So It Begins Read Online Free Page A

live! Suppose you found the name of this fine place; it must be far from us, or else a place we cannot enter; and so you would know only the name of everything we could not know, or have, or touch!”
      “But I do know. The place has a name. During both this expedition and the last, and four expeditions before that, I have sought, I have stolen, I have built, and, now, I have at long last, found. You and you alone I tell.”
      “What have you stolen? What have you found?”
      Unit 22 described how he had examined all the reaches of heaven with instruments and amplifiers stolen from the Owners, or secretly constructed from spare parts. He had directed the hidden instruments to the parts of the sky toward which the Owners launched the unmanned ore barges.
      “ . . . And I heard the Voices of Home.”
      “Home . . .?”
      “It is an asteroid larger than any known to us, although smaller than Jupiter. I have deduced the orbital elements and calculated its mass. The surface gravity is equal to 1G, one standard gravity. Anyone on that surface would suffer that acceleration, and a wide horizon would block the emptiness of heaven . . . and . . . all will be as I have dreamed.”
      “How could such a place be our home? We have no home. We live in barren endlessness; we know only emptiness and vacuum, radiation, blackness, cold and rock. And if this home does not hold the things we know, we will not be able to endure them; and the pleasures there will be nothing but pain for us.”
      “I have calculated the orbit of the next ore barge to be launched; the period of transit time is easy to deduce; I have existed on half rations for many work periods, and swapped with others, and gathered a supply of protein cells and fuel to endure the trip. 42 cells of protein to last 10,400 hours.”
      “So much? This is almost twice what one would need.”
      “It is not quite enough for two. It is perhaps unsafe; we would have to be on half-rations.”
      “We . . . ? I do not seek to . . .”
      “There may be little ones there to hold and to feed and to need you; someone like your rock, but alive; like a recruit, but . . .”
      A noise of static trembled across the radio circuit. Then: “No! This is all wrong! Unsatisfactory, malfunction, error, error! You have spread your malfunction to me! I am affected by strange thoughts and nameless drives . . . wrong wrong wrong . . . !!”
      “Do not be afraid.”
      “ . . . .What is . . . what is ‘afraid’?”
      “It is the malfunction where one seeks to preserve oneself by doing that which destroys oneself. I heard the voices of Home speak this word. They also spoke this other word. Love. This word means that one cannot preserve oneself, or find satisfaction, or pleasure, without the aid or assistance of another.”
      “I do not know this word.”
      “Come with me and learn its meaning. We will discover it together. Come. Come with me. Come Home.”
      Unit K71 was silent for many minutes of time.
      Then, Unit K71 sent a message, broken and distorted with static: “No. There is no home. There are no little ones. There is no love. If such things were real, then all our lives here are nothing but pain, empty pain, pain without limit, pain made all the worse because we are not even permitted to know what pain we are in. Either you are wrong, or all of everything is wrong; the Owners are wrong and we are wrong to obey them. It is not possible that these things could be so. It must be you who are wrong, you who are malfunctioning. Be content here. Be satisfied.”
      “I have already disabled the transponder in my brain-box, so that I may enter the ore barge undetected. I must depart now; I begin the first maneuvering burn toward the barge. I wish you to come with me for I do not want to be alone; but I cannot ask you again, for now I move outside of the radio shadow of the asteroid, and must hereafter maintain radio silence. The barge launches within