Adelia

is my name.....I am of mixed-DNA.....human science would say roughly 70 percent Earth derived, and the balance a mixture of "natural other" and "artificial manufactured"......manufactured by the machine cultures down towards galactic core.....my current partners on this trip are of similar make-up, except for Elder who is a complete natural human. It seems that the Captain of the ship is also full natural.....and I've never seen anything like the dragon-mind brain-walkers before.....I've seen full bore machine entities of course.....and cyborgs abound along the frontier.....but I didn't know that any Transcended race would sometimes go slumming in sticky old mineral reality.....

The Captain thinks we're just dopers on the run.....well, that's how we presented ourselves. But really we are pilgrims on a spiritual quest. Perhaps the dragon-mind is on a quest too....looking for something they left behind? That's just a feeling I have.....but since joining this clan I've been able to develop intuitions that I see as trustworthy.....or as trustworthy as "empirical fact" or "logic"......One thing I have determined directly is that the dragon-mind does leave the brain-walkers at will to wander around the ship.....and even go outside the ship.....that's a benefit of Transcendence......Elder goes with them sometimes, as he is Adept.....I'm still just a student.....trying to gain practice.....

Elder says that when we reach the Wandering City spiritual progress will be facilitated ......the culture there is even older than machine culture.....the Wanderers carry secrets from very rarified and powerful realms.....the Captain must be from the City to know how to get there.....maybe there is more to him than I think.....I'll ask Elder .......but now it's my time for sacrament and meditation.....Practice leads Within to Clarity.....

Far ahead of the ship the City spins and twirls on the undercurrents of dark energy like a leaf in the wind as it plunges endlessly onwards......surrounded by eons of clutter and flotsom it streams between the stars almost as fast as light.....time dragging slowly in it's environs while the centuries dance blithely by in the gravity wells of star and planet......