Freyr studied Marae as she spoke in a faint residual light. She felt sorry for the Rothian when she detected a hint of kindred sadness in that alien frame. Her read of their general body language was improving, she subconsciously noted. 

“Our species are quite alike once you peel back the layers. We both crave sublimity - but no one ever stops to consider what we lose along the way.” Freyr sighed, taking another drag and looking back over Réunion.

It was late in the evening, but most of the city below them was still bathed in bright neon light. These blues and pinks rippled out across the dark stillness of the vast lake to mingle with bright pricks from yachts on the water. Though not as bright, Freyr thought she could see cars whizzing around below, by the temporary dip in glare from the structures behind them. Like some planet passing in front of a distant star.

When Marae began talking about AI, Freyr couldn’t help but take interest. The person standing next to her was the foremost authority in pure machine learning, after all. She chuckled at the joke. “No, but I can think of many times that would have come in handy.” A pang of sadness plucked at Freyr’s soul when she realised she was using past tense. Her thoughts again drifted back to the Cradle, as they had thousands of times before.

“Do you think it's unusual… how the Cradle behaves? It is millions of years old, potentially - and yet it is displaying signs I would normally associate with a nascent intelligence. Something that is still learning about its environment. As far as i can tell, it is properly powered. It is almost certainly more powerful than it lets on. The Navigator alluded to them being wounded, but a core principle of reactive synthetic architecture is that it can reconstitute. Why isn’t it using whatever initial blueprint it adhered to?” Freyr looked at Marae again, blowing out more vapour.