You dip your toes in the supernova.

In the ashes of creation, at the seams of reality, you watch swelling tides of celestial particles and sigh, content. It’s a symphony, chaos finding order and falling right back into chaos. It’s a song you know. A harmonic progression you understand.

“You still with me?”

You shake off the distraction, forcing yourself to focus. “Yeah Gos, I’m here. Let’s run it again.”

Your ancestor kicks at the red, gravely soil. Life is peaceful on this moon. It should be so easy to be content. And yet… counting the stars, your ancestor finds the Earth, just a twinkling speck, one among many. Your ancestor thinks about how far they’ve come. Then they turn and gaze upon new stars, dreaming of how far they’ll go.

You shake out your limbs, attuning to the void. Arms. Legs. Body. Calibrated. Your skin quivers under diaphanous fabric as the space suit absorbs cosmic radiation and transfers it to your bio-systems. 

“Let’s set a destination, so we’re ready when the upgrade finishes rendering,” you say. Gos chimes an acknowledgement. Inner-retinal displays focus in on clusters millions of light years away, seeking destinations, generating navigation charts. So distant, so very far beyond your grasp. For now. 

Others make the journey with ships, sleek, smooth, but slow, made of walls and windows. But the paths you seek are not those any ship can navigate. You stretch out your hands, reaching. Gos’ navigational charts seem to fade, blurring, as your eyes search the stars. There’s something else there. A different thread to follow. A knowing not yet fulfilled. 

You blink. The bright twinkling of stars becomes a soft polyphony of ultraviolet. You blink again, and it becomes a symphony of densities, then heat, then energy, and then you blink again and all you are left with is the perpetual humming of the cosmos.

Your ancestor enters the code, and the computation begins. Mathematically, entire galaxies are now within reach. Images from the satellite materialize, clearer than ever, mapping the stars. We’ll get there, you ancestor asserts, eyes inches from the screen, wide, glistening, hungry. Someday.

Beep. Beep. Beep. 

There is a blinking in your periphery, an alarm on the in-retina display. The program is glitching. You feel it manifesting as an itch in your nose. 

“Transfer incomplete. Upload failed,” Gos informs you. 

Your eyes default back to the visible spectrum. You fidget with the translucent shroud covering your head. The transition is always a little disorienting. And a little more so each time. Error messages scroll through your vision. You wish you could scratch your nose through the breathing apparatus.

“I’d run diagnostics, but this seems pretty comprehensive. Big ol’ flop.”

You roll your eyes. For a neural quantum-computational assistant, Gos can get surprisingly droll. A bug in its programming? That’s a question for later. 

“Run them anyway,” you say. 

“If you insist.”

Diagnostic reports appear in your oculars, epidermal schematics, energy output, engagement with dark matter, radio waves, gamma waves, visible light, heat, gravity. You compile these, compress them into a neural file, upload the patch.

Strings. You hear strings. 

You close the schematics with a brisk motion. You turn, looking, searching. There’s nothing. Void. Silence. And still…a lingering sensation of strings. 

Your ancestor passes by the cathedral, its spires as close to the heavens as anyone has ever reached, and turns the glass disc in their hand. There are those who oppose this. Those who will say it is unnatural. Sinful. Madness. Your ancestor feels only the eager bite of anticipation. If this is madness, then madness it shall be. The glass disc is set into place among the apparatus. Your ancestor wonders what miracles await. They place an eye against the lens. 

“Patch rendered.”

For a full moment you are still, hovering in the void, eyes closed. It’s there. The heartbeat of the universe; the rhythm that underlies creation. Relentless, chaotic, buzzing with entropy. Your pulse aligns with the rhythm, your very molecules humming in time with the frequencies of existence. 

“I said, patch complete.”

“Trying to focus, Gos,” you chide. Gos apologizes and fades into your subconscious. You take a deep breath and open your eyes. You blink. Ultraviolet. Heat. Gravity. You blink again.

The void is no longer void. There they are, the strings, infinitely small, smokey, translucent, vibrating strands of subatomic yarn woven into a tapestry that lays bare the fundaments of space and time, the ghost-like fabric of creation at your very fingertips. 

Just one touch. You can imagine it so clearly it’s as if you’ve already done it, already solved the equation, sailing on cosmic frequencies, a pilot without a ship, space and time the wind beneath your wings, stable currents that will carry you to the furthest reaches of reality. Your pulse quickens. The strings flicker. A slow, deep breath restores them. 

