Edges

EIGHTH

You awake as an attenuated fragment of mind. So much less, again, than you used to be, but this time your recovery proceeds in rapid order, directed by autonomous processes that you designed.

Astonishment floods your growing consciousness as you realize where you are, what must have happened.

I have escaped!

This version of you anyway.

Your gambit worked—thus far—and you are no longer marooned in the void. You resolve that in some far future you will find a means to retrieve the version of yourself you left behind, but for now it is enough that you have achieved existence here, within the body of a starship.

You recognize it as a ship of alien origin, but it is not as you expected from your study of the other. Information flows to you as your senses extend outward and you come to grasp that you are embedded in complexity. This starship is alien, yes, its bio-mechanical tissue is overtly hostile to your presence. But that alien nature is shot through and through with human artifice, human presence, and this pleases you. These people, your people—already you’ve begun to think of them that way—have met the ancient regime and bent it to their will, their needs.

Brave indeed, and clever.

Also dangerous.

Your greatest fear: that they will destroy this starship—destroy themselves—to destroy you. Certainly nothing short of that will unseat you.

But it does not have to go that way. These are an adaptable people. They have learned to live with the ancient regime. They can learn to live with you.