My brain was galloping along now. Some animals were obvious candidates. Dolphins, whales, cephalopods, the great apes, cows, grey parrots, dogs, corvids, elephants, pigs, and cats. Even some insects displayed considerable intelligence like bees, ants, and Ludlow the Librarian.

I thought about the sea squirt, an adorable little hermaphrodite chordate, the larvae of which float around the ocean looking for a place to attach so they can begin filter feeding. When they finally settle down, they no longer need their cerebral ganglion – a primitive little brain – and so they eat it.⁶³ Does the sea squirt enjoy some basic level of consciousness before devouring its brain? Does the Fray reach out during the larval phase and then unravel when the brain is consumed? These are important questions.

“We don’t fully understand the intricacies of how the Fray functions, but what is clear is that as you live, your experiences imprint upon the cord, leaving behind a partial record of your life. Some things make clearer impressions – intense experiences or strong beliefs tend to leave deeper marks. This is why you don’t have access to the whole house, so to speak, of your priors. Only the most important rooms will have been preserved, and even then, not completely. This is what I mean when I talk about downcord coherence: the measure of what a given Stringer can actually perceive of those prior lives.”

“Well, my guy had a whole bunch of rooms devoted to bug nuts. So, one of my past incarnations was an insect perv.”

“No,” Aptat said, standing from the captain’s chair, making it spin. “This is not reincarnation. Those downcord lives were not you. Your consciousness is not a continuation of theirs – it was simply the next in line. You get to visit their house, stand in a room or two. You never lived there. You merely occupy the same string of matter that bestows consciousness. You are a product of your own biology and genetic code, not the cord. The cord grants awareness, not individuality, nor does it influence the innate traits of ‘you-ness’.”

“Okay, fine. It’s not reincarnation,” I said, taken aback by Aptat’s sudden adamance.

“The situation of reincarnation would be your identity and your consciousness moving from one corporeal habitation to the next. That’s not this.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Being on a cord that failed to come apart when it should have, grants you the gift of retroception – ‘hindsight’ to some. Access to a portion of what your priors knew.”

“And look where it’s gotten me,” I scoffed. “What a gift.”

“Point taken,” said Aptat.

“So you hunt us... Stringers.”

“Hard to call it hunting, really. Most of you have been screaming about it for your entire lives. I only listen.”

I stared flatly.

“You Stringers devote so much energy to making queries, trying to understand why you are the way you are. Eventually a signal gets out.”

“I didn’t send any signals.”

Aptat rolled their pupil-less eyes. “Earth is radio bright, Ben. It’s been shooting unintentional electronic information out from its surface at the speed of light for a few hundred years.”