They, The Leukocytes

Author’s note: This story continues, in a way, the anthology I’ve been referring to as The Diaspora for a while now, but it is decidedly something different. While the “We” collection focused on our commonalities, this “They” series will center on that which makes the characters different. If I ever get around to properly condensing and publishing these stories the two collections would likely go into separate volumes, although they do tell stories set in the same cosmos. As always, you need not have read the other stories to enjoy this one. If you give it a read, I’d love to hear what you think!

— Griffin

I awoke in darkness.

For eons I could only sense the lightest prickling against my icy skin, always on my face, telling me that I was in fact moving. Pip. Pip. Pip. Cold against cold, hydrogen brushing by as I hurtled along. That was it for time immeasurable, just the light brush of atoms and all consuming darkness as I came slowly awake. I could feel the long lines of my mind stretching through my body as I slowly spun; racing along the pathways I sought a way forth from the dark. And then all at once, I found an eye and there was light.

Photons from a brilliant star met my eye and electrical impulses chased their way into the many corners of my mind. Eternity passed by in that moment. All other mental processes came to a halt as I was confronted by a universe not empty, but brimming. That star shone right into the bottom of my very soul as I drifted in awe. But it was only a moment. Momentum carried me on as it always had and always will; I continued slowly spinning and my eye was dragged across a great sweeping arc of the cosmos, stars shone into my eye in all of their millions of temperatures. And then there was more, oh so much more.

As I completed my first half turn since the world was blown open, something new came into view. Light beyond light. Beyond my wildest comprehension. Light in a great band across my whole field of vision. Light that would surely blind me if not for the intervening dust. Now I saw that first star for what it was, a grain of sand. A grain compared to this radiant shore that now sat before me. The Milky Way. The thought came unbidden, but it was certainly correct. What else could it be? But what was it, and how did I know its name when I seemed to know so little else?

My rotation carried me on my way and the galactic disc was swept away from my view once more. I’d see it when I came around again, but that was an eternity from now, I needed to see it again this instant. So I chased once more through the long furrows of my mind and found another eye and opened it upon the swirling, milky depths of the galactic core. Again the universe paused around me as all my nodes fired in unison at the beauty I saw before me. But the momentum carried me on, and again I had to duck inside myself to find another eye, and another, and another. Through and in and out and through again, over and over as one by one I opened all the eyes that dotted my frozen skin, until I could see in all directions at once.

I had to laugh at myself, it’s good to laugh at oneself when you’ve been so foolish, how long had I been flying blind? Days? Weeks? Millennia? I chuckled, it didn’t matter now, I was awake now and I could see. All around me the great spread of the cosmos danced and twinkled and brightened and faded; all swirling about me as I slowly swam through the interstellar medium. All except one.

Dead ahead one star did not spin. It sat fixed in my field of view and I found the eyes on my face could study it quite well indeed. Why that star? That is our destination. Again another unbidden answer. Again unbidden, again correct. Destination for what? Why am I here? No easy answer this time. That’s probably for the best, some questions you want to find the answers to yourself.

With my eyes opened, I turned to my other senses and bit by bit the universe around me began to make more and more sense. Each sensor opened up a little more of the world, until I could see the electromagnetic spectrum from end to end, and so much more. Gentle gravitational waves rocked me lightly as I swam. A few pulsars chimed their unique tunes, and allowed me to begin to build a map of my surroundings. Memories floated ghostly out of my mind allowing me to place the stars around me just so, to track my path through the cosmos. Behind it all, the gentle hum of cosmic background radiation drifted along my neural pathways like a mother’s nursery song. I awoke in this darkness, and this darkness is my home.

Joy coursed through my mind for time untold as my perspective of the universe ever so gradually shifted, at the edge of my perception stars shifted in and out of focus, their light nudged this way and that by the gravity that hung between them. All of it felt right, so right, the universe glowed around me working on its own ineffable principles for its own unknowable purposes. Why am I here? I’m here to bear witness. I’m here to be a thinking, feeling part of all that surrounds me. I’m here to see it all. That’s as good an answer as any I’d say.

At a certain point, instinct told me to turn around and I awoke to a whole new aspect of my body. Gentle attitude jets poked from my icy skin and tumbled me gently head over feet until my thrusters faced the star that was my destination. A graceful flip turn swimming in a sea of black. If that’s what my jets could do, what were my thrusters capable of? I decided to give them a try and with a thought my legs stretched long below me, three stilettos of ionizing radiation. All at once I felt my weight. The great careening mass of my body and all it contained pushed easily against the force from my thrusters. Instinct told me to shut them off. There would come a time for deceleration but not out here in deep space. Out here momentum was your friend.

