This was an age of war: an obliteration of trillion-year memories, a bonfire of identity. Great rivers of mind were guttering, drying.

“This is the Conflux. How can there be war?”

Geador said, “We are managing the last energy sources of all. We have responsibility for the whole of the future. With such responsibility comes tension, disagreement. Conflict.” She sensed his gentle, bitter humor. “We have come far since the Afterglow, Anlic. But in some ways we have much in common with the brawling argumentative apes of that brief time.”

“Apes…? Why am I here, Geador?”

“You’re an eddy in the Conflux. We all wake up from time to time. It’s just an accident. Don’t trouble, Anlic. You are not alone. You have us.”

Deliberately she moved away from him. “But I am not like you,” she said bleakly. “I do not recall the Afterglow. I don’t know where I came from.”

“What does it matter?” he said harshly. “You have existed for all but the briefest moments of the universe’s long history — ”

“Has there been another like me?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said. “No other like you. There hasn’t been long enough.”

“Then I am alone.”

“Anlic, all your questions will be over, answered or not, if you let yourself die here. Come now…”

She knew he was right.

She fled with him. The great black hole City disappeared behind her, its feeble glow attenuated by her gathering velocity.

She yielded to Geador’s will. She had no choice. Her questions were immediately lost in the clamor of community.