Voyager 1 is a deep-space probe weighing 722 kilograms. It was launched on September 5, 1977 with the mission of exploring the planets of our solar system.

Traveling roughly 1.47 million kilometers per day, it spent thirty-five years moving outward until, in 2012, it crossed the boundary of the heliosphere and entered interstellar space. Voyager became the first human-made object to leave the solar system.

Around the same time, two other objects were also born.

Voice 1.

Voice 2.

Their transmissions continue to this day.

Every day they exchange signals—random topics launched into the air in the hope that the other person will respond. The content is mostly meaningless. In many ways the conversations resemble something closer to voice phishing than communication.

Sometimes the exchange lasts nearly thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes.

According to countless productivity experts, thirty minutes a day is enough to change a life.

Thirty minutes of running.

Thirty minutes of weight training.

Thirty minutes of meditation.

Thirty minutes of reading.

Thirty minutes of writing.

Thirty minutes of learning new vocabulary.

Thirty minutes is more than enough time to begin becoming a different person.

And yet, for many people, those thirty minutes quietly disappear.

When you observe people whose spare moments are filled with meaningless chatter, it is easy to guess that they are deeply addicted to visual media. But the people themselves rarely notice it. To them it feels like perfectly normal behavior.

Someone casually mentions a television show they watched yesterday. Another person immediately responds. And just like that, the most pointless use of time begins.

Last weekend my wife looked out the window late at night and said that many apartments still had their lights on even though Monday was approaching.

I replied that the business of selling addiction through radio waves had clearly become very successful.

When we see videos of babies holding smartphones, the surprising thing is not their ability to use them. What matters is realizing how easily humans become attached to things that are both useless and endlessly accessible.

Creating an addiction subtle enough that people never feel alarmed by it—that is the real objective of many companies.

During my undergraduate years I devoted myself more to relationships than to studying. Only around my senior year did I finally realize the importance of grades. Wanting a better job and a better income, I decided to take the slowest and most difficult path available.

I do not know exactly why I made that choice. But perhaps I was not foolish enough to completely abandon my future.

At least I understood that the most urgent task was to run as efficiently as possible to fill the gap of time I had lost.

Fortunately, the relationships I had built were not meaningless. Through them, I managed to gain admission to a graduate laboratory known for its extremely demanding graduation requirements.

Because time was limited and the goal was clear, I had no choice but to read every day—even subjects I normally would never touch. Though I obsessively read the works of Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein.

Weekly discussions forced me to write. To keep distracting thoughts away, I walked for more than an hour every day while trying to catch up with classmates who had long ago formed the habit of studying.

Whenever I had spare energy, I lifted weights—one of the few things I felt confident about—and raised the weight of life itself.

After a chaotic period, I entered my thirties and eventually obtained what seemed, in my worldview at the time, to be a good job. I had jumped in before it was too late, and I felt grateful to the version of myself from two years earlier.

But as my work became familiar in my mid-thirties, television and movies slowly began to dominate my life.

I had loved films since childhood. Somehow I convinced myself that watching them late into the night—even before business trips or workdays—was enriching, as if I were gaining meaningful knowledge.

Looking back now, the thought is unsettling.

If I had continued living that way, I too might have fallen into the same voice-phishing trap as everyone else, thinking no differently from the crowd.

In retrospect, my obsessive attachment to weight training—something that began in my teenage years as a way to resist gravity—may have ultimately saved my future.

Even when I wanted to lie on the couch, I would stand on one leg while watching a movie. On weekend mornings I walked one or two hours just to reach the cinema early. Discovering a new gym along the way was far more exciting than any shopping trip.

Returning to the present, I look around.

At a certain time of day, two or three people with similar life trajectories naturally gather together. They excite each other’s brains and step outside for a cigarette, saying something like, “Let’s double this feeling.”

And just like that, another thirty minutes disappears.

Voice 1 and Voice 2.

Both born in 1977.

The expected operational lifespan of Voyager 1 is now estimated to reach around 2036. Remarkably, when it was first designed its expected lifetime was only five years.

But something strange happened in the same year Voyager was launched.

On August 15, 1977—just one month before launch—a radio telescope at Ohio State University detected a mysterious signal from space lasting about seventy-two seconds. The discoverer wrote the word “Wow!” beside the printout in astonishment.

It became known as the Wow! Signal.

Detected at the 1420 MHz frequency emitted by hydrogen atoms, the signal has often been discussed as a possible transmission from extraterrestrial intelligence.

The universe is filled with countless radio waves of unknown origin. Earth’s own radio and television signals also leak into space. Objects throughout the universe receive these signals and exchange information with whatever systems are capable of responding.

Which raises a curious question.

How did Voyager travel far beyond its expected lifespan in an environment where it cannot repair itself and cannot receive help?

One possibility is that after endlessly collecting data and photographing empty space day after day, it somehow reached a kind of enlightenment.

Another possibility is that a civilization interested in obtaining a sample of Earth upgraded Voyager so that it could receive guidance toward them.

A third possibility concerns the Wow Signal itself. Perhaps the signal detected one month before launch was not a coincidence. A civilization aware of Earth may have attempted to send information to prevent a future invasion—but the civilization mentioned in the second scenario intercepted and blocked the message.

And so the launch proceeded as planned.

What is destined to happen will happen.

But when we are inside the process, we have no way of recognizing it. Only later do people look back and attempt to explain. Most, however, refuse to believe.

The sudden appearance of smartphones changed human behavior faster than any technology in history.

Humanity may already have become nothing more than experimental subjects in a direction quietly shaped by a far more advanced civilization.

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