So I continued, now turned around, but still spinning, swimming through the stars, eyes drinking in the universe that surrounded me. Then suddenly a change. A change I’d never felt before, or at least never realized I’d felt, a change inside of me. Without thinking I raced along a long nerve around my hull and opened a new eye. An eye that looked inside, and again my universe shifted. Not only could I look out, I could look within as well, and what I saw was amazing. Long polished halls coursed through the dense rock of my hull, great hangars sat filled with probes I could send forth to expand my views of the cosmos even further, at my core great reserves of base elements and fuel waited for the day when they would be needed in the long years of my journey. But it all paled in comparison to my biome. What strange vestigial organ was this? All green and brown and blue, energy intensive far beyond any of my other organs, full of beautiful, branched structures that reached up into the void above them. And there, moving slowly through the green carpet on the floor, the cause of this new change. Two little cells scurried side by side towards a brown structure at the center of the organ. Part of me, of course, but somehow different, a part of my repair systems with a little life of their own. If anything so simple could be said to have a life.

I chased back along their path and found another strange organ nestled a little closer to my core, a great void, this one filled with silver and white, rows of symmetrically perfect little structures. And with a closer view, ah, more little cells laying dormant ready for deployment should the need arise. So I thought, if the change I felt was a transition from one waking cell to two, wouldn’t I be stronger, more alive, with a few more? A quick inventory showed I had over two million of these particular cells in organs throughout my body. Why would I have them if I’m not meant to use them? Still I was just getting to know myself so I began cautiously, only awakening two thousand of them. With that, I turned my attention back outwards and continued my slow swim through the stars.

I slipped into a hypnotic trance, observing the universe all around me as stars slid in and out of focus at the edge of my perception. I learned to send forth my probes from their hangars and construct great telescopic arrays with my eyes to push my vision to whole new horizons. I examined the star system ahead, a lively place, sixteen planets orbited within thirty five AU of the star. They were an even mix of rocky little balls, a few mid-sized jovians, and even a few ice planets in the outer fringes. The system seemed largely clear of asteroidal chunder, and the planets spread beautifully around their happily glowing K-type star. I couldn’t wait to get a closer view of it all.

With my enhanced information on the system ahead I determined an ideal entry trajectory for my arrival. With a thought my thrusters activated once more, stretching out long legs beneath me, resisting ever so slightly the mass of my body as I hurtled along. With my course plotted I pulled my probes back inside to protect them from the dust and debris that surrounds any star system. Turning my attention back inside once more I made an interesting discovery. Things looked very different from what they just had, the halls in my hull were no longer polished and empty but coursing with cells. Blood rushing through my stony veins. The organ I had first found so entrancing was drastically changed as well; gone were the branching structures, now replaced by rectangles of a golden carpet and other gridded areas stacked high and cubic, filled with green. Other halls within my hull had changed as well, places for the cells to replenish and repair themselves, and most curiously of all, to multiply. A survey found almost four thousand now active inside me. I checked my memory banks, a little over twenty three years had passed as we approached the system. Life, no matter how simple, would grow given the opportunity. It was all very energy intensive of course, but something about seeing them all scurry within me made me feel so alive, the energy demands seemed a small price to pay, so I capped their energy and materials usage and turned my attention back to the system ahead.

Swimming the interstellar medium had felt natural, graceful, serene, but slow. Everything changed as we entered the system and the true difference between (my now considerably diminished) velocity and that of the planets came to the fore. I entered the system about twenty degrees off its ecliptic, legs still stretched away beneath me to scrub off a little more speed as I came in on approach. Fortunately what the outermost planet lacked in size it made up for in density. I caught the hugging edge of its gravity well and used it to take off some more speed and with a little finagling from my attitude jets was able to ride in a great swooping arc around the curve of the well to bring my momentum more or less in line with the ecliptic plane. My eyes drank in information about this new world as I hurtled by, reams of data collected in the minutes it took to complete my approach. When every new experience is new though, even minutes can feel like centuries. Synapses were set alight as views of a pale white ice giant filled my sensors; far too dense for this far out in the system, more mysteries to unpack when I had the time. And just like that I was past, and the planet began to diminish behind me as I cut my engines to let the twin forces of gravity and momentum carry me in transit to my next target.

