The Helianx Proposition/page 21
It had taken a long time for the Helianx to get used to life aboard the Great Ship.
Although they had taken care to fashion the enormous craft,
as far as they could, to emulate conditions on Womb Planet,
clearly they were not able to duplicate the size of their destroyed world.
This had led to a growing frustration, especially amongst the younger of the surviving Helianx
who still carried memories of swimming freely in the pellucid waters of their home planet.
As part of the design process their computers had suggested incorporating
a series of vast interior spaces, buried in the hold of the ship and filled with water,
which would allow the Helianx a chance to exercise their bodies.
However, and this had been quite shocking to the Elders, the computers had insisted on the inclusion of dry chambers representing the planet after the seas had receded. The horror of their recent experience had colored their emotions so deeply that it became as a consequence, an unsung taboo, never to visit, or raise in discussion, the arid, storm-blown simulacrum lodged deep within the bowels of the ship. It was doubtless this impulse that had also led to their gradual acceptance of a more sedentary existence spent largely in the nutrient domes, and of the many obvious restrictions imposed by a peripatetic life in interstellar space.
Galactic historians have stressed the need to understand the enormous timespans involved when studying these strange creatures. It has always been hard for short-lived entities to grasp the psychological mindset of beings whose long lives could best be expressed in geological time. Do their thoughts move more slowly through those vast neural networks? Do their immensely long lifespans allow them to view universal philosophical questions in a profoundly different way? What meaning does death hold for creatures who die so infrequently? How is time considered when there is so much of it?
The changes the Helianx underwent as a species occurred over millions of years and many generations of life on the Great Ship. Much of their placid lives had been spent floating in Dreamtime, and by the time the computers started spitting out their new prediction for the demise of the superuniverse, the frightful memories of their unfortunate exile had all but dissipated. They had even grown to enjoy the indolence imposed on them by circumstances, broken only by occasional meetings with diplomatic missions, who often seemed unreasonably resentful of the Helianx for the news they brought.
As a result of the increasingly skeptical animosity amongst those they were merely trying to wam, the news that the Helianx were to place themselves in suspended animation for an undetermined period in the future, became a considerably more attractive prospect than might have been anticipated by a more restless species.
Even the computers' tentatively hopeful assurance concerning the life-support systems did little to dampen down their enthusiasm. When the Helianx had considered that this plan might give them a chance to survive, it had seemed a small price to pay.
