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The device has shown me outcomes and your hand in their making.

Anger surged through Mira. The Entity was more obtuse than Insignia. You have given extraordinary powers to your tyros, encouraged them to venture in certain directions. One has infected our greatest thinkers with a virus that impairs their decision-making, another has used your device to his own gain, passing it to a man who would cause further division between Post-Species and OLOSS under the guise of keeping peace.

No, she shouted. Not little problems. You’ve given us the tools to create our destruction and we’ve followed your intentions perfectly. You play a cruel game.

Mira felt its indifference, felt its withdrawal from her mind, the shaft softening in her back.

No! Wait. You must listen to me.

Mama, said Nova. Let me.

The Entity’s withdrawal halted and a sense of curiosity seeped through Mira’s being. Sole’s curiosity.

I am Nova, said her daughter. You seem alone. Is that why you have made these things happen?

Like this … Nova projected a grave melancholia, a vast emptiness without end that made Mira want to weep.

We all know. Do you feel it too?

A cold tingle shot through Mira as though she’d been injected with a drug.

Come, Mama.

Mira fell into a dizzying whirlpool of consciousness; was consumed by it and carried an immense, unfathomable distance to a place of dust and dust between galaxies. A place of cold mystery. A place of dark energy. Many Entities. Countless. Roving in their dark playground.

Yet only one of them asked a question. Only one of them cared to know. Sole.

You’ve come to us looking for your origins? Nova was gentle, soft persistence. No anger.

Mira felt the rightness of Nova’s statement. The rightness of Sole’s accord. You believe your origins are with us? she asked.

The sense of rightness came again.

I am young and don’t understand. How do our deaths serve you? Nova, so sweet and simple.

Mira imagined that at the corporeal level she was holding her breath, clenching her hands, waiting for Sole’s answer. Yet she felt nothing of her body.

Then understanding began to wash through her in little waves, like an incoming tide of knowledge that she could only truly grasp when it was high enough to drown her.

And she saw it, the life energy from billions and billions of dead sentients released into space, combining with all matter, colliding and transforming into dark energy.

You wanted to prove that you came from us, from our destruction?

Rightness. Complete and utter.

The idea numbed Mira. She revisited it, toyed with it, tried to read all its sides. You believe this has happened before?

Rightness.

She continued to think around it. But you are matter as well. Which means, if you are correct, that we are you and you are us. And if you are considered God then God is …

Si, Mama, Nova said. God is us. Or that is what Sole wishes to prove.

You would have billions of sentients die to know … that?

Rightness without remorse.

Mira sank under Sole’s answer, was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of its callousness. She floundered to stay afloat in the present, her daughter’s voice her only lifeline.

Look to the future for your answer, not the past, her infant told the Entity. Let me come with you, help you.

Hesitation. Interest.

I give you willing energy, not stolen. I give you company.

We’ll find the answer together. Without destruction.

Nova! You cannot! Mira panicked.

Mama, it is how it will be. Sole must have company. Nova was definite.

Then let it be me. She felt the Entity’s focus on her like a pouring of molten metal.

But Nova addressed the Entity again, ignoring her. In exchange for my company, you will make amends to our kind. Or at least … halt our extinction.

Now! insisted Nova.