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

by John Scalzi

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.

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. In reality space is mostly nothing, more nothing than humans have ever comprehended or even could comprehend.

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.

What is it like to spend hundreds of thousands of years in space? It is, literally, nothing at all.