54

Like some strange interplanetary rain, devices splashed into the oceans of the orange sun’s second world. Their thirsts slaked, their reservoirs sated with deuterium, the visitors rose from the ocean, streaked across the sky, and returned to the darkness of the cometary belt. And fell back again. And rose anew …

What had begun this process? How long had it continued? No one knew—for there was no one to know. Only the most basic software guided the mechanisms in their endless procession, as only dead reckoning had brought them here. As only the most elemental and reflexive signaling interrupted the silence of their wanderings.

The nomads were myriad—but somehow sensed there had been countless more. Where were the rest? Lost in hyperspace. Lost to cataclysm. Gone beyond the dim comprehension that was the limit of any one device’s ability.

But link by link, ethereal connections formed. The amorphous swarm took on a more orderly configuration. The devices’ returns into the nurturing ocean assumed a schedule.

Data processing quickened. Information once divided, replicated, and carefully distributed for safekeeping coalesced—as memories.

Interconnections began to grow exponentially. Communications exploded. Complexity burgeoned. Self-awareness awakened. Insights cascaded.

Illumination returned.

Alone, serene, fifty-two light-years from the death and destruction that he had fled, Proteus once more contemplated the majesty of the universe.