Of the thousands of shuttles launched before we left the mothership, none had sent such a signal. But we didn’t even think too much about it lest the entity that was putting everything at our fingertips might come up with such an idea. Or Pierre?”
I began to think with the greatest speed I thought myself capable of was the shuttle pilot with the dislocated shoulder, trapped in a survival suit with only five hours of oxygen, hopelessly lost in an apocalyptic landscape of sharp, inhospitable rocks. I thought I was dying and having a final dream, so I decided to enhance my dream and wished for a tub of warm, sparkling water. In fact, mutual attraction was one of the prerequisites for forming a terraforming pair.