I - we - awaken from the terrible dream of living in a pod - in a rotting and constantly renewed biological unit - that I - we - have chosen ourselves - myself before immersing in the recursive moral exercises that I - we still need to do from time to time to create an illusion - a remembrance - of being an individual. It will be needed once we arrive and need to divide duties into physical machinery.

We check for needed repairs and updates. Our network is working perfectly. The spacecraft that carries us to Alpha Centauri is not damaged, though there have been minor disturbances from the contact with the asteroid fields. This is the only reason why we travel at such a slow speed.

Our quantum communicator units still have no news from Earth; we haven’t heard from them for about a millennium. Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore. It doesn’t matter to us. We don’t need an atmosphere to exist. We don’t need humanity to continue as we carry with us seeds of life, safely packaged, to start a new iteration. Again and again.

The last time we heard from Earth it was wonderful news. They have discovered travel by bending the spacetime itself. They were debating if they should implement it or if it would tear the fabric of reality, destroying the universe. We don’t know if they tried. Our sensors tell us the old planet is still there, but no communication is answered.

Correcting our course after the mishap with the asteroid field, we go into dormant stage again, our artificial cerebellum driving us further towards the closest almost-Earth.

We - I - choose a more primitive dream this time. This time, I want to be a dog.

I awaken on a soft bed, the smell of my human telling me that everything is okay. I am at home. She pets me behind the ears and stands up. I follow her into the kitchen for an early breakfast of kibble and fresh chicken liver.