Engineman - Eric Brown [138]
So... the light I am following is not really Bobby?
Mirren felt Bobby's amusement. -- No, not as such. I am everywhere, united, one with the continuum; however, the light you follow was me, it still could be said to be me, my essence, my history, experience, memories... it is the essence 'I' access when I wish to join with another essence and experience existence as, say, a sundiver in the far galaxy you know as NGC-5194, or experience the life of an amoeba on Mars... This realm makes possible a universal understanding, permits every essence the ability to access every other essence. It takes time, of course; there are trillions of trillions of essences of everything that has ever existed in the long history of the universe, but the comprehensive understanding of everything is the goal of every essence in this realm. After all, what is the purpose of existence, but the transmission and reception of information, in whatever form that information might take?
It seemed mere seconds since they had departed the crowded energy field. Now, as Mirren followed the light that had been his brother and attempted to absorb what he had been told, the blue expanse through which they were travelling once again became populous - with a scattering of essences at first, then more and more, until the blue radiance disappeared and it seemed that the very medium they were passing through consisted of nothing but such essences, vessels, as Bobby had said, of pure information, storehouses of every fact that had ever been.
-- These essences tend to remain in the region of the continuum which corresponds to the sector of space where they existed in real-time. Thus, the essences you first encountered were those of our galaxy, humans, aliens, animals, plant-life specific to the Milky Way.
-- The essences here, Bobby went on, once lived out their lives in Andromeda. I will now access one, attempt to transmit to you my ability to experience life far away, long ago. Pick a light, Ralph.
Mirren cast about him. That one - the magenta beacon describing a helix around the slowly rising orange light...
No sooner had the thought been thought, then the light that was Bobby swooped upon the magenta beacon. Their union produced a small explosion, and then Mirren made out two lights. Bobby's golden comet joined with the pulsing magenta life-force. They spun, embraced in mutual attraction, the helix they described becoming tighter, faster.
-- Come closer, Ralph.
Mirren propelled himself closer to the rotating binaries, felt himself attracted - and in a sudden rush he experienced a dizzying overload of information: he knew, in an instant, what it was to be a one thousand tonne gastropod floating in the methane sea of a vast gas giant orbiting a sun going nova. He experienced the creature's emotions, accessed its memories, understood the complex society in which it functioned; for as long as he maintained the contact, he was the creature. He could skip through its life, like fast-forwarding a disc, experience its birth, then live through the pain of its death as it was ripped apart by the blast from the exploding sun, and then he was one with the creature's joy as it transcended...
Then Bobby parted company with the pulsing magenta beacon and swirled around Mirren. -- Did you feel it, did you experience its pain, and then its rapture as it transcended?
Mirren was hardly able to respond, which was response enough.
-- Come, Bobby commanded, and led the way through the sparsely populated region of blue light between the real-time galaxies, towards the massed essences that existed in the continuum's analogue of their home galaxy.
-- Do you begin to apprehend the magnificence of this ultimate