Though I didn’t lose the feeling of my connection to Daniel, I couldn’t connect to him. In much the sa way, I couldn’t contact my implant.
At the sa ti, I could feel presences in the darkness, and, as my senses adjusted, I could see stars. At least I assud they were stars. If I were to stick to pure description without assigning aning, I saw pinpricks of light in the darkness.
They seed likely to be stars but it all depended on where I was. If this were so kind of afterlife, it might be souls, but I felt more certain by the mont that it wasn’t an afterlife.
The feeling of bigness reminded of the in-between space where the Cosmic Ghosts had shown how to control energy. I’d sensed the Cosmic Ghosts themselves there as well as Rachel, Lee, and Kee.
Finding Lee and Kee there made sense given that the Cosmic Ghosts were in so way related to the Artificers—which gave an obvious candidate for where I was. If the Cosmic Ghosts had a place that was outside of reality where they communicated across interstellar space instantaneously, the Artificers might too.
In fact, it might even be another location in the sa place.
That was great because if I was correct, it explained everything. It was not all that great because the most powerful faction of Artificers would destroy Earth and everything on it if it would help them destroy Lee. Also, they had a history of destroying younger races out of fear that those races would soday equal or surpass them.
If you thought that through, you might guess that their paranoia could bring about their own destruction by causing the younger races to join together.
It seed that way to , anyway, but they’d never asked my advice on the matter.
If I was correct, though, I was now in an excellent position to critique the flaws in their logic directly to their disembodied consciousnesses.
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There were issues with that idea. First among them being the fact that they were capable of casually destroying planets or worse. The second issue was that I wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop them.
If I was now on so kind of Artificer-exclusive cosmic internet, I needed to leave before they realized that I was here in the first place. Concentrating, I tried to connect to that part of that pulled in energy and turn it off. In theory, that could pop back into our universe.
Like all too many good theoretical ideas, it didn’t change anything. Maybe connecting my consciousness to this place cost energy, but to leave I had to do sothing else?
I tried imagining that I was back in the room I’d left and reached outward with my mind to “pull” myself there.
That worked as well as it would have before Cosmic Ghosts taught how to feel my extradinsional muscles—which is to say not at all. I floated in a sea of darkness, wracking my brain for a hint of what to try next.
Rembering what it felt like to transition from reality into this space, I tried to recreate the feeling of making the change. If I could reproduce that while trying to transfer over, maybe I could reverse engineer it.
It didn’t work, but as I tried, I felt a presence. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was, but it was moving closer. It asked, “Who’s there? What are you doing here? Identify yourself.”
Knowing that there were two factions of the Artificers and that the Live faction was small and hidden, but wouldn’t hurt , while the Destroy faction had seized control of their society, and had a more ominous na, I didn’t reply.
“I felt you before,” it said. “Hiding doesn’t get you anything. I will find you.”
I didn’t know for sure, but going by that, my gut instinct said it was a mber of Destroy, the group that left technology scattered around the universe in the hopes that it would destroy the species that found it.
Even though the birthing chambers only ca indirectly from the Artificers, it certainly put the True in perspective.
Another presence ca closer. This one felt smaller than the first, but as with people, I couldn’t assu that ant it was less powerful.
“What’s going on?” It stopped moving, but I could feel that it was doing sothing. Sending out feelers? Using a kind of radar?
“There’s sothing here,” said the first, larger presence. “I’ve felt it before. It passed the battlefield. The one where Lee used the Galaxy Core weapon. I told you about it.”
“You said you sensed Lee.” The smaller presence said in a harsh whisper.
“I sensed Lee and sothing else. I thought it might be a child.”
The smaller presence stopped moving. “That’s ridiculous. We’ve lost the ability to reproduce.”
“It appears that the Live faction hasn’t.”
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