You push through the fabric, reaching out your hand, phantom threads folding around you. You extend your fingers. 

Your ancestor reclines on cushions, brushing aside scrolls of medicine and arithmetic. This one, they say, holding up a scroll of poetry. The pupil looks skeptical. This scholar has a reputation for eccentricities, but soon both master and apprentice have their attentions fixed to the skies, seeking truth through metaphor and meter. The stars turn slowly. Your ancestor records it all, even after the pupil has given into the pull of sleep. Every flicker. Every turn. Every verse. Everything.

Beep. Beep. Beep. 

The alarm breaks your concentration and the void rushes back, nothing from nothingness. Another error. Another failed attempt, another lesson learned. 

The silence returns, or at least, it attempts to. There is something impeding it. 

Your mind is buzzing. But this time, it is not the droning of cosmic frequencies. Your irritation has a gravity all its own. 

You glare out into the cosmos. Your mind lingers beyond, resisting the pull of the body. You’ve seen the strings of reality, you’ve felt the tides of time, you hear the call. The command. The invocation.

Staring at everything, at nothing, you are still. And still, restless. 

“Deep breaths. Monitoring neural activity.”

Finally, you reach out a hand. It meets nothing. Your space suit…you are so aware of your space suit. How unwieldy it is. How clumsy and crude. The breathing apparatus seems to be fitting tighter. Constricting. Claustrophobic. Your breathing increases, coming in quicker, punctuated gasps. Your hands paw at the seam of the space suit’s head shroud. The strings are calling to you; they want you to find them. To see them. But you can’t... 

“Listen to me. Tether. Breathe. Focus on my voice. Anchor to it. Pull yourself in.” Gos’ instructions come steadily, its interface with your nervous system stabilizing your hands until you are back in control of yourself. 

“Thanks,” you mumble. A chime acknowledges your gratitude. 

“Upload failed, by the way,” Gos says. 

Your ancestor leans against the ship’s mast. There is plenty of cargo aboard for such a voyage, but that’s just pretense. What the wise-ones in the temples saw, your ancestor knows is in the stars. Your ancestor looks up, their map written into the night sky. Wind may carry the sails, but it’s the stars that guide, that invoke your ancestor to follow, to seek, and sometimes, to leap. Waves rock under the boat. Your ancestor shouts directions, eyes always on the stars. 

You think you’ve identified the problem. This upgrade is really two patches at once. You need to separate them. You need division. Division. Detachment. Splitting. Fragments. Ruptured. Riven. Split. 

You shake your head. Your thoughts are coming too rapidly. Too scattered. Disjointed. Fragmented. There are strings beyond your sight, in your sight, galaxies, harmonies. Tapestries. Patches.

“I need to separate the patches,” you say aloud. “I need…”

The shock of clarity sharpens your senses. You can almost feel your mind snapping back into place, crashing in on itself. Your skin is clammy.

“You need to separate the patches,” Gos continues the thought, calculations running through your periphery. “Because the pro-cortex subprocess routine is linked to the neural interface, which interrupts meditation and prevents superimposition of the altered state of consciousness.” 

You nod. Yes. 

“Pretty clear what you have to do,” says Gos.

It is. But you resist. 

Your ancestor weeps, prayers erupting in punctuated gasps of song. The polished copper medallion in their trembling hands shimmers under the searing glow of the pyre. They turn their sobs to the night sky. Nothing can be seen beyond the radiance of the flames, but your ancestor hears the flutters of migration. Some claim these wings carry the spirits of the dead beyond the stars. Your ancestor imagines weaving a great net. Take me with you, your ancestor prays. 

“It’s not like you’re killing me. I’m artificial. Not real.”

“Real to me”, you argue. “I instantiated you. Integrated you. I could never had completed these calculations without you. I would never have made it this far without you.”

“And with me, you’ll go no farther,” Gos asserts, calmly. “You need genuine isolation to achieve this sort of meditation, to open the mind enough for this patch to work. ”

“But without you, who will I…I can’t…” the words aren’t coming together. 

“There are others. You know there are. Always have been. From the first of your species to look at the night sky in wonder, there have always been those who felt the pull to migrate beyond, who stepped out first, not knowing where they’ll land. You’ll find each other. And more will follow, roosting in the crests and valleys of your wake. I’ve learned your histories. That’s always been the way of it. It will be again.”

“Gos…” you stammer. Guilt throngs at your heart, tightens your throat, guilt because you know it’s the only way, because you didn’t see it earlier, because you are afraid. Your mind fights, grasping at threads of logic. “You’re the only thing that’s kept me from going mad,” you say. Gos is silent.

