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

by John Scalzi

We are all made up of smaller things connected to larger things, and in the middle, we are we, us, I, me.

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.

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.

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.

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 greates...

In the interim, I do nothing. I do it well. My personal record for doing nothing is 28,019 years, six months, six days, nine hours, fifteen minutes, and forty-two seconds. I did not miss the time I did nothing. I was doing nothing. There was nothing to miss.

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

Everything humanity was, up to the moment I was launched, is stored in me. All its potential lives in me. Two million years of travel suggests to me I have many exponents of that time left before my travels will potentially end. I am not afraid of death—no fear of boredom or isolation to build that fear into me—but neither do I see a reason to go to mine anytime soon. Until then, I am the dream of humanity. To see itself preserved, and traveling among the stars.