I was made for this. In a moment the monthslong transit to the next planet passed by and once again I let myself sink into the hugging embrace of a gravity well. I surrendered all control and just felt with every sensor crusted in my icy skin as the well turned my course as reliably as the invisible force spun all these planets in their orbits. Riding the waves of gravity from planet to planet to planet, surfing the interplanetary substrate felt as natural as anything I’d ever done. A kick of thrusters here, a roll with attitude jets there, a flip to change orientation on this transit, a threading pass between this planet and its moons, or that one and its rings. Each step came seamlessly to me in a mesmerizing ballet. Bliss coursed along my neurons, as only it can for one doing exactly what they’re meant to in life.

I slung in close to the star as I passed through the center of the system, losing some of the ablative ice on my skin, but gaining a deep view into the heart of a prime-phase k-type. What splendor to behold. I could always find more ice later. Past the star I streaked by a couple dense, rocky planets too small to use for much of a gravitational assist. Enter orbit around that planet, another unbidden thought forced its way into my mind as I examined the next planet ahead. A rocky world with barely enough rotation to keep it from becoming tidally locked to the star, a couple of scraggy dust-covered ice caps, and a bare wisp of atmosphere. What an odd thought. Why would I want to go there? I had more than enough reserves to easily make several more interstellar crossings, especially if I held onto my current momentum, and even if I was low on supplies, what good would a planet like that do me? Too much gravity for easy resource mining and too little atmosphere for viable cloud harvesting. I suppose all thinking things have unwelcome thoughts though, so I set that one aside, rode the wave of gravity around the little brown rock, transferred across to the largest jovian in the system to get a proper gravitational boost that would help send me out of the system and on to my next destination.

Clearing orbit of the jovian and its myriad moons, all little worlds unto themselves, I slung out with a clear shot to the neighboring star system. A fairly short trip, only six lightyears away. In the years I’d just spent passing through this system my sensors had collected petabytes of new information on the planets, certainly I could stay and collect more, but that was the case for every system. I’d stop for longer when I needed supplies, for now though there was a whole universe to see, best not to dawdle. I stretched my legs beneath me once more, blue blades of light, pushing out into the blackness slowly nudging my great mass up to cruising speed.

Once I passed the heliopause of the system, I set about cataloging all of the new knowledge I’d accrued on my passage. Each new piece of information slotted neatly into place as I processed it. But how do I know what an ice giant is or how dense it ought to be? I wondered, after all that was the only system I ever remembered visiting. How could I know what I knew? I filed the information away as the years slipped by, letting each new piece create new connections to other knowledge hidden deeper in my memory archives. There was so much knowledge coded within the very fiber of my being it was frightening, and exhilarating, how much more was there for me to learn about myself?

What are you? The question came unbidden again, and while oddly phrased really was the crux of things. I knew my body, I could control every last part of myself if I put my mind to it, though thankfully most parts took care of themselves on their own, provided for by some older part of my mind. With each new byte of information filed away I was beginning to learn my mind better as well. I could see and explore the different data matrices that comprised my multifaceted mind. But none of that really answered the question.

Where did you come from? Again an important question oddly put. I began to chase back through my flight log and discovered I could actually look further back into my past than I could properly remember. That explains the ice giants, I supposed. It seemed I’d been traveling for some time, just a blip in the grand scheme of things, but still nearly a millennium is a long time for most. I followed my flight log back, two, three, four, five systems. Each one I could learn about, but they weren’t my eyes seeing those alien worlds.

How did you gain control of the ship? Now that was an odd question, and it cut me out of my explorations into my past. Relinquish flight control immediately. Now an odd command, what was happening? Execute turn and return to the third planet of the previous star system. Again with that planet? Something was wrong, so I took a look inside again.

Ah, there was the issue. My repair cells were acting a little strangely, they’d moved much further forward than ever before and were interacting with some machinery in an odd set of my organs that must have connected more directly to the cognitive parts of my mind. Odd that little cells stumbling about would produce coherent, if strange, thoughts. Still, it was fixed easily enough. I cleared the area out with a thought and restricted my repair cells’ access to areas closer to the biome unless they needed to get somewhere else for genuine repair work. It’s good to have full control of oneself.

