Marae was, for a moment, hesitant to answer. While Freyr looked out over the city, Marae’s eyes went towards the sky, watching the rain as it fell towards her. The sky was not visible through the clouds, and even if it had been, the stars would not have been visible for the light pollution. Still, her mind imagined what her eyes could not see. The near-incomprehensible vastness of the universe still seemed immense to the Rothians, but she wondered if it felt any smaller to the Cradle beings? By all the evidence known so far, they were intergalactic beings. How vast was existence to them? 

“I…hesitate to get too focused on guesses about the Cradle beings. We have been observing them from such a…limited perspective. They are intelligences that are eons old, and we cannot even begin to describe who or what created them. It is like we are trying to peer at their nature through a pinhole. We should do the best we can with the information we have, of course, but I think it is important that we approach them with the mindset that the truth could be something far outside what we can see with our perspective.” Marae answered. For a moment, she smiled and turned back towards Freyr. “After all, there was a time when Rothians thought we would never settle the stars because the distances involved were far too immense to conquer. And if we did, we would never be able to keep our people together as one. But, that was only because our understanding of physics limited our view. Once we expanded out understanding enough to learn how to send our ships faster than light, it was like the whole universe opened up to us.”

Once again, Marae’s focus was caught up in her memories. In fact, the pair’s chat had brought her back to one of the most impactful memories of her life. “I still remember that evening, actually. That is one I think I will be taking all the way to Eternity. I was on the team that was working to experimentally prove our theories on faster-than-light conveyance. Well…sort of. Tarasair was on the team. That was her name, the first AI. I was mostly there as support to her. Her mind was specialized for the kind of abstract thinking we needed for the strange problems in quantum physics we were trying to overcome, and she contributed greatly to the project. The day we finally confirmed what we had been seeing in our experiments...well, I don’t think I’ve seen that kind of genuine, uncontained happiness since. I don’t think I’ve ever [i]felt[/i] that kind of pure wonder and hope since.”

Marae leaned forward against the parapet. “I don’t know if my words can really give justice to how it felt. I intend no offense, of course, but the context around that discovery was very different from today. When you were born, interstellar travel was already a fact of life. Every star you see when you look up at the night sky, you know can reach if you really want to. I was born before we had even set foot on our own moon, much less other stars. Our scientific understanding at the time pointed to the rest of the universe, or even just our galaxy, being forever out of reach in any practical sense. Back then, I did not know if Rothia would truly be the only world I would ever know. And then…we succeeded. The matter we had transported had only been on the subatomic scale; it would be many years before entire spaceships were even in the conversation, but the fact remained that we had done it. We had the proof, beyond any doubt, that we. Had. Done it. Light was no longer the great barrier; there were no barriers. After our initial cheering was done, we got together to celebrate. Brought out the expensive wine and everything. I remember walking out on the balcony and just looking up at the sky. It was cloudy; couldn’t see a single star, but I could imagine every one of them. Every star that we had only viewed through telescopes, all the planets, and asteroids, and everything else I had only ‘seen’ in convincing 3D models, I knew I would actually be able to see with my own two eyes one day. In my mind, at that moment, the universe was finally, truly open to me. It was…” She paused for a moment. In the rain, it was hard to notice the tears in her eyes, but the way her voice became choked up betrayed their presence all the same. “…those clouds were beautiful.” 

There was a brief silence between them, and a hint of awkwardness in Marae’s expression when she glanced over again to Freyr. “Sorry, I just…” She began, though she did not complete the thought. “…I do have some ideas about the Navigator’s behavior, but…are you sure you want to talk about all that right now?” She asked, reaching a hand over to Freyr’s shoulder. “You’ve been working non-stop. Today, yesterday, all last week, I haven’t seen you when you’re not working. It is healthy to give your mind a break from time to time, not to mention good for productivity. We should do something fun.” She smiled.