The Island - Peter Watts

Peter Watts 2 The Island
We are the cave men. We are the Ancients, the Progenitors, the
blue-collar steel monkeys. We spin your webs and build your
magic gateways, thread each needle's eye at sixty thousand
kilometers a second. We never stop. We never even dare to slow
down, lest the light of your coming turn us to plasma. All for you.
All so you can step from star to star without dirtying your feet in
these endless, empty wastes between.
Is it really too much to ask, that you might talk to us now and
then?
I know about evolution and engineering. I know how much
you've changed. I've seen these portals give birth to gods and
demons and things we can't begin to comprehend, things I can't
believe were ever human; alien hitchikers, maybe, riding the rails
we've left behind. Alien conquerers.
Exterminators, perhaps.
But I've also seen those gates stay dark and empty until they
faded from view. We've infered diebacks and dark ages,
civilizations burned to the ground and others rising from their
ashes— and sometimes, afterwards, the things that come out look a
little like the ships we might have built, back in the day. They
speak to each other— radio, laser, carrier neutrinos— and
sometimes their voices sound something like ours. There was a
time we dared to hope that they really were like us, that the circle
had come round again and closed on beings we could talk to. I've
lost count of the times we tried to break the ice.
I've lost count of the eons since we gave up.
All these iterations fading behind us. All these hybrids and
posthumans and immortals, gods and catatonic cavemen trapped in
magical chariots they can't begin to understand, and not one of
them ever pointed a comm laser in our direction to say Hey, how's
it going, or Guess what? We cured Damascus Disease! or even
Thanks, guys, keep up the good work.
We're not some fucking cargo cult. We're the backbone of your
goddamn empire. You wouldn't even be out here if it weren't for
us.
And— and you're our children. Whatever you've become, you
were once like this, like me. I believed in you once. There was a