A Small Reward

Fifty-five minutes later.

The entire Proxima Centauri star system returned to a semblance of its previous silence before humans arrived. The majority of the machines were put into automatic mode, while those requiring human control were switched to power-saving mode.

Everyone who wasn’t engaged in an essential task had already donned their VR devices and logged into the local VR network. They clicked on the invitation link, which transported them to a massive meeting hall capable of accommodating all of them. The hall reminded them of their last gathering of such magnitude, right before they embarked on their exploration mission.

“What do you think they gathered us for?” Yavuz, a mechanical engineer standing next to Lee, asked him, as Lee was currently one of the most well-known people in the exploration fleet.