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.

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.

If humans were to stand on the surface of a planet orbiting another star, they would need to be created there.

It would not be the last time I was changed by knowledge.

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 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. 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 was then active for eight seconds, to double-check an issue with a system and offer a correction. Then I did nothing for another eight thousand years.

I was meant for slow time between the stars, and if the species whose information I carried no longer existed as it had when I left, then that was neither here nor there with regard to my task. I was meant to be a witness to who they were, not who they might become in time.