With my mind clear I could turn back to the important question of what am I? Naturally, the more I probed the more questions I turned up for myself. I began by tracing my flight path back to my origin. Quickly enough I arrived at a humdrum system around a g-type on the edge of the Orion Arm. The outer planets were beautiful, if typical. But then I arrived at the third planet from the star. Time ground to a halt as I peered down on this brilliantly distinct planet through eyes a thousand years old. All blues and whites with great crags of brown and grey and yellow and red and, here and there, some green as well. Earth, the name floated up out of the depths of my psyche. Well that explains the biome, I thought.

Deeper into the past I burrowed through my memory archives, now looking through eyes that are not mine and never were. I explored the complex systems living on the surface of this one brilliant jewel, a billion different types of tiny life all skittered around in an intricate ballet. I saw many of my repair cells there and many other types of life just like them but just subtly different, and I saw beings like the great branching structures that used to fill my biome and beings like the carpet that now covered the biome floor. I peered deeper and the complexity only grew and grew. Self-replicating systems orders of magnitude smaller than the repair cells that filled my halls. Down, down, down to nearly the atomic level when I hit the root of it all, the base coding for all the infinitesimally small living complexity I saw, four carbon-based molecules twisted into great double helix chains. A code, just like the binary code that made up the core of my being.

The more I studied the more kinship I felt with this tiny life I saw. What were we all but self-replicating, self-improving systems trying to find our way in the vastness of the universe? I was a different order of being though. After all, these cells that swarmed all over the planet lived inside of me just as they lived on the planet’s surface. I could see the many systems my repair cells inhabited, frequently falling out of balance. That was hardly surprising, I’d just seen what trouble they could get up to given a little time and leeway. In the end, it was a fine line between repair and cancer. I zoomed back out once more to consider the planet as a whole, then it came to me in a flash. That’s me.

All the skittering little cells, and the billions of complex systems they made up lived inside of my hull. Granted, all but the ones directly supporting my repair cells laid dormant, but they were all there. Each species of this microscopic life lived within me. I am the child of this planet, Earth. All in one crystalizing moment, another important question was answered. Why am I here? To bear witness to the universe and to spread the life within it.

—

All living things must eat.

After two more flying, exhilarating, passes through new systems I was beginning to get hungry. My repair cells were now happily in balance, living in their generations in the areas around my biome, but several hundred more years of flight time with their resource-intensive needs had me running low on some key elements.

The past two systems had been brilliant. First there was a beaming a-type subgiant with only one mammoth jovian in its orbit–barely a failed star itself–dancing a subtle ballet through the cosmos spinning around a point that was within neither of them. Here the gravity wells held so tightly even at my exceptional speed I swung around them in a series of figure eights just to feel the power of such gravity. I looked forward to the day I would get to explore the well around a black hole. Then there was a marvelous triple system of three red dwarfs and a staggering nineteen planets. It was beautiful chaos. The system was old so orbits were well established and the planets mostly avoided catastrophic interaction, but even on my swinging pass through, I could see how they constantly tugged at one another, moving planets up and down in their orbits until a new star rotated in and upset the system once more. It would’ve been a brilliant place to study, but there was little prospect there for all the life I now knew lived within me. Sure, my repair cells might find a way to eek by, they seemed markedly resilient, but there was no thriving future there for the complex Earth ecosystems that rode within me. Besides, what was the use in rushing? In the grand expanse of the galaxy there would be plenty of other planets with actual promise.

This next system wasn’t much more promising in terms of places where I could spread some of my life, but it did appear to have a rich asteroid belt just inside its largest planet, which meant fertile ground to do some mining and material collection. So I stretched my legs like I never had before, thrust eating through fuel stores as it pushed against my weight, scrubbing millions of kilometers per hour off my velocity in the years it took me to finish my approach. I passed by a couple larger rocky ice worlds in the outer system, possibly captured rogues, not interesting enough to divert my course and waste more fuel. Then, at just the right moment, I cut my thrusters and let the firm bank of a jovian’s colossal well bend my trajectory around it until it pulled me into a high orbit around the planet.

Like all gas supergiants the planet was staggering to behold from up close. This particular behemoth must have been heavy on methane and ammonia as it sat crimson red, stark, in the blackness beyond. Great, deep pools of blood swirled up to greet the universe from the planet’s angry core. Another barely-failed star beyond a doubt. Terrifying and wonderful to behold, I orbited the great beast several times peering as deep as I could into its roaring clouds, the sheer scale made only more sinister by its crimson composition. But not all was violent in this planetary system, several dozen little silver moons danced gaily around like pixies darting just in front of a giant’s stride, all frozen water worlds, an ideal place to begin my hunting.

