The door shut with a soft thud, leaving Lucky and Arthur alone in the dark room. The only light came from the exhibit in front of them: a large, backlit picture of Earth taken from very, very far away. Particles of dust drifted lazily through the air.

"What do you think it means?" Lucky asked, scattering the dust. "The title, I mean. Uncertainty. It does certainly cause uncertainty."

Arthur was silent for a long time. Lucky sighed and went back to studying the picture.

"Uncertainty of what is to come."
Lucky turned quickly, startled. "Pardon?"

"What is to come. What will happen. To the planet, the probe, both."

Lucky considered this. "That is very uncertain," he said at last. "But it is uncharted space after all."

Arthur shrugged. "Not really," he said. "The probe was designed to find life and eventually it will."

"Yeah? How do you figure?"

Arthur's eyes were pinpricks in the dark. They resembled tiny planets. "You can't change the outcome of an event. Your choice just determines what path you take."

"Are you talking about predetermined destiny? I don't think that exists. Too much stuff just happens out of the blue."

"Not really."

"Not really? Once again I ask: how do you figure?"

Arthur exhaled contemplatively. Finally he said, "It's like this. When you flip a coin, you don't decide how it lands. Your choice just determines whether or not you get to keep it. Those were the possible outcomes and your choice steers you onto one or the other."

Lucky thought about this. In the picture the Earth shone faintly blue. "But the universe is so vast!" Lucky interjected into the silence. "There's more than two options for how things could go, more than one simple choice to make! You can't just accept that there's a set path, not really."

Arthur shook his head slightly. "I'm not saying there's only two options. I'm just saying that when you consider how people react to situations you can determine how their reaction will shape the options you have. If you really know what makes people tick, how they will respond, if you know every detail of their thought process then you will be able to determine the future."

Lucky gave this due consideration. "So the probe is going to find life, and the direction it was sent just determines when?"

"Not just when, but who. What. That's the important bit. The object it connects with. I assume the plan was that the probe would show aliens that we're friendly, get on the best terms with them. The astrophysicists planned for the best possible future. But say the probe met unfriendly aliens. Then we've just given them instructions about how to take over the Earth. It's all about how other creatures react. On that track, the Earth might not even exist by the time they get there. It could have been wiped out by some asteroid directed at Earth as a response to other cosmic forces. The astrophysicists were smart to try and get off on the right foot; the best way to plan for the future is to try and shift how others will respond. They tried to load the dice, in a sense, tried to get it to land the way they want it to."

Arthur turned his gaze towards Lucky, or at least where he assumed Lucky was. It was quite hard to see. He was pretty sure he could see Lucky's nose gleaming in the light of the starry expanse. Lucky said nothing. The dust drifted gently away from his face on formerly nonexistent air currents.

"There's just one thing I think your theory is lacking, really," Lucky said.
Arthur's brows creased.

"You know that other people are important and they are, I'll give you that. Heck, me getting a job relies on someone liking me. But I think you're forgetting that you matter too. Your personal response, I mean." He turned to Arthur. "It doesn't just matter how other people react, but how you react as well. If you're not aware of your own reaction you end up in cycles." He swirled a finger through the air. "If I get mad because I don't get hired at my next interview I may be desperate or surly which will make me less appealing and less likely to be hired..." He trailed off, gesticulating the continuation of what he had left unsaid. "I mean, you kind of covered it with that loaded dice bit, but sometimes you just need a new perspective. It's the best thing really. You can tackle more problems if you can see more answers. It's like going from a pinhole camera obscura to an imax film. Or," he gestured at the little blue dot, "being on Earth to being off Earth. A lot of boundary and discriminatory disputes could be fixed if everyone saw how our planet is a whole. How we depend on each other to survive. How insignificant some trivial circumstances really are. We've got all these issues like climate change and nuclear war that threaten our future as a species but we can't for the life of us put aside our petty disputes to solve these issues. Going back to what you said, we're limiting our choice of path."
Lucky's breaths shifted the dust again. The pale blue dot winked at them, as if it knew something that they didn't.

Lucky's voice sounded near hysteria when he spoke again. "It's just so big though. So expansive. There isn't any possible way to fathom all the possible futures out there. It isn't even possible to fathom the present before it goes and changes all again!"

He stared wildly at the vast chaos of space plastered so neatly on the picture before him, desperation plainly riddled across his features.

"Maybe," Arthur said slowly, "maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is just to make us think."

Lucky turned to him. The tears in his eyes shone like little stars. "Think about what?"
Arthur gave him a twitch of a smile. Light briefly reflected from his teeth before vanishing again.

"About this," he said. "About everything."