your car, but there was no around so you dragged the body into the woods and smeared it with honey, but that only attracted deer and no bears so you had to take more drastic measures by cutting up the body into smaller pieces, which you had to do in order to bury them in small holes in the frozen ground, yet now every time you go for a drive you can still see his haunted dead eyes looking up at you as you cover him in rock hard frigid dirt... uhh... I just mean that you always want to make a good impression and that's all the Golden Records are meant to do.

 

Ultimately, I like to believe that one day the disks will be recovered by an advanced space-faring race of beings, and perhaps those being will look a lot like us. The only people who have any real need for Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the same people who launched them out into the void in the first place. Perhaps, in a thousand years our ancestors will be the ones to travel out and recover the crafts and instead of spending the remainder of their lives deteriorating in the void they will sit on display as a testament to the will and hope of humanity as it took its first optimistic steps into the ocean of space. So maybe the Golden Disks serve not only as a greeting but as a time capsule and maybe even a finish line, because iit is quite possible that the next object to surpass Voyager 1 as the farthest human-made craft may in fact have actual humans on board.