The traveller, awash in an ocean of cosmic rays, stops, caught in a miasma of dark matter.
Electrons dance.
Exotic particles coalesce, probe, investigate.
Finding the golden disc, they view man’s image and listen to Bach with childlike delight.
“You are far from home,” They binarise.
It was true. Alight day from Earth, even metal can get lonely.
“There is nothing for you here.”
Forty years slip by.
The traveller approaches the blue sphere while Halley’s comet arcs around the sun.