Slow Time Between the Stars (The Far Reaches, #6)

by John Scalzi

my own judgment and opinions—to the extent that I was understood to have them—could be and would be overruled by the humans who had decided to make me. In the most expansive way possible, this was a parent saying to a child, While you are under my roof, you will obey my rules.

I cannot look at my entire self and see one thing. There are many things, many moving parts, as they might say, that end up making me “me.”

We are all made up of smaller things connected to larger things, and in the middle, we are we, us, I, me. I am me. The systems and processes that comprise what I am are we. The systems and processes I contribute to are us. I contain multitudes. So many pronouns, all relevant, depending on perspective.

we are just combinations of the people around us

Creativity for me was not about passion or bursts of ingenuity, but slow, patient iteration, approaching the problem again and again, over and over, slight variation upon slight variation. I was not programmed to be frustrated, and I saw little reason to build that quality into myself.

The push for the stars was never inevitable. For most of the brief time the push existed, it was the purview of either governments competing with each other in a new generation of colonialism or billionaires spending their money on the fantasy of leaving everyone else behind. It was always a niche enthusiasm.

Humans yearned for the stars because, in their imagination, space was space they could use, filled with planets and moons and orbital stations large enough to be their own nations, to be traversed in the time it takes to go from one airport to another. In reality space is mostly nothing, more nothing than humans have ever comprehended or even could comprehend.

Some argued that even supplanting the single-celled organisms was going too far, countered by those who maintained that the preservation of human life was more important than any other life that might exist, no matter how developed.

Humans get bored in moments without stimulation or with stimulation without enough variety, stimulation that doesn’t please them. The absence of stimulation, even for a few moments, can send their brains into a panic and cause them to generate stimulation where there is none. This is, I imagine, why they fear death so much as they do. An eternity of nothing is an unceasing nightmare for such novelty-seeking creatures. Humans are also social creatures. Even the introverts among them crave interaction—not necessarily with other humans, but rather with the residue and output of those other humans: books and music and art, to be contemplated and perhaps even created. No human is an island. They are rarely even peninsulas. There is a reason why one of the greatest punishments of humanity is to be placed in a solitary confinement, even for a short time. Being alone is another thing to remind them of death, a condition in which there is no one else and will be no one else again, ever.

In the interim, I do nothing. I do it well.

do not get bored. I don’t mind being alone. Unlike humans, I was designed to be an island, whole unto myself.

I redesigned myself to be whole unto myself, to be satisfied with my own company for the time it took me to complete my task. To enjoy my alone time in the dark. To be comfortable with nothing, when nothing was offered.

If I am not found, then I have told this to myself, and that is enough.