The Jameson Satellite

An aging scientist arranges for his corpse to be sealed in a self‑propelled rocket and placed in a high orbit to escape earthly decay. Over millions of years the planet cools and human civilization disappears while the satellite endures. A visiting race of metal, tentacled beings called Zoromes eventually recovers the preserved body, studies and restores the brain, and integrates the recovered human with their mechanical technology. Revived and allied with the alien intelligences, he accompanies them on voyages that juxtapose human mortality with technological persistence and probe cosmic time, identity, and the wonder of unfamiliar life.