In the dawn of her birth a major cosmic collision was visible from her pod’s ship. She bore witness to this glorious moment. The impact produced three ripples so bright and dense with radiation that it inevitably caused malfunctions in her ocular circuitry. Her retinal inner working sparked, her eyesight dimmed. She was left in a dark and hyper-aware spike where all she could see were these three rings. TR became her name. 

Her pod had to redirect the ship to the nearest bio-mass populated planet, an ocean world. Conditions were difficult, yet they managed to collect the floating, bloated remains of the ocean’s departed creatures and took their bio-matter, transfiguring it into new retinal parts for TR. In no time she was fully repaired. As is the nature of transfiguration and transmodification, the synching with collective memory began. And in this way, she came to be uniquely part of this entity.

The pod was comprised of four researchers and TR. They were always set in motion, never touching down onto many celestial bodies unless for repairs. Long before they had even transfigured TR, they had picked up a transmission of unknown origin. It was at the time the oldest message they had ever received and with much excitement they resolved to set out and find it.

•

TR on Earth

At night she labored intensely in the rebuilding of the base station in the mountains. Much of the concrete rock had crumbled away, tumbling down steep paths, settling into their comfortable nooks to be further eaten away by the elements. It became her objective to collect what remained and piece it all back together as close to its original design as possible, patching it with mud and minerals. After this was done she would begin with the wiring. 

When the sun was at its highest and most pedal hunters were in repose, she would go about the forested areas and scavenge the forgotten remains of animals. Meat, bone, and aquatic plants were the most resourceful. TR repurposed this bio-material as venous pathways that would become the base station’s new wiring system. Through this system she could sync into a much more comprehensive network of Earth’s history. She could virtually receive all the information that she could conceive of.

Synching in a spacecraft like the one she lived on was a much more intensive exercise than anything one researcher could devise in one season on an unfamiliar landscape. One could, when trained properly, access any place in the universe. One could communicate with an entity in a desired location and access its memory. This system was the life-long project of her pod and in many ways she was the product of this research.

Even under these more restrictive circumstances TR learned about this place through un-wired synching. It felt as if though this place yearned to be seen, to be heard, to be held. Especially the Earth of a time past. The Earth of Ancient Ocean. She remembered the waters that gave her new eyes. A new vision. Those waters she carried with her everywhere she went. They not only yearned to be seen and held but they belied a larger motivation. TR was the water bearer across galaxies. Through her, oceans meet each other again and for the first time. TR, the conduit.

The spines on her skin became erect. The drone in the sky had returned.