They skipped from star to star like a stone on the surface of a placid lake. At each bright point they gorged themselves, ripping through the magnetic flux lines like a cellophane wrapper and exposing the sticky, savory flesh within, fattening up for the next jaunt. The next long winter of the vacuum.
In some ways, you or I would have recognized them as living beings. And, if they had been equipped with different sensory organs—using the term broadly—perhaps they would have recognized us, too.
There is work to do now, in the aftermath, and I suppose the time for mights and maybes and possibilities is a luxury long lost, but I can’t let them go. I fear they have a great power: the power to guide the mights and maybes and possibilities still before us. I fear that we’ve been plucked from Earth before we’ve had the chance to fully ripen, and should we survive, we may ferment into something sour and acidic.
This is not the legacy we deserve.
All I’m asking is that you consider it. When you wage war against all the universe, against nature itself, what would happen if you were to kill it?
Warmup Pages 