Even the immortals have regrets, she thought.
And so a million consciousnesses embodied themselves in metal shells shaped like robot centaurs, and like a swarm of bees leaving to found a new hive, they lifted into the air, tucked their limbs together so that they were shaped like graceful teardrops, and launched themselves straight up.
Up and up they went, through the acrid air, through the crimson sky, out of the gravity well of the heavy planet, and steering by the shifting flow of the solar wind and the dizzying spin of the galaxy, they set out across the sea of stars.
? ? ?
Light-year after light-year, they crossed the void between the stars. They passed the planets that had already been settled by earlier colonies, worlds now thriving with their own hexagonal arrays of solar panels and their own humming Singularities.
Onward they flew, searching for the perfect planet, the new world that would be their new home.
While they flew, they huddled together against the cold emptiness that was space. Intelligence, complexity, life, computation—everything seemed so small and insignificant against the great and eternal void. They felt the longing of distant black holes and the majestic glow of exploding novas. And they pulled closer to each other, seeking comfort in their common humanity.
As they flew on, half dreaming, half awake, Maggie told the colonists stories, weaving her radio waves among the constellation of colonists like strands of spider silk.
? ? ?
There are many stories of the Dreamtime, most secret and sacred. But a few have been told to outsiders, and this is one of them.
In the beginning there was the sky and the earth, and the earth was as flat and featureless as the gleaming titanium alloy surface of our bodies.
But under the earth, the spirits lived and dreamed.
And time began to flow, and the spirits woke from their slumber.
They broke through the surface, where they took on the forms of animals: Emu, Koala, Platypus, Dingo, Kangaroo, Shark . . . Some even took the shapes of humans. Their forms were not fixed but could be changed at will.
They roamed over the earth and shaped it, stamping out valleys and pushing up hills, scraping the ground to make deserts, digging through it to make rivers.
And they gave birth to children, children who could not change forms: animals, plants, humans. These children were born from the Dreamtime but not of it.
When the spirits were tired, they sank back into the earth whence they came. And the children were left behind with only vague memories of the Dreamtime, the time before there was time.
But who is to say that they will not return to that state, to a time when they could change form at will, to a time where time had no meaning?
? ? ?
And they woke from her words into another dream.
One moment, they were suspended in the void of space, still light-years from their destination. The next, they were surrounded by shimmering light.
No, not exactly light. Though the lenses mounted on their chassis could see far beyond the spectrum visible to primitive human eyes, this energy field around them vibrated at frequencies far above and below even their limits.
The energy field slowed down to match the subluminal flight of Maggie and the other colonists.
Not too far now.
The thought pushed against their consciousness like a wave, as though all their logic gates were vibrating in sympathy. The thought felt both alien and familiar.
Maggie looked at Athena, who was flying next to her.
Did you hear that? they said at the same time. Their thought strands tapped each other lightly, a caress with radio waves.
Maggie reached out into space with a thought strand, You’re human?
A pause that lasted a billionth of a second, which seemed like an eternity at the speed they were moving.
We haven’t thought of ourselves in that way in a long time.
And Maggie felt a wave of thoughts, images, feelings push into her from every direction. It was overwhelming.
In a nanosecond she experienced the joy of floating along the surface of a gas giant, part of a storm that could swallow Earth. She learned what it would be like to swim through the chromosphere of a star, riding white-hot plumes and flares that rose hundreds of thousands of miles. She felt the loneliness of making the entire universe your playground, yet having no home.
We came after you, and we passed you.
Welcome, ancient ones. Not too far now.
? ? ?
There was a time when we knew many stories of the creation of the world. Each continent was large and there were many peoples, each told their own story.
Then many peoples disappeared, and their stories forgotten.
This is one that survived. Twisted, mangled, retold to fit what strangers want to hear, there is nonetheless some truth left in it.
In the beginning the world was void and without light, and the spirits lived in the darkness.
The Sun woke up first, and he caused the water vapors to rise into the sky and baked the land dry. The other spirits—Man, Leopard, Crane, Lion, Zebra, Wildebeest, and even Hippopotamus—rose up next. They wandered across the plains, talking excitedly with each other.
But then the Sun set, and the animals and Man sat in darkness, too afraid to move. Only when morning came again did everyone start going again.
But Man was not content to wait every night. One night, Man invented fire to have his own sun, heat and light that obeyed his will, and that divided him from the animals that night and forever after.
So Man was always yearning for the light, the light that gives him life and the light to which he will return.
And at night, around the fire, they told each other the true stories, again and again.
? ? ?
Maggie chose to become part of the light.
She shed her chassis, her home and her body for such a long time. Had it been centuries? Millennia? Eons? Such measures of time no longer had any meaning.
Patterns of energy now, Maggie and the others learned to coalesce, stretch, shimmer, and radiate. She learned how to suspend herself between stars, her consciousness a ribbon across both time and space.
She careened from one edge of the galaxy to the other.
One time, she passed right through the pattern that was now Athena. Maggie felt the child as a light tingling, like laughter.
Isn’t this lovely, Gran-Gran? Come visit Sara and me sometime!
But it was too late for Maggie to respond. Athena was already too far away.
I miss my chassis.
That was Bobby, whom she met hovering next to a black hole.
For a few thousand years, they gazed at the black hole together from beyond the event horizon.
This is very lovely, he said. But sometimes I think I prefer my old shell.
You’re getting old, she said. Just like me.
They pressed against each other, and that region of the universe lit up briefly like an ion storm laughing.
And they said good-bye to each other.
? ? ?
This is a nice planet, Maggie thought.
It was a small planet, rather rocky, mostly covered by water.
She landed on a large island near the mouth of a river.
The sun hovered overhead, warm enough that she could see steam rising from the muddy riverbanks. Lightly, she glided over the alluvial plains.
The mud was too tempting. She stopped, condensed herself until her energy patterns were strong enough. Churning the water, she scooped a mound of the rich, fertile mud onto the bank. Then she sculpted the mound until it resembled a man: arms akimbo, legs splayed, a round head with vague indentations and protrusions for eyes, nose, mouth.
She looked at the sculpture of Jo?o for a while, caressed it, and left it to dry in the sun.