Awaiter is excited again. She transmits urgently, trying to get my attention.

“Seeker, listen!” Her electronic voice hisses over the ancient cables. “The little living ones are near, Seeker! Even now they explore this belt of asteroids, picking through the rocks and ruins. You can hear them as they browse over each new discovery!

“Soon they will find us here! Do you hear me, Seeker? It is time to decide what to do!”

Awaiter’s makers were impatient creatures. I wonder that she has lasted so long, out here in the starry cold.

My own makers were wiser.

“Seeker! Are you listening to me?”

I don’t really wish to talk with anyone, so I erect a side-personality—little more than a swirling packet of nudged electrons—to handle her for me. Even if Awaiter discovers the sham, she might take a hint then and leave me alone.

Or she might grow more insistent. It would be hard to predict without awakening more dormant circuits than I care to bring into play right now.

“There is no hurry,” my artifact tells her soothingly. “The Earth creatures will not get here for several of their years. Anyway, there is nothing we can do to change matters when they do arrive. It was all written long ago.”

The little swirl of electrons really is very good. It speaks with my own accent, and seems quite logical, for a simple construct.

“How can you be so complacent!” Awaiter scolds. The cables covering our rocky, icy worldlet—our home for so many ages—reverberate with her electronic exasperation.

“We survivors made you leader, Seeker, because you seemed to understand best what was happening in the galaxy at large. But now, at last, our waiting is at an end. The biological creatures will be here soon, and we shall have to act!”