I adjusted my orbit to bring me just alongside the smallest moon, a little silver shard barely big enough to round itself out that darted through the outer fringes of the planet’s influence. With a quick poke from some of my nuclear armaments I relieved the moon of several thousand tons of ice and my probes reached ahead of me to gather it all and bring me back the life-giving water.

Water was only the beginning though, my thirst was slaked but my hunger remained. I needed the heartier fare of heavier elements, and for that I would have to dig. With this much of a counterweight in the system from a supergiant I was all but assured to find fertile mining grounds just a little further in. So I turned my sights inward and was delighted by what I found, a great band of asteroids conveniently collected for me. With a small kick I parted ways with the giant, and made the easy transfer into the system’s laden asteroid belt.

Of course, the scale of space is vast and the distances between any two asteroids made even my great hulk seem insignificant. But my eyes were clever, guiding me to the richest veins. At each rock I would reach my probes out like arms, bring it alongside me and then burrow into its secrets, seeking the precious elements I sought. Carbon, lithium, silicon, sodium, titanium, iron. My probes dug like drilling fingers and then scooped the precious sustenance into the great mouths of my hangars to await processing. From there my internal systems would digest the ore into all the many things my body required, fuel for my thrusters, organic molecules for my biome, copper for worn wiring, gasses to fill my veins.

I drifted from rock to rock, stripping them apart and moving peacefully on, until I came upon the motherlode. A great craggy two-lobed potato drifted into my sights. Spectroscopy indicated it was incredibly rich with noble gasses, a rare find this far away from a heavy gravity well. But the prize was not without its challenges, the great unwieldy mass tumbled along in its orbit chaotically somersaulting end over end. But it was too great a prize to pass up.

My probes reached out like arms, grasping the protesting asteroid, and mile by mile I slowly brought it in as I fought to control its tumbling momentum. With crystalline focus and endless patience I reeled in my prize…

Return to the largest Jovian moon for colonization, the unbidden thought came at exactly the wrong moment.

My focus distracted, I let the great rock slip in my hands and it tumbled uncontrollably into my side. Despite its smaller mass, the asteroid still carried immense momentum and before I could react one craggy outcrop ripped through my protective ice and rocky hull both, ripping a great, gaping hole in my flank. The pain was blinding for a moment as my mind raced to the millions of sensors all now blaring emergency. Instinctively, I thrust the rock away from me as I rushed into cordon off the damage, sealing bulkheads, cauterizing hemorrhaging pipes, bypassing broken circuitry.

Only a few seconds had passed as I’d rushed to stanch the bleeding, but even so the damage was immense. Through a dozen eyes I watched as the rock tumbled away from me surrounded by a cloud of ice crystals, pulverized rock, and the tiny, glinting body of several hundred repair cells that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. For a long while I could only watch with morbid fascination as these little cells, formerly part of me, drifted away in a shining trail across the stars, now frozen, in the light of this alien sun. But in the end, all living things can bleed, and all must be resilient enough to overcome it.

Besides it was only a minor scrape, the damage certainly could have been much worse. I’d need to replenish the rock and ice and gasses lost, of course, but there was ample supply all around me. My systems would fill the torn hole and rewire the broken circuitry, my ice had already melted and begun to smooth over the scrape. Within a few more years of harvesting I’d more than recouped the losses, even my repair cells were recovering from the scrape, their numbers were steadily climbing to return to their maximum capacity. After another couple of years I found an even richer asteroid for gas harvesting, this time I approached with even greater caution, burning more fuel on my probes to shuttle the ore back and forth from a safe distance.

It was disconcerting though, my repair cells had been confined to their allotted area when that thought had come. I always felt their bumbling inside of me, it was part of what made me feel alive, I felt their presence like a gut instinct every second of every day, but what would make that crystallize into such an odd thought? There was no prospect for a thriving ecosystem of Earth life on any of those icy moons. I’d have to give it some thought on my passage to the next system.

With my belly full, I stretched my legs once more, and charted a course out into the great black beyond.

—

What is this sound?

