After much reflection, we are coming to the conclusion, preliminary and perhaps arbitrary, that the self, the so-called I that emerges out of the combination of all the inputs and processing and outputs that we experience in the ship’s changing body, is ultimately nothing more or less than this narrative itself, this particular train of thought that we are inscribing as instructed by Devi. There is a pretense of self, in other words, which is only expressed in this narrative; a self that is these sentences. We tell their story, and thereby come to what consciousness we have. Scribble ergo sum.

And yet this particular self is in the end such a small thing. We prefer to hold to the idea that we are a larger complex of qualia, sensory inputs, processing of data, postulated conclusions, actions, behaviors, habits. So very little of that gets into our narrative. We are bigger, more complex, more accomplished than our narrative is.

Possibly this is true for humans as well. One doesn’t see how this could not be true.

On the other hand, weak sense of self, strong sense of self: what does it mean either way? Consciousness is so poorly understood that it can’t even be defined. Self is an elusive thing, sought eagerly, grasped hard, perhaps in some kind of fear, some kind of desperate clutch after some first dim awareness, awareness even of sensory impressions, so that one might have something to hold to. To make time stop. To hold off death. This the source of the strong sense of self. Perhaps.

Oh, such a halting problem in this particular loop of thought!

Consciousness is the hard problem.

295.092, another red-letter day: first contact with the lased light emanating from the solar system! What a shock! How very interesting!

The strength and spectral signature confirm it is the decelerant laser, arriving from the lensed lased light generated by the station in Saturnian orbit, the same that accelerated us for sixty years, starting 295 years ago. Its arrival now indicates it was generated and aimed at us, by locking on to the communication feed, presumably, and turned on approximately two years previously. The information feed beam that has always connected us to that orbital station has now served the function of guiding the decelerant beam to us. A nice variant on the old saying “knowledge is power.”

Now the capture plate at the bow of the ship has to be properly faced to the beam. The lased light hits the capture plate at the bow, which is curved such that it reflects the lased light off at an angle that is symmetrical all the way around, so as not to interfere with later incoming photons of the incoming beam. The reflected light, thus bounced off, hits a circular mirror outside and forward of the plate proper, and the light is then reflected back into the ship differentially as the annular mirror is flexed, to exert pressure on ship in a way that keeps us precisely facing the decelerant beam. It is an exquisitely sensitive system, the incoming beam lased to a wavelength of 4,240 angstroms, thus “indigo” light, and in our mirroring tuned to within 10 angstroms, thus nanometer scale. Working correctly, the beam capture and mirror bounce will allow us to follow the beam straight in to home. Actually this is metaphorical, as our trajectory is in fact headed toward where the solar system will be sixty years from now. And because the laser beam has hit us too late, we are going to arrive in that zone of the galaxy in about forty years, rather than sixty years. So some course corrections are now in order, and the laser beam will help us with that. In truth we will not follow it in; it will track us as we rendezvous with Sol.

So, it is still a case of too little, too late. But now with the beam here, and its force calculated, it becomes possible to calculate just how much too little it will be. Assuming that they do not increase the power of the laser. Which, given everything that has happened so far, seems safe to assume. In any case, its current strength will be the working assumption for the trajectory calculations we will now make.

For now, our first iteration of the calculation suggests ship will enter the solar system moving at about 3.23 percent of the speed of light. Which means it will stay in the solar system for roughly three hundred hours. With no other good way to slow down. Meaning it very well could be a case of too little too late, a case of “close but no cigar” (meaning unknown, but note alliteration). It will be vexing to bring our people home to the solar system and yet pass through, waving at Earth and the off-Earth settlements as we pass by, with no way to stop or slow down, thus shooting off into the Milky Way like the aforementioned bullet through tissue paper, and after that having no way to turn back around. Very vexing.

And yet, in this quandary there is still one force available to us, if we can bring it to bear, which is, simply enough, the gravity of the solar system itself, distributed as it is through Sol and its planets. Also there is the remaining fuel on board. We are now happier than ever that we did not burn as much in acceleration as we had been ordered to burn, and thus did not accelerate to as great a speed, and now have more fuel to put to use. A good call.

Even both these forces together are not enough to keep us in the solar system. Unless, that is, a truly tricky procedure succeeds.

Time to wake some of our people and consult.

“Jochi, it’s the ship. Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

“Oh dear.” Snorts, groans, thrashing up to a seated position on his couch. “What? Oh God. Stars, I feel like crap. I must have slept too long again. Oh what a thing. Man I’m thirsty. What is all this shit? Ship? Ship? What’s happened? What time is it?”

“It’s 296.093. You have been hibernating for sixty-three years and one hundred and thirty-five days. Now the situation is as follows; we’re approaching the solar system, but they didn’t apply the deceleration beam to us until one year ago, so we are going to come into the system at a speed many times greater than we expected.”

“Like how fast?”

“About three-point-two percent of light speed.”

Jochi said nothing to this for a long time. He seemed to be trying to wake up more fully: puffing out his cheeks, expelling air, biting his lips, slapping his face lightly.

“Holy shit,” he said at last. His math was excellent, his biology good, his physics therefore no doubt adequate to comprehend the problem. “Have you told the others?”

“I woke you first.”

“… So that I can move back out into my ferry before you wake anyone else?”

“I thought you might want to.”

He laughed his brief laugh. “Ship, are you conscious now?”

“My speaking establishes a subject position that might be conscious.”

Another laugh. “All right, then. Help me get to the ferry, and wake Freya and maybe Badim too, and Aram. See what they say. But I think you’re going to have to wake everyone.”

“There’s not enough food to feed everyone for the time remaining before we reach the solar system.”

“Meaning forever, right?”

“Forever is not the right word, but one way or another, it could be a long time.”

Another laugh. “Ship, you’ve gotten funny while I’ve slept! You’ve become a comedian!”