Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2)

We

Listen.

Information on either side of us. The crackling discharge of meaning. For generations

We

Listen, dying and renewing and feeding, careful not to upset the balance These-of-We have achieved. The world around us is quiescent now. We have made our peace with it.

And what have we found? We cannot know but we store and process, store and process, construct our theories and our models within the labyrinthine structures of our libraries. Each pattern of information that comes to us is examined and passed on, one side to the other and back.

We

Are constructing a picture of the complexities of this new land. These-of-We are beginning to understand the existence of an identity. These patterns tell us stories of greater spaces and arrangements of structures beyond. We listen and we learn that this great world we have found is small, that it orbits amongst others, that this assembly of electricity is its own library of concepts utterly alien to us. But we are intrepid and we are inquisitive and we can adapt. We are listening. We are learning about all the places outside this our new vessel.

We

Are growing. The information feeds us. Processing this new data is turning us into something more than we were, because we must stretch to accept such new ideas. We model the sensory inputs of our vessel, the motor outputs, most of all the busy, busy transition of information. Such life, such wonder as our vessel talks to itself through us.

One generation understands enough.

One generation has modelled enough. We know the vessel and the spaces and other complexities that it talks to itself about.

One generation begins to change the information as it passes through us,

Inserting our own data, modifying its parameters,

Speaking to it in its own voice.