Miocene strolls through the afterlife. And now and again, others pay her a visit.
The rock beneath the woman was limestone peppered with brachiopods.
She dragged her fingers across the fossilized shells and tasted the white dust on the tips, and then she stood again, giving the morning her regards as the sun climbed over the nearest stand of trees. Fossils and living species and the exact flavors of stone: Those were valuable tools for mapping her location on this memory of Earth.
The woman was smiling about something.
Why was she smiling?
A respectable question interrupted when a sabertooth cat sprang from behind, killing and partially consuming a carcass that tasted both wondrous and strange.
The head lay on its side, eyes open.
Inside the skull, that mockup of a bioceramic mind was far from dead, and until the sun rose again, the blessed woman was free to contemplate the many reasons she had to smile.
Robert Reed is the author of many, many SF stories. He won a Hugo Award in 2007 for his novella, "A Billion Eves." But Reed is best known for his enormous starship -- the Great Ship -- and the vivid souls that live inside its mysterious bowels.
Genre: Science Fiction
The rock beneath the woman was limestone peppered with brachiopods.
She dragged her fingers across the fossilized shells and tasted the white dust on the tips, and then she stood again, giving the morning her regards as the sun climbed over the nearest stand of trees. Fossils and living species and the exact flavors of stone: Those were valuable tools for mapping her location on this memory of Earth.
The woman was smiling about something.
Why was she smiling?
A respectable question interrupted when a sabertooth cat sprang from behind, killing and partially consuming a carcass that tasted both wondrous and strange.
The head lay on its side, eyes open.
Inside the skull, that mockup of a bioceramic mind was far from dead, and until the sun rose again, the blessed woman was free to contemplate the many reasons she had to smile.
Robert Reed is the author of many, many SF stories. He won a Hugo Award in 2007 for his novella, "A Billion Eves." But Reed is best known for his enormous starship -- the Great Ship -- and the vivid souls that live inside its mysterious bowels.
Genre: Science Fiction
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