The Dance of Distance

By Andrew James Woodyard

From vast distances within space and centuries apart in time two interstellarcologies detected each other via long range laser pulses. Each structure resembled an asymmetrical cornucopia that dwarfed most asteroids in size. Trillions of beings that evolved over the eons from the simple stock of homosapiens and their planetary ilk filled their holds and corridors. However, their massive internal populations were reproducing so quickly that neither structure could ever possibly manage to contain the bulk of life within them. New living space was desperately needed to relieve the overcrowded and resource stretched structures of their burdens, but habitable planets were in short supply, and barren planets took millenniums to terraform. The central computer cores of both interstellarcologies agreed to rendezvous, then merge their populations in the coming eons, to fabricate a new structure to relieve their encumbrances: they would mate upon arrival.

They swam with bursts of thrust and course corrections in total silence, through an endless invisible sea of quintessence and dark matter vortexes. Generation upon generation of sentient beings were born, lived and died within them in the ages between the rendezvous. Swarms of shuttles and life-pods came and went around each structure at all times, pillaging and assimilating whatever inter-spacial bodies they came within an AU of. When the two structures came within a parsec of each other they each began to decelerate. When they came within a light year of each other they extended their grappling coils and widened their cargo bays for an eventual docking. When they came within an AU of each other their inhabitants rocketed back and forth between them and intermixed while the two structures slowly drew closer.

Their dance of distance spread across millions upon millions of kilometres. Each structure oriented itself in relation to the other and selected where it would become male and where it would become female. Inhabits from each were chosen to be the lifeblood of the new mechanical embryo in anticipation of the merger. When the two structures drew within visual sight of each other they decelerated further to a near immobile drift, until the moment of coupling came and their individual grappling coils wrapped around their adjoining hulls in a soft embrace of metal, plastic and carbon fiber. Docking ports connected automatically, their cargo bays met and latched together in a hundred million places, then their central computing cores touched and became one. In the great bulk of their combined bellies they began to fabricate the new structure, with their post-human populations doing what the machines could not do.

As the interlocked structures spun, swivelled and drifted through the void their structural offspring grew larger and larger, and when it was ready to burst from its artificial womb its own central computing core activated. It instantly became aware of itself, all recorded history, and all that it could detect within its visual field. Like its parent structures it was a cosmic god of eternally expanding intellect. In a matter of Earth-months it grew to fill the combined cargo bays of its parent structures until it could grow no larger within confinement, and was born into the wilderness of empty space.

One by one the docking tubes released from both parents in a slow and silent procession. Their releases followed in a pattern so gradual that the inhabitants within them barely registered that anything was happening at all. Each parent separated from the other with their cargo bays wide open, leaving the infant structure to float free in the vacuum. The instant it was released it began to orient and propel itself toward its first destination: an unexplored dual red dwarf system dozens of parsecs away, while it used the resources that its parent structures initially supplied it with to expand outward to better accommodate the already growing population within it.

After one AU of distance the populations on board the three structures no longer intermingled with each other via shuttles and life pods. After one light year each parent structure drew their grappling coils back into their hulls, and the infant structure doubled in size after consuming a small asteroid. After one parsec each parent structure began to accelerate outward into the depths of space, no longer concerned with each other, and unlikely to ever meet again.

The new interstellarcology accelerated close to the speed of light toward its destination. Millenniums passed as it expanded further, consuming more astral bodies that it came across, and seeding others where it could. Then, long after its initial population of post-human beings had all died off and been forgotten, it detected a laser pulse from another interstellarcology many hundreds of parsecs away. Its internal population was expanding beyond the limits that it could diffuse and contain, thus it adjusted its course, and sent out a laser pulse of its own.

About the Author

I’m originally from Running Springs, California, in the San Bernardino Mountains, although I’ve lived all over Southern California.

I wrote and drew a few webcomics for a few years, and was the writer and publisher of a web series called Supernaturals Presents for two years which is available to read online.

I’ve had artwork, fiction and poetry published in Phineas Literary Magazine, Morpheus Tales, Statement, Inlandia and The Realms Beyond since 2014.

I’m currently an illustration student at Cal State Fullerton.