It's February fourth (Earth calendar), twelve days past conjunction. We lie around all over the volume of the playroom, listening to Logan talk at his own leisurely pace.

"So they were like a Net?" asks Max

"A what?"

"A Net, a neural network. A network of elements that emulates the brain, or at least brain functions like perception and learning and cognitive abilities and so forth. We have them on the station, along with regular computers."

"Yeah, like that. Like a living network. This was at the beginning of their civilization, about a billion years ago, give or take a hundred million." He laughs. "Heh-heh, what's a hundred million years amongst friends.

"Allen showed me what they looked like back at the dawn of their recorded history. They were a little like wasps - actually, a lot like wasps, only bigger." He holds up the palm of his hand to illustrate the size. "About like that, but no wings, and the legs weren't the same. And there was one other major difference that was grotesque and fascinating at the same time:

"There was a large section behind the head that contained most of the central nervous system, and out of that were two appendages that looked almost like human arms, with elbows, and tiny, detailed, nearly hand-like features at the end that they used for manipulating. But that's not the interesting part.

"The interesting part is that out of this bulbous pod, there were twenty or thirty filaments, almost like antennae, or tendrils, about two or three body lengths long, that trailed along behind when they crawled, that gave them a real buggy, vermin-like look. Something you definitely wouldn't want to pick up and cuddle. In this same pod, there were twenty or thirty little receptacles in an array across the back, just behind the head and in front of the tendrils.

"These were specialized organs for interconnecting. The wasps could plug into each other, tendril into receptacle, and they'd get into these big groups, like bees swarming around a queen bee, except there wasn't a queen. They'd get all interconnected; wired together in a group of thousands, maybe millions, tendrils all tangled up. It was a little like group sex, except it didn't look like a lot of fun to me. Yeah, real group sex is a lot more fun."

"Grandfather." I admonish.

"So I hear," he adds, winking. "Anyhow, these organs were for bug-to-bug communications, and Allen told me they also doubled as sex organs. So my analogy isn't far off the mark."

"Then the aliens started out as intelligent bugs," Charles states.

"No. Not at all. They were dumb bugs. It was the networks that were smart. The bugs weren't any more intelligent than your typical wasp. They were like individual brain cells - well, maybe like sophisticated microprocessors. They couldn't do much thinking for themselves, but they were a part of a larger organization that could think. That word, 'organization', is the key. They were organized into groups, but it wasn't group sex; it was group think. They were part of a higher being: a mass, a flock, a hive. These higher beings, they were third level critters, living on a substrate of two lower levels: the bugs, and the cells that made up the bugs. By comparison, we're only second level critters. You and I are gigantic walking cell colonies.

"Well, actually, the bugs could do more than wasps and brain cells. It was an unusual and disconcerting thing if you think about it. From time to time after sitting there doing their group think, being part of a larger living being, they would come apart into individuals again, and go off and get a bite to eat, maybe play a game of handball or something recreational, and also carry out whatever instructions they'd gotten from their 'super-self'.

"Now that's a little different from your typical brain. Imagine all the neurons in your brain coming apart every once in a while, taking a walk. If you think losing your train of thought is an experience, try that. The bugs would separate, and whatever thought process was going on at the time would be - well, where would the thought go? It wouldn't be anywhere, would it? The individual constituted by these bugs in a particular configuration would cease to exist.

"But here's the kicker. After a while the bugs would come back together again, and they'd remake almost all the original connections. They knew how to put the individual together again, even if they didn't know what they were doing or why. It was instinctive. And then that thought that got interrupted in mid-think would pick up where it left off, and whoever was thinking it might not even be aware that he'd come apart at the seams for awhile. Now that's bizarre. Where was that individual in the meantime? Was it like he was sleeping? Or dead?

"Well, this period that Allen showed me was the self starting stage for their civilization, at the knee of the exponential curve, similar to what we're going through ourselves. The individuals - by that, I mean the groups, not the wasps - began to evolve rapidly. Being sort of free-form - not like us with fixed arrangements of brain cells - they were a lot more flexible, and sometimes individuals would merge into bigger and more complicated individuals. That wasn't too different from one thing eating another thing, a reorganization of material - and there were groups of groups, sort of like cities and governments and PTAs and churches, and groups that would share subsets of their bug components at different times, and - well, you get the point, they started getting sophisticated. And their little bug components, when they came apart, would do tasks apart from their normal eating and reproduction - they would build things. Houses, museums, parking lots, art galleries, gambling casinos, tennis courts, all the amenities that civilized individuals can't get by without, but of course the bugs didn't have a clue what they were doing, they were just following a program.