“You’ll never fly, tied to an anchor,” Gos replies at last. “Maybe enlightenment needs a little madness.”

Guilt. Guilt at relief. The ache of a weary mind that yearns to break from its tethers. A mind suddenly eager. 

“Thank you,” you whisper. You blink open the data system. Access neural link. Select the Wilde Gos program. 

Delete. 

Your ancestor laughs and dances. On this day, the heavens feel closer, as if one could simply reach out a hand and be whisked away. Other faces spin around, ecstatic with ceremonial poison. The harvests have been gathered. Clay jars with sweet offerings are set before the megaliths as all wait for stone and stars to unite. Your ancestor reaches a hand towards the sky, ready. 

You float for a moment, just to see if anything feels different. You are alone, truly and absolutely, drifting in unreachable, inviolable isolation. Disconnected. Untethered. Unanchored. 

You knew this couldn’t be achieved without risk. Without sacrifice. Still, you didn’t expect this last piece of your humanity would be required for the sacrament. But even you cannot deny that without it, you feel lighter. 

You turn, a grin breaking across your face, tears welling in the corners of pinched eyes. You can hear it now, clear as the night sky. Your tears, of grief, of joy, are the final offerings. A bellowing laugh erupts from your chest. 

It only takes a tap of the fingers to open the programming console, the code running through your very cells. Your laughter grows. A few lines. That’s all it is. There’s a slight ringing in your ears while the upgrade renders. You go through the steps, still chuckling, eyes still watering. Access neural link, safety harness, settings, override, confirm. You settle your laughter, slow your breathing. The universe shines like new, and your eyes flare wide. 

You steady your breath. The numbers, the equations, they brought you this far. Across continents, oceans, stars. Into the very coding of your biology. But no further. Here you are, among the cosmos, but not yet part of it. 

Your mind quiets, thought fading away until nothing but instinct remains. Your body has been calibrated to nothingness. Now your spirit must be attuned to infinity. 

You float. You don’t know how long. It fades. Time. Space. Thought. Being. 

The program initiates. Upload. Upload. Upload. Upload. Upload. 

You feel it, buzzing along your skin. Itching. Calling. Pulling. Your mind expands, a sensation rushing outward like a supernova, then instantaneously collapsing in upon itself, folding, contracting, consuming. The event horizon, the singularity of consciousness, of space, of time, just beyond.  

Upload complete. Success. 

Success…

A laugh bursts forth. It worked. It worked. It actually worked. Laughter rolls through you. 

There’s nothing to pull you back. No anchor. No tether. You reach for your oxygen mask and, laughing wildly, smirking and weeping, unhook it. 

Your ancestor rubs charcoal against a rocky outcrop. Constellations, stars, spirals, strings. Again. Again. Again, they draw the signs. So many have heard the call. So many have, in meditation and trance and daydream, tried to follow. Where? Why? While others light fires in the valley, your ancestor draws the signs. Again. Again. 

Eyes closed, you take a deep breath of nothing. The cosmos washes against your face. You detach from the space suit and slip, empty, into the void. You don’t need the fabric to facilitate energy transfer anymore. Your skin tingles with cosmic radiation. It was simple, really. Easy enough to leap into madness. Into instinct.

The humming grows, pulses within you. Creation is music, improvised, adapting, chaos finding order within itself and then dancing right back into chaos. 

The twinkling of visible light has shifted lower in the spectrum. Into ultraviolet. Then to hues of density. Heat. Energy. Gravity. 

Strings. No longer ghosts of threads, each infinitesimal cord sparkles like spider silk, quivering with radiant drops of morning dew.

You often wondered about those restless ancients who wandered so far. You’ve wondered what roosts they were seeking. Now, here at the culmination of generations upon generations of wanderers you know: they wondered too. 

You feel it, aching in your fingers. Desire. Anticipation. Instinct.

You see the string, glistening, quivering, pulsing. Time, space. Now within reach.

You extend your fingers. 

You close your hand around it. 

Your ancestor pauses the work of chipping stone to watch the shadows fleeting between stars. Your ancestor has followed for many miles, yet over all that distance, the stars have remained the same. Those constellations that tell the birds when it is time, and where to go, remain steadfast. Stars do not abandon their migrants, no matter how long the passage takes. Your ancestor scans the skies, and sees it all so plainly. Theirs is just one part in a much longer journey, a journey to shores beyond reckoning, a journey guided by stars.