We discovered it on the far side of the asteroid belt,
Floating:
Cylindrical and spinning,
it wasn’t a military ship or merchant vessel, but an interstellar art gallery,
empty and abandoned.
Or so we thought,
because no one imagined the pieces themselves were the passengers and the crew;
that art could be intelligent.
Having walked its prolonged and quiet corridors, I wonder:
Did an I create this art? Did the I construct the gallery? Or did the art construct the gallery; did the art become itself? From where does art originate, and to where does it go? What is its purpose? Does it have a purpose?
Perhaps there is, somewhere distant and unknown, a world from which this art escaped—a world of creators whose creations fled, like sons from their mothers, or humanity from God.
I sit and think.
I sit and look.
I sit and weep and fear.
It speaks to me. From across an unfathomed distance, the art communicates by way of intellectual infection, emotive hijack. I remember her. I cannot be the intended recipient. I do not know its language, yet I am affected. Forever she is gone, fled from me across the stars. The art inhabits me. The art inverts my self.
Upon return to station I am not the same.
Let it be, I decide.
We’ve already burned so much.
The art continues its journey through the universe—
silent- , permanent-
ly changing it.
—from Δutarch: Reconstructed Diaries & Other Suppressed Writings