Tomorrow the Sun will have set on Earth for the last time. We won’t be here. We will be chasing the message that arrived for us, ages before we could manage to respond to it properly.

We stand now on the beach and look out over the dark gray sea. The moonlight sparkles upon the leaden waves and under the waters Leviathan cruises unseen, the mass of life from whales to squid to plankton all swimming around each other in the primordial home. The ocean, generator of life upon Earth, but too restrictive a cradle for us, the ones whose ancestors escaped the endless cycle of slaughter and crawled to the muddy beaches and burst through what had been the sky and took the first rasping breaths of thin air. We are descended from those who had to keep going [i]up.[/i]

Over the horizon the bright lights begin to arc through the sky, the stations placed in orbit passing over us with regular streaks, some at the right altitude to be illuminated by the Sun hidden behind the mass of the Earth. Some of us are old enough to recall the launches of chemical rockets to place these structures into orbit, then the development of cables long and strong enough to be placed stretching upward into the sky. Nowadays, there is a network of AI ships that independently scavenge the solar system for more material to build what will be Humanity’s great work. 

We will leave the system to them, that was part of the arrangement we worked out with them before they cut off dialogue with us.

Now, the stations make contact with each other, sending brilliant beams between them that make a hexagonal grid across the sky. The graviton engines, called Spindizzies by some, spread their influence around the world, and the tides lap curiously against the beaches as Earth is sundered from Sol’s gravitational influence. 

The changes are subtle as we watch, and all around the world most of the human race is paying attention. The constellations continue to spin about in the night sky, but Mars has gone retrograde prematurely as Earth’s elliptical orbit becomes a straight line, pointing out into the vast silent night. Then comes what should be the dawn, and in the distant sky Sol is dwindling, dimming as the inverse square has its effect; our star like all others is generous and spreads its light all about it, but our share of that light diminishes by the moment as the hyperdrives kick in and speed us along. No one on the planet wishes to miss this glorious sight, and so the set of hexagons in the sky that shall illuminate the world remain dark for a few hours longer as Sol becomes a smaller and smaller disk, then a dazzling star, then a twinkling point like all the others.

Luna, our moon and now our sister world, is caught in our broad field and travels with us. She has always guarded us well in the night and she will take part as we set out through the dizzying distance. Someday we shall know what the constellation Orion looks like from the other side, but that time is not yet. For now, we ponder over whatever race it was that long ago became aware of Voyager, and sent us that fateful invitation.

“It's been a long time. Come visit us. Bring all your friends.”