a mother’s smile ‘—is clear and perfectly stable. The poles are as they were. The polymers have been compacted and now orbit the moon.’ She brought her hands together. ‘This planet’s ecosystem is in harmony once again. Our work is done.’
The chambers were silent, but filled with smiles.
‘Now we face a choice,’ my mother went on. The resounding pitch of her voice is a little under 112Hz above my own, although its undertones are much deeper. It crackles in its upper register, and when it does it falls. Perhaps this is due to some kind of self-consciousness. I do not know. I like it.
‘Do we stay upon the planet we have repaired, or not?’
There was the sound of hair and skin against fabric. Heads turning, left and right.
‘We cannot.’
The words came from Benedikt, who stood near the edge of our circle. He is one of the oldest of my cousins, born several years before me. His voice has a deep timbre scattered with pulse waves, similar to a sound I had once heard when my balloon passed a flock of geese over the Arctic coast. Benedikt is a technology specialist, smaller than most, with sleek black hair and a thin crescent scar that follows the line of his left cheekbone. All eyes turned to him.
‘You speak with certainty, Benedikt,’ said my mother. ‘As usual.’
Benedikt went to reply, but his father Caige had emerged from the council’s line. Caige is enormous. His face shone red in the candle light, and his belly bulged, belying his unusual fondness for wheat and mashed root vegetables.
‘That is because my son is certain, as we all must be. Physicality is crude and riddled with obstacles. There are far more efficient forms of existence.’
‘You refer to transcendence,’ said my mother.
‘Of course I do. We must depart: to stay would be lunacy.’
THE PROBLEM WITH animals is that they do not think ahead. This is because their bodies know on some level that they will one day die, and therefore the future is somebody else’s problem.
Even your species, who were at least born with the capacity to consider the future, only ever did so in speculation. You saw tomorrow as an imaginary thing, which is almost certainly why we are where we are.
The erta do not speculate. We extrapolate, and one need only spend a little time on this planet to extrapolate from its freely given data the single courtesy it asks of its inhabitants: keep your footprints light, please.
Do not multiply more than you can sustain, do not consume more than you need, do not create more than is necessary.
This is why our population remains static, our food is simple, and our technology—though once immense for our purpose—is now meagre. Our dwellings are built from wood and stone; we use horses to cover distance; and what little power our settlements require is harnessed from the energy that flows freely through them. We do not build monstrous cities, or blast rockets into space, or seek out useless luxuries. The Halls of Gestation are quiet now, and the Halls of Necessity—where minor technological requirements such as screws, cups or fabric are discussed at length before being granted (or, more often than not, denied)—are rarely visited. Only the Halls of Reason are busy. Busy with voices, all eager to leave.
So Caige was quite correct; to stay upon this planet would be an exercise in foolishness. We would live as slaves, bound by its terms. Millennia would pass and we would achieve nothing but the maintenance of our settlements and the nourishment of our bodies. Occasionally we would have to replenish the population—for all erta must die, albeit far in the future—but even this act would be folly, for one day the planet itself would succumb to its own death, at the hands of a bulbous sun or some other cosmic misadventure, and we would be gone forever.
For what purpose would we live? None whatsoever. We had to leave, and transcendence was the only answer.
I would like to explain transcendence to you, but I cannot. I am bound by the limits of human language, and there exists no combination of words that can sufficiently describe it.
I could invent some.
I could even recycle some, for the mountains of words you abandoned over the centuries were almost a match for your landfills. We still use some to name those few pieces of technology we still use. Lanterns, for example. Lanterns are bright conglomerations of dense photon arrays, automated, fast and highly armed. Once