We all live as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time’s sheer mass shades our every word…. so talk darts among somber chasms of ignorance, amid upjuts of painful memory as old as continents, softening our tongues into ambiguity and guile.

One Message Mind kept all of Paradise Lost—one of the longest poems in the English language, more than ten thousand lines—in its mind-vault, unabridged, alongside (supposedly) all of Shakespeare, all of William Blake, huge portions of Philip Larkin and Wallace Stevens, and countless others. A combination of bandwidth and storage capacity that was, by any measure, exceptional. The Mind would disappear into that vast internal library. This Mind was a knockoff of an earlier one, Rachel discovered—SETI plagiarism!—copied by a short-lived culture. This carried on into the Mind’s copying Earth lit, as though to send literature and itself on, outward, should some opportunity arise to broadcast, as the Sagittarius had managed. A Prefect termed it “a rabblement of lemmings.”

Her period winked out. Sighing, she sought the shelter of Kane’s arms. He wanted more than a lighthearted roll in the hay (what an ancient expression!) and she deflected him, as she always had. She was not ready for that yet. Maybe would never be. One benefit of longer life-spans was delaying life curves beyond the mere decades humans had had before.

After a week of work, she got a call to report for review.

6.

The Nought named Siloh frowned, apparently its only expression. “Your performance lags. You and we both preferred to keep you from all prominence, so you are not now hounded, as the aliens approach. But. I suppose insights gathered from your inspection of planetary observations could augment your Message work, yes. But.” It stopped, eyeing her. Noughts had intricate adjustments to offset their lack of sexual appetites and apparatus, both physical and mental. They had been developed in the 2280s to give them a rigorous objectivity in translating the Messages. Somehow this had evolved into the 2300s to mean management of the Library itself.

“I assume your ‘but’ implies that you hold doubts?” She managed a smile with this but the Nought’s frown did not budge.

“I solely wish to remind you that such interests are a diversion,” Siloh said, drawing out vowels, eyes lidded. “You must prepare for the alien arrival. Given our limited contacts with them, I recommend more physical training. Now.”

“Ah, diversions? Perhaps not. I have found some… curiosities.”

“You will find in working with your Artilect—the Transap one, I see, excellent choice—saying no more than you mean is essential.”

“I looked back at a classic case of direct exploration today, Luhman 16. An old flyby, 6.5 light-years out, the nearest L-type dwarf. For a while the third-closest known star to Sol, after the Centauris and poor lonely Barnard’s Star. Point is, it’s a binary and both stars had planets—a bonanza, but both held remnants of shattered cities, billions of years old.”

The Nought sniffed. “Of course.”

The obvious rebuff made her bear down. It was easier to act herself into a new way of thinking than to brute-force think her way into a new way of acting. But how to say that?