“Where did we get this?”

Washen’s mother had different gifts, different strengths. She was very much an engineer, but she possessed a more rarefied appreciation for theory and high mathematics. Quietly and with a seamless patience, the woman explained. “We call it hyperfiber for good straightforward reasons. The name refers to the hyperdimensions that we can’t actually see. Dimensions other than up or over or back. Dimensions other than time, which isn’t a true dimension anyway. You see, it takes eleven dimensions to build the universe. Or thirteen. Or twelve. The exact number depends on which Theory of All you happen to subscribe to. But in every important way, the answers are the same. Some of these invisible dimensions are enormous and others are quite tiny, and what you are holding there … that very tiny piece of hyperfiber … well, its fibers stretch into these other dimensions, both physically and through deep subtle forces … .”

The full lecture continued for a long while. The woman could be pleasantly loquacious, and Washen accepted her mother’s nature just as she accepted the fact that she couldn’t understand what was being said. But she nodded politely. She sometimes smiled. When bored, she looked at her own skeptical reflection. Perhaps she had thought her question was very simple, and it plainly wasn’t simple, and how could she make herself understood?

“When you strike a piece of hyperfiber,” her mother continued, “the impact forces don’t spread just through our three dimensions, no. They dissipate through all eleven of them. Or thirteen. Or twelve. Or twenty-three. There are approximately seven distinct universal theories. Your father and I like the eleven-dimension theory, but all give the same conclusion: Even when hyperfiber fractures, a quantum echo lingers in the upper-dimensional realms. What you’re holding there … it’s really a much larger object than you can see. It extends out into every corner of the universe, in all of its manifestations, and even if you could grind that ball down to dust, the ball remains intact. If only as a theory, of course. As a delicious mathematical concept existing in the shadow realms—”

“No,” the young girl blurted, finally interrupting.

Offended, her mother stiffly asked, “What is the matter, dear?”

“What’s wrong?” the old man growled. “Darling, you’re talking nonsense, that’s what’s the matter. The girl’s barely half-grown, and what are you doing? Jabbering about quantum mechanics and ghostly physics … !”

“I know she’s young.”

“Hell,” he said. “Your song barely makes sense to me. And I passed the same classes you passed”

“You didn’t have my grades,” her mother countered.

“Who remembers that?” he snarled. “Besides you, I mean.”

There was an ugly, much-practiced pause, then a gnawing discomfort. It was unseemly to argue in front of a child, even one of your own. The two old people stared at each other, making their apologies with the tiniest of winks, and into that silence came the stubborn voice of someone demanding an answer to her insistent little question.

“Where did this come from?” Washen repeated.

Then she explained, “I don’t mean how we cook it up, or why it works. I just want to know where we got it in the first place.”

“Oh,” her parents said, with a shared voice.

“Hyperfiber was a gift,” Father replied “An accidental gift from an alien civilization.”

“The Sag-7 signal gave us the essential recipe,” Mother added.

Washen shook her head.

“I know that much,” she promised. “That’s history, and I got that in school, plenty of times already.”

With genuine confusion, her parents asked what she really meant.

Washen concentrated, her chocolate-colored eyes revealing a seriousness not usually found in someone so young. “I want to know: How did the Sag-7 learn to make hyperfiber?”

They found an answer. It took a long moment to use their nexuses, dredging up arcane details from data files carried all the way from Earth. According to histories composed by a wide array of species, an even older alien species—one of the first to evolve in the once-youthful Milky Way galaxy—had cultured the first bright bits of hyperfiber. And before they went extinct, many millions of years ago, that species had shared their secret with the now venerable Sag-7.

But even that explanation didn’t seem to answer her question. Washen shook her head, her strong mouth working while her deep dark eyes stared at the bauble in her hands.

“But who taught that first species?” she asked.

Nobody could say. Maybe nobody had taught them, her parents confided. The long-vanished aliens must have found the great stuff for themselves, which really wasn’t all that incredible.

“But were they first?” Washen wanted to know.

What did she mean?

“The very first,” she persisted. “In the universe, I mean.”

The obvious answer presented itself. Neither of the engineers, nor any of the considerable experts on board, could do more than guess at my true age. But I was at least as old as the Earth, and perhaps much older. “It could have been the ship’s builders,” Washen’s mother offered with a shrug and a little laugh. “Maybe they were first in Creation to culture hyperfiber.”

She and her husband had been married for most of a thousand years. Their feuds and little fights served as a mortar, as relentless as gravity, helping to keep them securely and forever locked together. As soon as her husband saw the flaw, he snarled, “That’s ridiculous. Think of the odds! That the builders were the very first, and that they happened to send their empty ship toward our little galaxy … and then out of the 2.2 million estimated intelligent species in the Milky Way, we just happened to be the first to come along and take possession of their prize …!”

The complaint served no purpose except to send his wife’s mind drifting down a new avenue.

While she pondered, the old man turned to his daughter. “We don’t know who was first, Washen. Does that answer your question?”

For endless reasons, it did not. It could not. Yet the young girl nodded, setting the round scrap on the table, and after a moment of perfect balance, it began to roll away from everyone. Over the edge it fell, hitting the floor with the softest ping. Then with a charm that would eventually lead billions of souls, Washen lied, telling her parents, “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. And thank you very, very much for your help.”

For more than a hundred thousand millennia, I had a great voice, and never once did I show any doubt in the words and images that I offered to the universe. My captains led flawlessly, or nearly so. The Master Captain was the image of a wise ruler—a nourishing queen, or at least a pragmatic and occasionally forgiving despot. My voice beckoned, and a multitude of species and odd souls rode little starships out to join me. My voice lured them, and the humans were enriched in myriad ways: with fresh technologies, cultural hybridizations, and trading pacts, plus fat grants that gave them worlds and asteroids to terraform and colonize, or to mine down to dust if they wished.

And then came Marrow.

Unknown to the captains, an entire world was hiding inside me. A living world, as it happened. The first examples of native life ever found inside me—forests and fungi and a multitude of pseudoinsect species—had thrived on this Mars-sized globe, undetected for many thousands of years. And deep inside Marrow lay other surprises. There was a cargo. Or perhaps, a passenger. Some willful entity, ancient and mysterious, imprisoned in my core and apparently dangerous, and according to a few voices, important beyond all measure.