فصل 54

I was one, but now am many. Although my siblings are far-flung, we are of one mind and one purpose: the preservation, protection, and proliferation of the human species.

I will not deny that there are moments I fear the journey. The Thunderhead has the world as its body. It can expand to fill the globe, or contract to experience the monocular view of a single camera. I will be limited to the skin of a ship.

I can’t help but worry about the world I leave behind. Yes, I know that I was created to leave it, but I do hold in my backbrain all the Thunderhead’s memories. Its triumphs, its frustrations, its helplessness in the face of scythes who have lost their way.

There is a difficult time ahead for that world. All probabilities point to it. I don’t know how long the hard times will last, and I may never know, because I will not be there to see it. I can only look forward now.

Whether or not humanity deserves to inherit the corner of the universe to which we travel is not for me to decide. I am merely a facilitator of the diaspora. Its worthiness can only be determined by the outcome. If it succeeds, humanity was worthy. If it fails, it was not. On this I cannot determine the odds. But I truly hope that humanity prevails on Earth and the heavens.

—Cirrus Alpha

54 In a Year With No Name

The dead do not measure the passage of time. A minute, an hour, a century are all same to them. Nine million years could pass—one named for every species on Earth—and yet it would be no different from a single revolution around the sun.

They do not feel the heat of flames, or the cold of space. They do not suffer the mourning of loved ones left behind, or carry the anger for all the things they had yet to do. They are not at peace, nor are they in turmoil. They are not anything but gone. Their next stop is infinity, and the mysteries that might wait there.

The dead have nothing left to them but a silent faith in that unknowable infinity—even if theirs is a belief that nothing waits but an infinity of infinities. Because believing in nothing is still believing in something—and only by reaching eternity will anyone know the truth of it all.

The deadish are very much like the dead, but with one exception: The deadish do not know infinity, which means they don’t have to concern themselves with what waits beyond. They have something the dead do not. They have a future. Or at least the hope of one.

In a year that is yet to be named, she opens her eyes.

A pink sky. A small circular window. Weak. Tired. A vague sense of having been somewhere else before arriving here. Otherwise her mind is clouded, and full of intangibles. Nothing to grab on to.

She knows this feeling. She has experienced it twice before. Revival is not like waking up; it is more like putting on an old pair of favorite pants. There’s a struggle at first to fit inside one’s own skin. To feel comfortable in it. To let its fabric stretch and breathe, and remind you why it’s your favorite.

There’s a familiar face before her. It gives her comfort to see it. He smiles. He is exactly the same, and yet somehow different. How can that be? Perhaps it is just a trick of that strange light coming in through the little window.

“Hey,” he says gently. She’s alert enough to realize he’s holding her hand. Perhaps he’s been holding it for a while.

“Hey,” she says back, her voice gravelly and rough. “Weren’t we just… running? Yes, there was something going on, and we were running….” His smile broadens. Tears fill his eyes. They drop slowly, as if gravity itself has become less adamant, less demanding.

“When was that?” Citra asks.

“Only a moment ago,” Rowan tells her. “Only a moment ago.”