"Then I have searched everywhere for my answers—except within myself!"
"Yes, Oldster." Distant, yet near, the sweet voice drifted in. "Now you inhabit that place you searched for. And it is a place that belongs to life alone."
The seeming-galaxies seemed to shimmer in answering accord.
"And now," cried Oldster, "my thoughts return to that moment when I trapped the universe's smallest particle in utter vacuum—and wondered if it could determine its own destiny. It could not!"
He drifted, his formless self somehow moving through these logically constructed "galaxies" toward some goal whose meaning hummed within him.
Then, echoing through and through this universe came the ringing voice that hovered outside himself.
"Now you see, Oldster, and know what it is you see. For life is the rebel, but dead matter knows no path but that given it.
"Oldster! Does not life have memory, emotion, volition? Do not even those functions need mechanism? Oldster—" the thought held no sadness, only an immeasurable love "—you know you have choice, and why you have choice. Now farewell! Your time of glory has come."
The fluttering of countless minds against his began to quiet. Without pain, he knew they were leaving—were gone—leaving the memory of their near-perfection, carrying with them the ultimate answers of life. And yet it did not matter. Did not matter!
He was within his fabled band of decision.