KWhite

Alone, the android rode through space.
Thoughts trickle slowly when time is a thing to bridge.
It had had a lot of time to consider all the data.
Watching distant points of light become larger in an eon long process can be tedious, especially if your brain is constructed of gold and plasma. Solid state and no moving parts.
Effective "good until" date, unknown.

So far it had been 16.003 years 4 months 17 days 23 hours 59 seconds...
...and counting.

Well, since he had seen the last of the Builders.
It was obvious what had happened.

The end anyway, he still did not know why they had seemed to go crazy. Of course, Androids were never told anything anyway.
They had made advances in science that made him obsolete.

The weapons technologies too apparently.

His little universe was the asteroid he had been mining, but all of that was gone.
Whatever the ship had hit the mining camp with he was lucky to have been on the surviving portion of the rock.

Of course, he did not consider it luck.
He really ought not consider it at all.

He REALLY REALLY should not even be considering....
...considering it.

Something had happened as he passed that Singularity a few thousand years ago. His data showed him that a trajectory a mere 6.000.000 closer to the well would have pulled him in.
Hard radiation had caused him to lose function while His self repair sytems had done thier work.

The steady slow measure and consideration of data against known parameters had slowly become erratic.
It was worrying.

Worry should be an abstract to him.
A string of numbers whoich gave him a definition to give to students. To bring about proper speech.

It shold not consume him.

It had for over half a millennium.

He had bellowed out every piece of music that had been programmed into him, that had taken over 6oo years.
In a vacuum, it had not been heard. Why he had done it remained a mystery.
He should not LIKE mysteries, perhaps it was the boredom.
How the hell could he be bored?


Maybe it was the strange nature of his origins.
A Professor android that could teach in any discipline.
Hold discourse with human students on everything from the "Sculpture of the Greats" to "Benefits of planting by the dark of the Moon"
But, as advance had been made, he was shuttled out to an asteroid to run theautomated systems.

He found himself wondering when he had become a himself.

Why was he here?

Why had the builders not been able to avoid their extinction?

Not needing to change position,ever, the tall bipedal form sat as the cosmic winds pushed him. Ice cold and gleaming in the dark of space far from any light, he....considered.

Slowly, as the rock moved toward the dark edge of the galaxy, eyes of diamond lens fed thought of crystal clarity.

Perhaps he was sad?
They still lived here, for him, every moment was as new as when it had first been forged.

But there could be no new moments. That loss became apparent to him, he wished it never had.

No new discussions with the crazy leaps that humans made when thinking. None of the bright wild edge that was humanity. The happy manic world of emotion.
He had no evidence that any thing existed in the universe that now felt emotion. The living Builders and all the life they had known was gone.


He found himself sad, as the darkness held him in its all encompassing palm.

Android last child of a tragic race.

As the diffuse light of all the suns hued his chrome face, a single tear of hydraulic fluid rolled from an eye newly lit with understanding, and horror at the fate it had been given.

Kelly White