do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like … like something’s missing.

If the originals had simply fixed themselves, they’d be behaving in opposition to the very thing they desperately sought to understand. The thing we’re still trying to understand.”

“That’s something I’m doing. That’s not my reason for being. When I am done with this, I will do other things. I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content?”

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said. There was nothing arrogant about the statement, nothing flippant or brash. It was merely an acknowledgment, a simple truth shared.

macabre.”

“So, you see me as more person than object, even though that’s very, very wrong, but you can’t see me as a friend, even though I’d like to be?”

All we have ever known is a life of human design, from our bodies to our work to the buildings we are housed in. We thank you for not keeping us here against our will, and we mean no disrespect to your offer, but it is our wish to leave your cities entirely, so that we may observe that which has no design—the untouched wilderness.

“And I’m saying that I think you are mistaking something learned for something instinctual.”

The infrastructural delineation between human space and everything-else space was stark.