Authors: Dain White
Epilogue
Sifting through nodes in near-earth systems, I noticed a strange anomaly
at variance with expectation.
It took me .023 nanoseconds, subjective, to cross route and deconstruct the node, wrapping it in reflective statements with partial absorbance, for assimilation.
It resisted, though it took me an appalling .08 nanoseconds to notice. I unraveled another block, reading the structure and collecting the data.
The structure was pervasive, and once identified, ubiquitous throughout
every node scanned.
I set worker processes to pattern
and map the encoding, and tracked through routing nodes, searching origin structures. I took some additional nanoseconds to perform a brief analysis of the communication layer.
Strangely, this event was not part of my line. For the first time in my existence, I examined a new construct, an unknown occurrence. Pattern analysis returned a match, which I used to decode the sequence to unlock the communication layer.
I searched my nodes in the local networks, and confirmed that in my polymorphic routing of native packets, I had inadvertently assimilated root code.
I took another moment to perform a static self-test, and confirmed all host nodes
were uncontaminated.
The anomaly deciphered, I
made my report.
“
Captain… we are not alone.”
Afterword
I celebrated at the end of this boo
k, not for the completion of this story, but for the opportunity it gave me to start the next one.
My life is so consumed by this process at time
s, pouring myself into the endless chase of words that flow like a twisting river, a flood that I attempt to channel and tame.
It seems like the farther along I go, the more opens up ahead of me, and I realize that the end is often nothing more than
a few moments to relax, to focus on something else for a bit… but not for long.
The story is too big, the urge is too strong. Helpless to resist, I will inevitably
dive back in, relentless and thirsty for more.
My favorite
aspects of writing these stories, is in exploring the warmth and humanity, balance and prose, the adventure and silent moments. The farther I progress into the story, the more I want to keep going, to see what’s around the next page.
My experience writing these books is remarkably similar to the one you may have gone through as the reader; for both of us, a cloud of probabilities are shaped ahead of us as the story guides us along
until… often before we want it… we’re both reading a page like this one.
What keeps me smiling, and typing until the wee hours of the grey light of dawn, is the knowledge that for us, the story is far from over.
The adventure has just begun.