Selectors & Selectees
      "At the Station, she had learned a kind of humality, a reminder of how little the inhabitants of Earth really knew...The telefax was now inviting her to press the RETURN key. But she did not have the will to go to it. It would have wait. She thought of her Father, and John Staughton, and her mother. They had sacrificed much for her, and she had been too self-involved to notice. She wished Palmer were with her... The telefax chimed again, but she was much too busy undoing and reconstructing the mythologies of her life. With this letter, Ellie had cycled back and come upon herself all those years ago. She had learned so much since then. There was so much more to learn.
       Above the table on which the chattering telefac sat was a mirror. In it she saw a woman neither young nor old, neither mother nor daughter. They had been right to keep the truth from her. She was not sufficiently advanced enough to receive that signal, much less decyrpt it. She had spent her career attempting to make contact with the most remote and alien of strangers, while in her own life she had made contact with with hardly anyone at all. She had been fierce in debunking the creation myths of others, and oblivious to the lie at the core of her own. She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." - The Artist's Signature

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