“Now, I find the existence of Schrödinger boxes fascinating,” continued the pod, as if it were unique in that respect. The indicator on Justinian’s console was flashing to indicate slow poison in the local atmosphere. It was no wonder; he was standing in a viscous bubble blown from the flier’s rear hatch, staring at an AI pod that rested on the floor of a fourteen-kilometer-deep ocean trench. The flier’s lights illuminated only the volume contained by the bubble’s thin transparent wall, beyond which there was just the still blackness of the ocean. Don’t worry about it, Leslie had said; people use those bubbles for traveling around the connecting filaments of the Shawl. Yes, thought Justinian, but those bubbles didn’t have thousands of tons of pressure piled on each square centimeter, all trying to crush the adamantium threads that braced the pseudofabric.

There was a roaring noise coming from the flier’s hatch: the ship’s air-conditioning system fighting a losing battle as it tried to purify the sea bottom atmosphere. It was an exercise in futility. Gas was leaking from cracks in the slimy rocks of the sea bed as quickly as the flier’s life system could remove it.

Justinian didn’t want to think about it. The faster he did this job, the faster he could get out of here.

He looked down. This AI’s body was more developed than the previous ones. The kidney-bean-shaped pod had split open and sprouted various devices and protuberances like a germinating seed. For some reason the pod had grown itself a pair of metal arms that it was using to accentuate its points as it spoke. It was holding its arms wide apart now, as if wondering.

“Consider our position,” it was saying. “We’re standing fourteen kilometers down on the ocean bed of a planet lost between galaxies. Imagine that you could look out of here at our own galaxy. How would you see it?”

Just as Justinian opened his mouth to answer, the AI pod spoke for him: “I’ll tell you: as a swirl of light. As stars written over empty space. Do you know how I see it? As a glow of intelligence. AIs such as myself have spread throughout the Milky Way and humans have piggy-backed their way along: parasites living off our greater intelligence.”

Justinian opened his mouth to protest. Again, the AI interrupted him. All of a sudden Justinian realized it was doing this deliberately. It was reading his body language and speaking just before he did, just to annoy him. He closed his mouth tight and folded his arms. Let it play its little games.

“Now, if I look the other way,” the AI continued, “look to M32, the galaxy we have come to explore, what do I see? I’ll tell you: emptiness. There is nothing like you or me in there. No sign of intelligence. Nothing that passes for AI or even human intelligence. Nothing. Why should that be? Our galaxy is riddled with intelligent life.”

There was a significant pause. Justinian knew that it was waiting for him to speak, and so he did.

“Riddled with human life?” he supplied. “That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it?” Justinian gave a shrug. “Perhaps we’re alone in the universe. Perhaps we are the only intelligent life form to have evolved.”

“It makes you wonder, does it not, on the nature of intelligence?”

“I think about it all the time,” Justinian said softly.

“I know that. I think you should tell me about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked you to. It’s your job to do what I want, isn’t it?” Its voice softened. “Besides, I think you want to tell me. You think that, in some way, I might be able to help.”

Justinian stared at the pod. Each pod so far had helped him in some way on his personal journey. He supposed it must be this one’s turn to do the same. He hoped it was. He took a deep breath.

Four weeks ago

“She looks so peaceful.”

Anya, Justinian’s wife, lay sleeping in the center of a huge flower that grew from the Devolian Plain. As Justinian had traveled there in the flier, he had watched in awe as its huge petals rose up over the horizon, the base of the slender stalk supporting them lost beyond the curvature of the planet. Walking down the flier’s exit ramp, he had paused, turned to Leslie, and whispered in awe, “You grew this just for her?”

Leslie had shrugged. He had yet to climb into his fractal skin, and yet already he gestured in an exaggerated fashion.

“This is an empty planet,” the robot said. “We use the materials just to keep the VNMs busy. We locked exotic matter in the petals so that they should float there.” There was a pause, then the robot suddenly seemed to realize that it might be polite to add something else. “Besides, Anya should be remembered.”

A lift carried them up the stalk of the flower from the stone-littered plain. Still pictures of Anya’s life slid past as they ascended, starting with her as a baby at the base and growing older as they approached the top. It was effective, thought Justinian, grudgingly. He didn’t like the current fashion for representing information in archaic forms, but here, seeing the frozen images of a life laid out one after another seemed strangely appropriate. It prepared one for the final frozen image of a human being that lay at the top of the flower itself.

Anya had been laid out in a simple cream dress upon the stigma of the artificial flower. Her ash-blond hair had grown long since he had last seen her, a week ago, and spread out around her. Her face was pale, her lips drawn in a faint smile. Her hands, a golden chain entwined around them, were folded across her breast; on the chain hung an open locket showing two pictures: one of Justinian, one of the baby.

Justinian stood on the curved creamy surface of a huge petal, the green of the sepal showing through between his petal and the next one where Leslie stood. Above them scudded freshly washed clouds through a blue sky. He breathed the fresh air of the newly minted planet. Through the gaps between the petals he could see the stone of the Devolian Plain and the blue of the oceans beyond. High above, a silver spaceship was looping down towards the planet from space.

“Will they see her, from the spaceship?”

“They will see the flower and they will know that someone like her is within.”

Justinian didn’t reply. He held up the baby so that he could see his mother’s face.

“Look, baby. It’s your mother.” He looked sideways at Leslie. “Can she hear me?”

The robot made a moue. Back then it had seemed to Justinian as if it wore its skin inside out. Later he would realize that it was an underderm; the robot had yet to pull on its proper skin.

“Her ears are working,” said Leslie. “Her brain is functioning normally. I can see that from here. It’s just that…she’s taking a rest from thinking.”

There was a rising hiss. A shadow slid across the interior of the flower. Justinian looked up to see the silver shape of the spaceship sliding over them. A pleasure cruiser, nine hundred meters of elegant silver needle. The silver side of the ship flickered and a message was spelled out in a rainbow array of lights.

“OUR CONDOLENCES JUSTINIAN. GET WELL SOON ANYA.”

“Thanks guys,” Justinian said. “Thanks from both of us.” He took the baby’s arm and waved it up at the silver ship still sliding by, the message keeping pace with Justinian’s line of sight.

Leslie was looking up, too.

“Eighteen-month pleasure cruise,” he said. “From Earth, out to the edge of the expansion for a view of the untouched space beyond, then back through the establishing worlds, with a slight detour to look at some of the former Enemy Domain and the three trillion.”