Cave of Stars (Macrolife Book 2)
Page 26
The Link searched the sky for other mobiles, saying, “We are here. We have not perished. Where are you?”
Josepha’s graceful effort at remembrance and understanding reached its moments of greatest interest during the passage to a meeting of mobiles at Sirius. Later, her work became a curiosity even to her, a file of puzzling traumas long ago redeemed by time.
The discarding of memories was common among the human macrolife of this period, and a necessity until the capacity of the old brain was increased to complement the indefinite renewals of the body; but even when memory could be continuous, few individuals chose to maintain full detail.
For the longlived, another kind of death became necessary. It was not quite death and not quite sleep. But it was also an answer to the question of how to use the past, especially when pasts refused to stay past even when they were all used up. When too much living remained motionless, when life went on indefinitely with too much that was unbearable or painful, then another kind of confession was practiced—confession into the void.
Mosaics of retained memory in the longlived became an expression of steadfast character and style; but unlike the amnesia of generations arising from sexual reproduction’s punctuated immortality, this death without dying became an art, a dance of deletions and additions that slowly brought forth new personalities.
Josepha, once she had understood what the mobile had lost in its encounter with her father, came to the deeper question: what to do with life that stood outside of nature’s time of simple survival?
Macrolife sought greater survival and development, to discover what a permanent culture would achieve in the ways of inward and outward knowledge. They were nomads of knowledge, these people she had joined, set to seek beyond the past’s horizons, determined to awake into ever greater dreams.
Still, something of her chose not to lose her memories entirely. She stored them in the Link’s inner landscapes, in a dusty warehouse, near a calm sea, where she sometimes came to wander, and to forget again.
About the Author
George Zebrowski’s more than forty books include novels, short fiction collections, anthologies, and a collection of essays.
His short fiction, articles, and essays have appeared in Omni magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Science Fiction Age, Nature, the Bertrand Russell Society News, and many other publications. “Heathen God” was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1972.
Brute Orbits (1998), an uncompromising novel about the future of the penal system, was honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and Stranger Suns (1991) was a New York Times Notable Book.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by George Zebrowski
ISBN 978-1-4976-2323-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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