“Literally? You and I?” Byrne looked at the world zipping around them. “Of course it is.” He laughed. “There’s nothing mystical here, none of that repeating-our-actions nonsense. No, no, in fact, each universe is vastly different. That’s our job. That’s why I say this is our universe.”
Cole shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“What is life but information, my young friend? We are just—well you are just chemical programs and mindless routines. Ahh, you frown, and you are right to do so. Sentient things cannot grasp the accidental nature of their existence, and they are correct to feel this way. Tell me, do you know why Humans and the Bern look so similar?”
Cole looked at his hands and considered the question. “Convergent evolution?” he guessed. “The simplest solutions predominate?” But he knew that wasn’t right. Hadn’t Dani given him clues in the hallway of that Drenard prison?
“Nonsense. The odds are prohibitive. Look at the diversity of life on any one planet. An honest account of them is more bizarre than the differences between you and a filthy Bel Tra. No, my little Chosen One, the reason the Bern look alike all across the universe, the way they are able to rule all of creation with an iron and beneficent embrace, is simple: we set everything up in advance.”
Cole continued to stare at his palms; he peered at the lines in them. “You made us?”
“Almost,” Byrne said. “There are problems now and then. We just get the—to use a Terran expression—the ball rolling. And most times, the ball is kind enough to go downhill, following the route we set up in advance. It’s all about rules, you see. If the laws of nature are within certain parameters, you get a universe conducive to life. And when you can rig impervious seeds full of genetic information, seeds that can only be blown apart by the forces present at the end of the universe, seeds that ablate just right during the creation process, then you achieve what all life seeks.”
“Which is?” Cole asked.
“Immortality, of course.”
Byrne smiled. “And not the temporary sort. We’re not talking organ transplants, or colonies on a different egg but still in the same solar basket. We’re talking about real descendants surviving the end of time and making it through to the next beginning.”
“But it’s all your life, right? Only what you decide lives and ever gets that chance.”
“Most of it. But then, we’re setting up our universes to be warm and wet, which is a habitat conducive to other sorts of breeding, mutating brands of scum. The problem for these life forms is that we’ve given ourselves a head start. And the . . . unique method we use to communicate with the next generation is tied to our DNA, so we know what’s going on first. Of course, there have been mutations in the past that outpaced our local representatives, but since intergalactic spaceflight is—or has been thought to be—impossible, these were just pockets of annoyance scrubbed away every twenty billion years or so, motes that contaminated a mere galaxy or two, but what are a few galaxies in the grand scheme of things? Practically nothing.”