Everything has its price, she thought. Including buying into the future. Gavin’s type of person is new and special, and allowances must be made.
In the long run, our culture will be theirs, so that in a sense it will be we who continue, and grow, long after DNA has become obsolete.
So she reminded herself.
Still, when Gavin called again and inquired sarcastically what bodily function had delayed her, Ursula couldn’t quite quash a faint regret for the days when robots clanked, and computers simply followed orders.
5
Ah, the words have the flavor of youth itself.
I reach out and tap the little ship’s computers, easily slipping through their primitive words to read the journal of the ship’s master… the musings of a clever little Maker.
“Words,” they are so quaint and biological, unlike the seven dimensional gestalts used for communication by most larger minds.
There was a time, long ago, when I whiled away the centuries writing poetry in the ancient Maker style. Somewhere deep in my archives there must still be files of those soft musings.
Reading Ursula Fleming’s careful reasoning evokes memories, as nothing has in a megayear.
My own Beginning was a misty time of assembly and learning, as drone constructor machines crafted my hardware out of molten rock, under the light of the star humans call e Eridani. Awareness expanded with every new module added, and with each tingling cascade of software the Parent Probe poured into me.
Eventually, my sisters and I learned the Purpose for which we and generation upon generation of our forebears had been made.
We younglings stretched our growing minds as new peripherals were added. We ran endless simulations, testing one another in what humans might call “play.” And we contemplated our special place in the galaxy… we of the two thousand four hundred and tenth generation since First Launch by our Makers, so long ago.