Phase IV

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Time: Something clicked and in the nebula shaped like a spirochete, a bolt of energy moved from one side to the other, seventeen light-years, and then vaulted into pure space. Pure space was another two hundred thousand light-years, and the energy, now compacted, whisked through it like a fish through water, accelerating, the inside curiously static.

Time: Something attacked the energy, some cosmic turbulence or another intelligence, impossible to tell, and the energy felt itself being squeezed, became sentient then, and fought back. Somewhere in the Crab cluster, the attacker and the intelligence fought, and the battle lasted for fifteen thousand years. Then the attacker fell away like ash and the energy continued on its journey. Intelligence withdrew. At some subliminal level it meditated.

The system rotated around a small Class B star, the star almost a dwarf, in a far sector of the Milky Way. The sun in normal cycle would approach nova in fifteen billion years, burn out then and consume the system. Now it was still on the upswing. The radiance from this star drew the approaching energy to life once again and it became sensate. It probed through channels of recollection in a way that both was and was not conscious.

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