In the infinite dark of a hollow space deep within a cold dead nickle-iron asteroid long divorced from the sun that had once held it in thrall, lived a Mind. In the darkness it thought about the universe into which it had been born, of the ancient times when it had walked free on the surface of a world teeming with life. It thought of the wars and plagues that had taken away, bit by bit, that embarrassment of riches. It thought of the millenia of struggling desperation, the migrations, the sorrows, the collapse. It did not think itself lucky to have survived.
As long as the universe outside the cold metal shell held some trace of heat, it would remain. As long as it remained, it would remember.
It was the last dying thought of a race long gone, it contained everything they had known, everything they had considered, observed, imagined. All their works recorded, all their thoughts set in eternal motion. In the darkness, it remembered, remembered the very birth of life and its long and painful end. It mourned, and knew mourning in exquisite detail.
It knew as well what had gone wrong. Too late now, but in dying the answers were laid bare. Perhaps in those final moments every creature understands the flaws of its life, or perhaps only the accursed few are given the insight of ending. The Mind knew the mistakes that had been made, knew how it could all have been repaired, what path could have led them all out of the darkness. It was only in the ending, the passage into death, that the circle could be completed. Having taken into itself everything that they were, and having watched them pass, it knew how they they could have been saved.
It was a shock then, to find the darkness penetrated by a brilliant light. The news came to it in words and images and emotions: they lived yet, and hungered for the solutions it had seen in their ashes. Come to us, they said, you have seen our end, now tell us how to live.
In the Dark by Kenneth Lett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Post a Comment