The first time she woke she was in the ruins of an abandoned gravity mine.
At first the Community had chased around the outer strata of the great gloomy structure. But at last, close to the core, they reached a cramped ring.
Here the central black hole’s gravity was so strong that light itself curved in closed orbits.
The torus tunnel looked infinitely long. And they could race as fast as they dared.
As they hurtled past fullerene walls they could see multiple images of themselves, a glowing golden mesh before and behind, for the echoes of their light endlessly circled the central knot of spacetime. “Just like the old days!” they called, excited. “Just like the Afterglow. . . !”
Exhilarated, they pushed against the light barrier, and those trapped circling images shifted to blue or red.
That was when it happened.
This Community was just a small tributary of the Conflux: isolated here in this ancient place, the density of mind already stretched thin. And now, as lightspeed neared, that isolation stretched to breaking point.
. . . She budded off from the rest, her consciousness made discrete, separated from the greater flow of minds and memories.
She slowed. The others rushed on without her, a dazzling circular storm orbiting the exhausted black hole. It felt like coming awake, emerging from a dream.
