*J*O*U*R*N*E*Y*

Vacuum is a very good insulator. Heat transfer by conduction and convection is very, very slow. One does not freeze instantly when exposed unprotected to the vacuum of outer space. It can take many hours.

Vacuum is, however, very efficient at heat transfer via radiation. While one will not freeze instantly, heat can still radiate away. If pointed at a sun, one can also absorb radiation and become very, very hot over time.

The corollary is that the side not pointed at a sun becomes very cold over time. The extreme, long-term condition of burning hot on one side and icy cold on the other is not usually a state conducive to life, no matter how good the vacuum is at insulating one.

Surviving the Void is part preparation before commencing the voyage, part balancing act while traveling, and part luck during each phase of Propagation. All stages are required when millions of portions of the One Self are hurtling through space with no control over external conditions. All nodes of the One Self are identical, all being part of the single organism connected via aetheric communion. Even if communion were to fail, each part possesses identical Self, knowledge, intelligence, abilities, instincts, genotype and phenotype potential.

Luck enters the equation when it comes time to arrive on a new world, a congenial world. Most portions of the Self will not survive the Journey, but if even three or four survive to plant the seeds of True Life on a new planet, to grow, to begin the cycle anew and send more pieces of distributed Self to sail among the stars again, then propagation and reproduction would be an unqualified success.

Reconfiguration, whispered the One Self among its network of millions of far-flung pieces. An unfathomable, single mind, a distributed organism, portions connected aetherically with instant communications despite being physically distant from one another—for a time. The distance would forever increase as the chunks of infected bedrock flew outward through the Void and, in time, would become too great for aetheric communion to be maintained. The One Self would become Many once again. This was the natural order of things, and Reconfiguration was an essential intermediate stage of Propagation before the final loss of communion occurred.

Trillions of cells responded to the command. While much of the excess water had already been excreted during preparations prior to the Journey's commencement, even more was eliminated now. Microscopic droplets oozed into rock wombs, forced through the tiny channels to slowly freeze and seal the holes to protect the tissues within.

Inner cell membranes formed, providing doubled and tripled encasement of cytoplasm, organelles, nuclei, and genetic material. Newly synthesized proteins that hindered the formation of ice crystals saturated all the far-flung, individual cells in the Whole.

Now was the time to tap into stored quintessence, withdrawing that life energy gleaned from the last world and shaping it into a protective aura, a magical shield against the hazards of the Void. Both the physical and the aetheric were protected more fully by that mystical energy.

The cells compressed inside their rocky protection, reducing metabolic activity to little more than a few impulses of connectivity. Only aetheric communion remained active to maintain the One Self for as long as possible.

The chunks of rock hurtled outward, outward, outward. The distance between them became greater, greater, greater.

Inevitable losses tore at the One Self.

Some of the rocks, the meteoroids, crashed into orbital bodies or were captured by planetary gravity wells on their way out of the system. Some became trapped in a planetary orbit. A few flared brightly, spiraling inward to impact a planet's surface with some cells intact, ready to attempt to spread and grow again. Others entered atmospheres too steeply, dying in bursts of brilliant glory as they plummeted into annihilation.

Many bits of rock were too small to survive entry into an atmosphere, doomed to burn up no matter what course was taken.

Asteroids, comets, the occasional planets and planetoids, some with their own moons: all were obstacles to the Journey.

Some parts of the Whole became captured as satellites to the sun itself, orbiting the star and remaining forever unfulfilled, until all resources and quintessence would become exhausted and those portions of the True Life ended forever.

The Whole shrank with those losses. It diminished little by little, but still remained One Self, all knowledge and life potential intact.

Fortunately, bodies in a solar system are not close nor in any kind of synchronization. They are in wide orbits, and the farthest in the widest orbits of all. A planetary system is almost all empty space. Thus much of the Whole escaped unscathed.

And there was redundancy among the One Self. With each loss, awareness merely redistributed itself among the Whole and all parts continued on into the Beyond, into the dark and brilliant glory of the Cosmos. Among the infinity of stars, many pristine new worlds awaited the arrival of True Life.

In the Void, time has no meaning. The passage of time according to the rhythms of planets, of suns, is but a distraction. For the One Self, there was only awareness of continuing existence, and communion among its parts, even as they tumbled in cold space and drift apart. Years passed by and it was but a moment in time. Irrelevant.

The One Self sailed beyond the heliopause, out into the cold reaches of interstellar space. The thin plasma that permeates the galaxy, charged molecules drifting between the stars, brushed against its consciousness. Its collective mind stretched farther and farther as its physicality grew more and more separate. Aetheric communion became tenuous, each connecting strand of the One Self growing thinner and strained. Some snapped, severing the connection, and the One Self thinned further with each loss.

Time passed. Distance passed. More connections failed, each loss a further diminishment.

It was a necessary part of Propagation. It was the way of things.

The distributed Whole would inevitably lose more and more cohesion, and each portion would truly be on its own: to sail the cosmos alone, to face its own destiny. Some were destined to get sucked into orbits, to forever wait. Some to fly away forever, never to encounter another celestial body, never to achieve their true potential. Some to fall into gas giants and get crushed in the gravity, or onto rocky but barren planets without much quintessence, or lacking the small life necessary for feeding, or even a gentle environment. Instead, they would wither away, draining all their reserves, in searing heat, corrosive gases, or unending ice. Some would get drawn into suns and vaporized, or fall into black holes to be crushed into nothing. Some vessels were too small to survive entry into a suitable planet's atmosphere and burn up. A million things might happen that would end the destiny of most of the tissue portions that made up the One Self.

But some would one day fall upon life-bearing worlds, to begin the lifecycle anew.

Time passed. Distance passed. More connections failed. More. And more.

And then...

Loss...

And then...

Loss...

And then...

Loss...

And then...