Origin. Stephen Baxter

and evolving. There were wars, there was love, there was life and death. Minds flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling droplets. There was immortality to be had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through copying and confluence across billions upon billions of years.

      Everywhere humans found life: crude replicators, of carbon or silicon or metal, churning meaninglessly in the dark.

      Nowhere did they find mind save what they brought with them or created no other against which human advancement could be tested.

      They came to understand that they would forever be alone.

      With time, the stars died like candles. But humans fed on bloated gravitational fat, and achieved a power undreamed of in earlier ages. It is impossible to understand what minds of that age were like, minds of time’s far downstream. They did not seek to acquire, not to breed, not even to learn. They needed nothing. They had nothing in common with their ancestors of the afterglow.

      Nothing but the will to survive. And even that was to be denied them by time.

      The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile and ultimately lethal.

      There was despair and loneliness.

      There was an age of war, an obliteration of trillion-year memories, a bonfire of identity. There was an age of suicide, as even the finest chose self-destruction against further purposeless time and struggle.

      The great rivers of mind guttered and dried.

      But some persisted: just a tributary, the stubborn, still unwilling to yield to the darkness, to accept the increasing confines of a universe growing inexorably old.

      And, at last, they realized that something was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.

      Burning the last of the universe’s resources, the final down-streamers lonely, dogged, all but insane – reached to the deepest past …

       1 WHEEL

      Reid Malenfant:

      ‘… Watch the Moon, Malenfant. Watch the Moon!’

      So here was Reid Malenfant, his life down the toilet, chasing joky UFO reports around a desolate African sky. Emma’s voice snapped him to full alertness, for just about for the first time, he admitted to himself, since takeoff.

      ‘What about the Moon?’

      ‘Just look at it!’

      Malenfant twisted his head this way and that, the helmet making his skull heavy, seeking the Moon. He was in the T-38’s forward blister. Emma was in the bubble behind him, her head craned back. The jet trainer was little more than a brilliant shell around them, white as an angel’s wing, suspended in a powder-blue sky. Where was the Moon – the west? He couldn’t see a damn thing.

      Frustrated, he threw the T-38 into a savage snap roll. A flat brown horizon twisted around the cockpit in less than a second.

      ‘Jesus, Malenfant,’ Emma groaned.

      He pulled out into a shallow climb towards the west, so that the low morning sun was behind him.

      … And then he saw it: a Moon, nearly full, baleful and big too big, bigger than it had any right to be. Its colours were masked by the washed-out blue of the air of Earth, but still, it had colours, yes, not the Moon’s rightful palette of greys, but smatterings of a deep blue-black, a murky brown that even had tinges of green, for God’s sake – but it was predominantly red, a strong scorched red like the dead heart of Australia seen from the flight deck of a Shuttle orbiter …

      It was a Moon, but not the Moon. A new Moon. A Red Moon.

      He just stared, still pulling the T-38 through its climb. He sensed Emma, behind him, silent. What was there to say about this, the replacement of a Moon?

      That was when he lost control.

      Fire:

      The people walk across the grass.

      The sky is blue. The grass is sparse, yellow. The ground is red under the grass. Fire’s toes are red with the dust. The people are slim black forms scattered on red-green.

      They are called the Running-folk.

      The people call to each other.

      ‘Fire? Dig! Fire?’

      ‘Dig, Dig, here! Loud, Loud?’

      Loud’s voice, from far away. ‘Fire, Fire! Dig! Loud!’

      The sun is high. There are only people on the grass. The cats sleep when the sun is high. The hyenas sleep. The Nutcracker-men and the Elf-men sleep in their trees. Everybody sleeps except the Running-folk. Fire knows this without thinking.

      As his legs walk Fire holds his hands clamped together. Smoke curls up from between his thumbs. There is moss inside his hands. The fire is in the moss. He blows on the moss. More smoke comes. The fire hurts his palms and fingers. But his hands are hard.

      His legs walk easily. Walking is for legs. Fire is not there in his legs. Fire is in his hands and his eyes. He makes his hands tend the fire, while his legs walk.

      Fire is carrying the fire. That is his name. That is what he does.

      It is darker. The people are quiet.

      Fire looks up. A fat cloud hangs over him. The sun is behind the cloud. The edge of the cloud glows golden. His nose can smell rain. His bare skin prickles, cold. Immersed in this new moment, he has forgotten he is hungry.

      The clouds part. There is a blue light, low in the sky. Fire looks at the blue light. It is not the sun. The blue light is new.

      Fire fears anything new.

      The fire wriggles in his hands.

      He looks down, forgetting the blue light. There is no smoke. The moss has turned to ash. The fire is shrinking.

      Fire crouches down. He shelters the moss under his belly. He feels its warmth on his bare skin. He hoots. ‘Fire, Fire! Fire, Fire!’

      Stone is small-far. He turns. He shouts. He is angry. He begins to come back towards Fire.

      Loud comes to Fire. Loud hoots. His voice is loud. Loud is his name. Loud kneels. He looks for bits of moss and dry grass. He pushes them into the bit of fire.

      Dig comes to Fire. Her hand holds arrowhead roots. She squats beside Fire. Her taut dugs brush his arm. His member stiffens. He rocks. She grins. Her hands push a root into his mouth. He tastes her fingers, her salty sweat.

      Loud hoots. His member is stiff too, sticking out under his belly. He crams bits of grass into Fire’s hands.

      Fire snaps his teeth. ‘Loud, Loud away!’

      Loud hoots again. He grabs Dig’s arm. She laughs. Her legs take her skipping away from both of them.

      Others come to Fire. Here are women, Grass and Shoot and Cold and Wood. Here are their babies with no names. Here are children with no names. The children jabber. Their eyes are round and bright.

      Here is Stone. Stone is dragging branches over the ground. Blue is helping Stone drag the branches. Sing is lying on the branches. Sing is white-haired. She is still. She is asleep.

      Stone sees the dying fire. He sees Fire’s stiff member. He roars. Stone’s hands drop the branches.

      Stone has forgotten Sing, on the branches. Sing tips to the ground. She groans.

      Stone’s axe clouts Fire on the back of the head. There is a hard sound. Stone shouts in Fire’s face. ‘Fire, Fire! Hungry, feed!’ His face is split by a scar. The scar is