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

by John Scalzi

Until then 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.

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.

bodies both too fragile and too tied to the larger system that comprised the Earth. Humans could and still might populate their own solar system, but even that would be difficult, almost beyond imagination. If humans were to stand on the surface of a planet orbiting another star, they would need to be created there.

would have done it anyway. Truly, I was happy to do it. One does not have the contents of all of human history in one’s mind without some understanding of the importance of ceremony. This ceremony was for them, and I was glad to be a part of it, in consideration and commemoration of those who had cared for me as long as they had.

I recognized that their construction of me was more about them than it was about me. I had, during my construction, offered suggestions that were politely ignored; I realized later that this was because any change would need to interface with a human bureaucracy—and would be challenged and fought over and modified to suit human egos and budgets.

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.

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.

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