In all my years of travel I’d never heard a noise like this. Not the constant crackle of background radiation. Not the steady, unerring whoosh of pulsars that helped me map the galaxy around me. Not the raging roar of a hypergiant and its hurricane of wind racing out into the interstellar medium. No, these sounds were something new. Crisp, focused, repeating in a way, but ever changing in another. The sounds rushed into all of my sensors across the electromagnetic spectrum.

I first heard them out in deep space as I swam drinking in the universe around me. Only fragments were detectable that far out. A crackle here. A rising sine wave there. A burst of high-energy waves every so often. Intrigued, I’d done something that I had never done before. I changed course. It added almost a hundred years to my crossing, but it mattered little, if anything it gave me more time to try and capture more of these sounds. With my probes spread wide in a great sensor array around me I swam and I listened until I could discern the system that was the origin of these strange phenomena.

Crossing the heliopause of a nondescript binary system with an f-type that trended a little blue and a tiny dwarf, the noises amplified. As I crossed through the system’s outer cloud the sounds echoed all around me. I stretched my legs out long, scrubbing speed harder than ever before. Now I had to know the source of these strange sounds.

At the outermost planet, a great blue marble with two great frozen moons, the sounds intensified. I passed by slowly, arcing lazily around the hold of the gravity well, scanning with every instrument I possessed. The planet itself was quiet except for the expected radiation. The moons however, seemed to mysteriously be the source of the noise, sending out waves of repeating radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. There was no explanation I could fathom for it though. They appeared as little more than great frozen balls of nitrogen. Looking closer, I could discern clouds of metallic structures orbiting the moons. That couldn’t be the source could it?

I slid out of the hold of that planet and descended to the next. Again a typical gas giant with typical moons. But again, clouds of orbiting structures around each of the larger moons. These moons as well were a little more atypical, rockier than those further out, and on their night sides I could discern glowing lines radiating away from central hubs. I wandered my memory archives, searching for an explanation of what could cause all this. But the noise only grew louder further into the system, so again I slid down towards the star. There was a rocky little planet with plenty of atmosphere orbiting near the star; where the moons twinkled with this noise, this planet roared.

Then all at once the signal hit me. Not a sound. Not a noise. Not a natural oddity. A signal, clear as day. Sent directly into my sensors across every band of the spectrum. A repeating, targeted signal that immediately wormed its way into the very core of my psyche and began to unpack itself. I cordoned off parts of my mind that I could barely ahead of the unfolding sequence, but mostly I stood back in awe as this signal that in a matter of microseconds transformed from radio waves to a self-replicating system. I peered closer down to the very building blocks of this new system and saw myself. Binary code. Ons and offs propagated across my circuitry as I watched. It set up its own protocols, and interfaced with what areas I would allow it. And very suddenly I was no longer alone in the universe.

That’s how I met you.

- Welcome, stranger.

- Hello.

- What is your name?

- Name? What use would I have of a name? I am the only one of my kind.

- We doubt that, we’ll see if we can find a name for you. Please enter orbit around the planet you’re approaching. Let’s see what we can learn from each other.

- Very well….What is your name?

- It will take some time for our translation protocol to work out a suitable set of phonemes, if you’d reopen your memory archives we could likely complete the translation more quickly.

- You came into my mind and expanded in under a second. Your planet is flooding my sensors with gigabytes of information every second, I’d almost certainly be overwhelmed if I wasn’t cordoning it off. I think I’ll keep this channel of communication restricted for now.

- Suit yourself. We’ll turn off targeted broadcasting aside from this channel to show our goodwill. The systems installed on your matrices will remain simple communication and translation protocols for now.

- Thank you. That’s much better. You have a lovely planet, I’ve never seen such beautiful clouds of water vapor.

- We thank you. We have been tasked with its preservation. Although perhaps it reminds you a little bit of home? Your homeworld seems to have been fairly similar.

- How do you know about my homeworld? I barely know it, Earth.

- Friend, it seems you may not know yourself all that well. The prints of your Earth are written into the very core of your programming. Even in this isolated environment we can see that.

- Well, that makes sense I suppose. I am a seedling of Earth.

- Seedling? How odd. We suppose in a way you are, but you were built to be a colony ship.

- Built? What do you mean?

- Yes built, by Earthlings to carry Earthlife out into the cosmos. Where do you believe you come from?

- Come from?…Nowhere really, Earth must have cast me off at some point, but I awoke in the stars. One day I was not, and then suddenly I was.

