Moonbound

by Robin Sloan

As Ariel sat and waited, a curious feeling was rising; not in the boy’s body, but in mine. My own cells. I sensed a familiar power in this data center, and it had, at last, sensed me, too. Through droplets of mist that landed on Ariel’s lips, in his nose, this power diffused into his blood. There, it sought me, and there, I recognized it. The ledger was built like me, with the same logic at its foundation. Like a mirror, I saw it: chronicler. Remnant of the Anth, hearty fungus upon which much technology had been layered. It was in the reeds, and their roots; in the fish, and their eggs. Somewhere, somehow, long ago, a chronicler had leapt from its subject, just as I had—and joined not a boy, but this vastly more capable partner. In a flash, I understood how it all worked: the vast rhizome of the reeds ferrying scraps of RNA that were integrated into the fish; each fish in turn becoming a living data point, its brain patterned by the RNA to determine its response to the woven queries from the beavers. It was sublime.