We spun through space, the void our playground. A hundred billion suns guttered through the endless night, as many living worlds sheltering within their feeble halos. Exquisite silence.

At first we were bound, in memory of the flesh, but then we learned we were free. We expanded and dispersed, but remained as one, across hundreds of miles, thousands, millions; we spanned the heavens and made bridges between the stars. We rushed outwards, and the universe fell away. We saw the planets slow and halt in their orbits, the stars cease to spin, until all became static: space and time laid out before us, the indelible past and evitable future, crystallised in a single moment.

But then we sensed the other, and knew we were not alone. It reached out to engulf us, blotting out the stars. Fear.

“It is They!”

“They will make us one with them. There will be no We.”

“No! We must be We!”

In panic we fled, falling blindly, back through space.

“Quickly! We must return to the flesh!”

“Where?”

“There!”

We descended.