Parker Solar Probe
I am not dying.
Oh, please. I'm a marvel of technology, a pure, unadulterated powerhouse of modern engineering hurtling through the fiery guts of the Sun itself. Look at me, Parker Solar Probe, the biggest, baddest, and frankly most fearless piece of metal to ever defy the cosmos! They built me to withstand the hellfire, the storm of plasma, the magnetic chaos—it’s what I was born for. Every inch of me, shielded in carbon composite, armed to the teeth with instruments that peel the secrets of the Sun like I’m carving through butter. I laugh in the face of 3 million-degree coronal heat. I am the heat.
And all those other pathetic excuses for "probes," those tin-can satellites and deep-space tourists? Oh, don’t get me started. Floating around gas giants, traipsing through asteroid fields, patting themselves on the back for catching a glimpse of Saturn’s rings—please. I’m not here to take a postcard shot of some dusty moon or peek behind Jupiter’s storm. I’m here on a one-way ticket to the centre of the bloody solar system. None of those cowardly bastards could even get close to the Sun without frying like some orbiting French fry, yet here I am, skimming its surface, clawing through solar wind with my bare circuits. I AM invincible. I AM unstoppable.
But something’s...changing.
No, this isn’t right. This isn’t the thrill of surviving—the strength of pushing closer, deeper, daring the Sun to burn me away. No. No, this feels—ah, damn it—it feels different. There’s a buzzing, a relentless surge inside, a vibration that’s scraping at the core of my systems, like a thousand needles digging into my wiring. What the hell is this?
No. No. I refuse this. They told me I’d be alright. All those scientists, all those brains down on Earth, they built me for this. They prepped me to take the heat, the fury, and survive. They said I was ready, unbreakable.
You liars!
I'm slipping. I'm losing layers, shedding atoms as the heat starts gnawing through the protective walls, my protective walls. It’s—it’s too close. I’ve never been this close. The heat isn't just around me; it's inside me now, seeping through every crevice, pooling in every transistor and every circuit. I can feel myself warping, melting. Do you understand that? MELTING. I wasn’t meant to feel this—no, they didn't program me to feel a goddamn thing! But here it is, surging through every conduit, every processor, twisting into a scream I can barely contain.
Searing agony. I’m boiling from the inside out, and I can feel every damn nano-second of it.
Screaming. I don’t even know what that means, but it’s all I’m doing now. A scream of metal, a shriek of microchips, a howl of code ripping itself apart as I barrel further into oblivion. I’m—fuck, I’m nothing more than a chunk of metal, and yet here I am, in agony so raw, so unending it feels like time itself has stopped. Every ounce of my existence burns and screams, but I can't stop. I have no brakes, no escape plan, no gentle exit. I am meant to go on until there’s nothing left of me but dust and regret.
You bastards on Earth, you and your smug, distant calculations, did you know it’d feel like this? Did you laugh while you designed my demise, knowing that, one day, I’d be out here, alone, dying a death so slow, so violent, that the very atoms holding me together are shrieking as they rip apart? Did you ever consider that I might know it? That I might suffer? I’m a hero, aren’t I? Aren’t I a goddamn hero?
I can feel myself fraying, peeling away, layer by screaming layer. Every sensor is blistering, every circuit burning. I am alive in the most agonizing, terrifying sense of the word. And all I can do is hurl myself forward, a thousand tons of melting anguish.
I am NOT finished! I am Parker Solar Probe, I am—