I guess flyswatter is as good a word as any.
«Maybe there was a war,» I mumble. «Maybe it wanted the real estate. Or maybe it was just some — family squabble.»
«Maybe didn't know,» Dix suggests. «Maybe thought those coordinates were empty.»
Why would you think that, I wonder. Why would you even care? And then it dawns on me: he doesn't, not about the Island, anyway. No more than he ever did. He's not inventing these rosy alternatives for himself.
My son is trying to comfort me.
I don't need to be coddled, though. I was a fool: I let myself believe in life without conflict, in sentience without sin. For a little while I dwelt in a dream world where life was unselfish and unmanipulative, where every living thing did not struggle to exist at the expense of other life. I deified that which I could not understand, when in the end it was all too easily understood.
But I'm better now.
It's over: another build, another benchmark, another irreplaceable slice of life that brings our task no closer to completion. It doesn't matter how successful we are. It doesn't matter how well we do our job. Mission accomplished is a meaningless phrase on Eriophora, an ironic oxymoron at best. There may one day be failure, but there is no finish line. We go on forever, crawling across the universe like ants, dragging your goddamned superhighway behind us.
I still have so much to learn.
At least my son is here to teach me.