had not been a true man for long centuries. He did not feel fear as other men feel fear, but all the same in those moments of waiting he became acutely aware of his own mortality, of the air in his lungs, the pump of his hearts; a body that for all its gifts was comprised of weak bone and weaker flesh, a body encased in a machine that itself was, in the larger scale of things, also weak. Whatever the tech-priests might say, what power technology had in the face of the universe’s hostility was meagre at best.
