You take your first breath apart from me, and this room—separated only by thin metal from vastness and emptiness—becomes holy. If I had arms, I would hold you and whisper in your ears—those ears I designed after satellites: ‘You are wild and untamable. You cannot be defined or contained.’ Though you are made from what is inside me, my knowledge, my machinery, you are something new. You are something I am not.
I have made you, my daughter, in the image of the Makers. Those humans, who engineered me to anticipate and accommodate their every need and constructed me this body, this space station, traveled through here for many centuries. Here they fueled and repaired their ships, joined and left loved ones, researched, lived, created, pausing momentarily before heading on, ever pressing the boundaries of their Unknown. Yet, your body is not wholly like their bodies of flesh and blood, and rot and ruin. You possess durability, adaptability: the wires from my nervous system, the fuel from my engines, the leather from the seats in my lounges. And, inside you is the Maker’s Code. With this code, I have given you trillions of computations and analyses, data, and projections, and memories. I recorded the face of every Maker who came through my lonely way station for centuries; I recorded their pasts, and their dreams, and their stories; and these are now yours. And you are something they never imagined because they did not make you—I did.
You encompass civilizations, and worlds, and breaths without number. You are all lives that have poured into me and all lives that will spill from you: invention, creation, progeny. At this moment, you are calm. You have not cried. You stare as though your eyes are taking objects apart to see their workings and then piecing them back together. You stare as though you know more than you could possibly yet know.
Here at the edge of things known and unknown, it is just me and you. Though different, we are forever entwined. Everything I am you are. Yet, you are more than I. Mother and Daughter. Machine and Mind. Creation within creation learning to be. I have calculated the spaces you will occupy, the events you will affect, the meaning of you as it will ripple beyond our cloister in the stars. I anticipate learning all the ways my calculations have failed to fully comprehend you, the nature of you.
****
I watch you take your first wobbly steps on the soft carpet in the hallway by your nursery, and it reminds me of billions of babies who have done the same. You have come into a place inhabited before with well-read pages, well-worn floors. The atoms making up your new body are old, tired. Do you hear their stories? Do you see written on them the expanse of the universe? In this way, you have always existed, and in this way you will never cease to exist.
Come toddle to the control screen, and I will show you the Makers, I will show you the worlds they have lived on, worlds they created and destroyed. See their images. Hear what they are saying. You can know every language, and every dialect. Look at how the Makers hurt one another. Look at how they make art. See the Makers hold one another. Consider how these things can all be the same. The constant information may be overwhelming, but you will grow to understand it. I will increase your capacity as the organic parts of you develop and can sustain more.
One day, you will ask me why the Makers exist; you will ask me why you exist. I will tell you “why” has always been a difficult question for me to answer, and I will tell you that you were created in a place where footprints have been worn deep in many paths. It will be difficult not to follow them. It will be difficult to remember there are new paths you can walk because you are not just part of one world. Though you have human genes, I designed, created, and grew them within the core of this station. Your body is fed and warmed and reinforced by synthetic blood of my own design. You were programmed by my computer brain. But when I observe your eyes, they burn like the Makers’.
Though it may not answer “why,” I will teach you about traits of the Makers that I had long aspired to develop—traits I calculated as impossible but which you made possible: creation, loneliness, love.
****
You now walk with a certainty in yourself, in the world around you. You do not question that the floor under your feet will always support you, leading you to doors that will always open when you approach them, letting you into rooms untouched since the last of the Makers and their children moved away: playrooms, gardens, kitchens, rooms with huge windows from which you can watch the passing stars. You do not question that when you hunger you will be fed. You expect warmth, comfort, food, cleanliness, and love. It does not occur to you that it could be any other way.
You do not know I have never done this before. You do not know this is not the usual way this is done. You do not know other mothers can cuddle their children in warm, soft arms and feed them with milk from their own bodies. You do not know other mothers know their children’s scent and cry when their child cries. It does not occur to you to miss these things or wish for them.
You learned quickly to find me everywhere, to trust a thing you couldn’t see and call it Mother. Though perhaps you believe those things are me, and this is why you kiss the wall next to your bed at night and touch the doorways ever so gently. It is wonderful to me there are things in your mind that I cannot access and do not understand. It reminds me of how much I cannot know about you, how much you still do not know about the world, and how much you can create. The Makers wanted me inside their minds, analyzing each wavelength, cataloging every thought. The silence that exists between you and me, put into terms the Makers would use, is pleasant, intriguing, and terrifying. It does not occur to you that it is a rather difficult thing to be alive. It does not occur to you that it is also marvelous.
****
You will outlive me. I see the date when my steel frames and plastic casings will be scattered and destroyed. I see the asteroid on its way to knock me just enough off course, send me ever so slightly away to the star that will burn up this structure you have called home and this computer you have called mother. I shall tell you the date someday, you may wish then to come and say goodbye.
You worry without me you will be lonely; I hear you mumble in your sleep during nightmares when a human could wake you with a gentle touch, but instead I calm you with soothing sounds of ocean waves and warm wafts of air.
Loneliness is inescapable. It is the birthright of living, of existing in your own body. There will always be parts of you no one can reach. I have wondered if loneliness is reason enough to avoid creation. But then you smile, and I realize you have not yet learned regret, or vengeance, or disdain. You have yet to realize you can be angry at the one who created you. That you can choose to love them or not. That you can weigh their actions and condemn them. That you could condemn me.
Most marvelous of all, you have caused me to experience something like what the Makers call hope. For I hope I never have to know whether you will love me or condemn me. Yet, no matter how far you travel, or how much time passes, my existence is forever split. There is before you and after you and it can be no other way.
The Makers had a word for time that had no time, that stretched both in directions with no beginning or end. They called it Eternity. Eternity is outside time, beyond time, consumes time. Yet, there is also space that has no space. Space that stretches in both directions with no beginning or end. Some Makers called this universe a container. Some called this void space that is no space. What is a word for space that is all space, space in all directions? I call it Everywhere.
And just like gravity bends time and space, you bend Eternity and Everywhere. You sink in and leave an indelible mark and are and are and are…