"So the aliens went on like this, getting more and more complicated, more and more sophisticated, more and more evolved. They discovered science, religion, art, law, government, agriculture, money - most of the great inventions we've come up with, and some we haven't.

"It wasn't clear to me whether they discovered sex. I'm not even sure what sex would consist of between consenting organizations. They could reproduce, certainly, but it was by splitting off parts of themselves, a little like cellular division I guess, but a lot more free-form. And two individuals could merge and become one, sharing a common pool of experience.

"Anyhow, in a universe that's about fifteen billion years old, give or take a few, they're just a little bit older than us. They came along after fourteen billion years, we waited for fifteen. Nothing extraordinary about that, huh? We're just closely spaced siblings."

"Well, heh, not really. Just extrapolate what we're going to do in the next billion years, considering what we've already done in just the last few hundred. I mean, we got off the ground into the air, and then from the air into space in just about sixty years. From coal and oil power to electricity to nuclear power took about the same length of time, give or take a few decades. From smoke signals to wires to telephones to radio to TV, about the same time. From pencil and paper and abacuses to adding machines to computers to networks that think. About the same time.

"I mean, just think of all the ways we're evolving, and how fast it's happening, and project that a long, long time into the future, and it ain't hard to imagine that in a billion years we'll have converted the Milky Way galaxy into a parking lot and be building a business district in Andromeda. I mean there will be some major changes.

"So why haven't -" Charles starts.

"I see your objection," Logan interrupts. "Why ain't that exactly what our alien friends have done? Why aren't we living in a parking lot? Why don't we see the signs of their presence around us every day? Hell, why do we even exist? Why didn't a colony of them come by Earth a few million years ago and nip us competing life forms in the bud? Good question, son. Been asked by mighty smart people and never answered. Good question, I commend you on the quality of that question, it's a humdinger. Wish I knew the answer, but they didn't tell me and I don't know.

Logan smiles brightly. "But I got a glimmering. It's like this. Maybe we really are living in one of their parking lots. They may be all around, but in a form we just can't perceive - like a fourth dimension, maybe, but not actually that. Maybe microscopic, maybe they've learned to live at the sub-nuclear level, but I don't believe that either.

"The point is, they evolved away from their original biological form and they don't look like they used to. After they developed technology, for instance, maybe they didn't need their buggy substrate any more, they could substitute microprocessors. After all, if the organization is what counts, if the software is all that's important, it shouldn't matter what computer you run it on, the result's the same. So they got a new substrate, moved into a new home. Makes you wonder what they did with the bugs, doesn't it. Maybe they called the exterminators. 'Orkin, we got this pest problem.'

"Anyhow, that was probably easier than for us to dispense with our biological base, our cells. But eventually we'll learn to do it, too. Assuming we don't blow ourselves up first.

"Suppose it took them all of a million years to learn how to do that. Longer than man has been around, total. But take that out of a billion and they still had nine hundred and ninety-nine more millions of years to evolve even further. That was just a faltering first step. Life is creative organization, it doesn't matter in any vital way what the substrate is. Maybe eventually the substrate can become electromagnetic fields or plasmas. Maybe they learned to live in the vacuum of space or in the atmospheres of gassy planets like Jupiter or Saturn. Or maybe they even learned to live in stars.

"So I think they're all around us and always have been, but we can't perceive them. Our senses or our brains can't pick up on them, like a cat doesn't seem to see itself in a mirror. It's like we're de coupled from them, or they're de coupled from us, whichever way you want to view it.

"So then why -" begins Max.

"Yes, that's a good question too," interrupts Logan. "Why, suddenly, did they decide to take a direct hand in our affairs? Maybe they came to help. Not just us, but the human species. They saw trouble coming, and saw that it was a very critical time in our development, and decided to give a hand. Maybe we're like an endangered species and they're trying to keep us from extinction."

"That wasn't my question," Max says.

"Well," chuckles Logan, "it should've been, and that's why I addressed it."

"No. What I want to know is, what're you here for?"

"Yeah, what're you good for?" Charles adds good-naturedly.

"As to why I'm here, as I told the ladies, I don't know. What I'm good for? Well, my Pappy used to say I was 'wuthless'. Good fer nothing, rotten to the core. But I knew he was lying, and he knew I knew - we played that game - and the sonofabitch loved me and I loved him. So maybe I'm wuthless, but I don't believe so."

"Well maybe you is, and maybe you ain't," my husband mocks gently. "We'll find out eventually. But what comes next? What do they have in mind for us?"