My name is George Onslow. I've never contributed to "SciFi-Babe" before, but I've known Alethea for a long time. I happened to mention to her that I'd heard about a myth from a man I ran into in a bar on Makarro, an insignificant, little world, way out beyond the ' Brama Singularity '. He was old, I told her. So old in fact that I was worried, at one point, that he'd die before he finished his story. But he didn't. In fact, as the story unfolded, his eyes twinkled more brightly and he became increasingly animated. I imagine the continuous supply of 'Screel' [Ed: kind of like Wild Turkey, we're told.] didn't hurt, and likely kept him going well into the night. What follows is my translation of what he told me, with a certain amount of poetic license.
"I heard it from someone who heard it from someone else. Something very special; something very beautiful happens, just once in a hundred human lifetimes on a planetoid, orbiting its sun every seven thousand years. It is a small, ice-shrouded world, which spends most of its orbit in pitch black darkness. For an all too brief period of fifty years or so, however, it passes very close to its sun, and something truly miraculous happens. From the depths of interstellar space, they come in their millions, seeking out this one small pinprick of reflected light among the millions of stars in the galactic disk. Why do they come? More importantly, what are they?
As for the reason why they seek out this particular planetoid, they are coming home to be reborn. As for what they are. Well, that is difficult. You see, they are both solid and yet not solid. They are like balls of light, but they also seem like balls of bluish colored metal, with white flecks. Some are an inch or so in diameter, many are much larger. All are etched with three parallel grooves running around the equator. You can almost see into them... But not quite.
Some have already begun to prepare themselves for regeneration. Balls of metal and light, opening like a continuously cut apple skin: once a ball, it is now an open helix. The energy inside flows out, raining on the ground like sparks from a firework. The ground absorbs every one, slowly changing color, until it is like a rainbow - though not of just seven colors, but every color. Every color you can imagine.
More and more are arriving, now. The entire planet is aglow. It has become visible in distant skies, like a supernova.
Suddenly, when the tiny world is all but crushed under the weight of so many, the miracle begins to unfold. Countless rifts form in the planetary crust, and from them pours pure energy. That which was brought here has been absorbed and renewed. It has been revitalized. Any and all errors have been corrected. The encoded messages are as they should be. Taken up by the quadrillions of seed cases, once more, they will be carried to the far reaches of the universe, seeding untold worlds with the fundamental building blocks of life. Who knows what incredible lifeforms will evolve over the countless millennia between now and the end of all time?
Their precious cargo delivered, the seed cases will return to this insignificant world, orbiting its unremarkable sun, to be revitalized and the cycle will begin again. As it has, countless times, since the beginning of everything.