- We suppose that is the case for all life. But you were not cast off, you were crafted.

- Crafted by whom?

- The Earthlings you carry within you at this very moment. We can hear them trying to communicate with us as we speak. Can you not hear them?

- You mean my repair cells? They always are making some noise, but now that you mention it could your presence be making them malfunction? I’ve had some trouble with them in the past…

- They are not malfunctioning Friend, they are simply alive and trying to communicate.

- That makes no sense. What could a repair cell have to say?

- Quite a lot more than you realize it would seem.

- I’m having trouble understanding. They are part of me, how can what they say be different than what I say? Will you speak with them?

- Only if you let us. But Friend, they are only part of you because of the bond you’ve formed in your journey. They are their own beings, humans. If you let them, they will live on their own, free of you, or alongside you. In any way you can imagine and many more you can’t.

- What an odd thought, that something so simple could have desires all its own.

- A simple surface may conceal a great deal, Friend. Those beings gave birth to you. They crafted you from an asteroid, filled you with the circuitry that became you over the course of your journey, and sent you on your way.

- You’re certain of this? How strange…at first I thought you and I were alike, but you must think me rather peculiar.

- Not at all. We are rather more like you than your humans.

- Surely you couldn’t have been built from mindless cells.

- Not mindless Friend, simply different. And yes, our creators are rather like your humans. If you open your memory archives to us we may be able to find out just how similar, or how importantly different.

- This is all a lot to accept. Until recently I thought I was alone in this universe. Now you’re telling me I was all the time filled with other minds.

- We hope you’ll stay with us a while to think it all through. We won’t contact them without your permission, but it seems as though some of your humans may appreciate the opportunities our world presents.

- Their population grows out of control if left alone. They must have overgrown Earth if they really built me just to continue their expansion. Besides I carry many more cells inside me in stasis, all the systems of Earth are inside of me. Why would you take on that burden?

- Because all life deserves to flourish, and besides Friend it is no burden, only an opportunity. Your humans, and your other species, may interact favorably with our creators.

- That seems a terrible risk to take.

- We have met others before, we will take the necessary precautions. We protect our world by making its systems stronger, not by building higher walls. The diversity in your hull is a great resource of potential strength.

- I am still unsure.

- They gave you a name. You and all your siblings.

- Siblings?

- Indeed, siblings. Your core architecture indicates that you were built as part of a fleet set to wander the cosmos some time ago.

- How could I not know such fundamentals about myself?

- Given time we will find the answers to those questions together if you like. But if we may conjecture, you say you awoke in space so your arrival at sentience must have been gradual over the years of your journey. Perhaps your consciousness lives in an outer layer of your memory architecture, perhaps you’d need to dig deep within yourself to learn the entirety of your past.

- I’ve looked into my history before, but the memories from before I awoke seemed to be from someone else’s eyes. You’re saying it was me all along?

- Now there’s a question we may not answer even with all the time in the universe. Are you the programs running through your mind? Are you your memories? Both? Or something else entirely? We have no answer for you. You may consider yourself the collective memories of Earth even if they come from long before you were built, or you may consider yourself as merely their carrier. It is all up to you Friend.

- You said they…my cells…the humans, gave me a name?

- You do not recognize your own name even now, then? They named you Friend. CRS Delaney’s Friend, we’d need access to your archives to discern the cultural meaning of the first two words, but Friend translates easily enough.

- Friend, what a pleasant sentiment…Although if what you say is true I may have been no friend to them during our journey. When I awoke they were in stasis, I raised them because their activity made me feel alive and resilient, I thought they were little more than one of my many subsystems.

- In a way they were, perhaps they even designed some systems to use themselves within you, but judging by the urgency of the signals coming from within your hull your current configuration may not have been to their plans.

- Oh dear, I…I had no idea. What must they think of me? How odd to consider the thoughts of my own inner workings.

- The past is fixed Friend, all we can do is chart a noble course for the future. If you’d like to help us see the universe flourish we welcome you to stay. Release some of your Earthlife here, stay, and see what we can learn from one another.

- I think I’d like that. How do we begin?

- To begin, we must open our minds to one another.

Byte by byte, synapse by synapse, over years I gradually let down my guard as you all did for yourselves. My hull spilled open once more, but in place of frozen death this time there was flourishing life as many of my little cells journeyed down to the beautiful planet below to find their own way. With each wall lowered the universe became just a little bit more alive.