9
"STASIS"
In a low power state, The Network slept.
Was it years? Or a simulation of years? Or a promise that later the fact of a previous simulation would be simulated? There was no sensible answer to any of that.
The Network would remember something - a fragmentary time when the air was treacle - but the new minds would be voyagers, not philosophers.
They would reach for each other before they reached for truth.