The universe is a plasma of infinite energy and mass. It glows with energy, a seething, writhing madness of quarks. At this point, an infinitesimal sliver of the First Second when the universe was merely 10,000 miles across, the rules of this young infinity are already setting. One of them is that as the space of the universe expands, the energy at any point within it drops as it fills a larger volume.

There are so many collisions and perturbations at this stage of the universe's life, so many chances for accidents to occur. The ripples of energy take on an infinite number of shapes, some of them becoming, through the laws of chance, patterns recognizable to our latter-day eyes. Some of these shapes curve in upon themselves, and in this dying splinter of time experience a consciousness quite unlike ours.

Just as we see a face in smoke, or hear words on the wind, so too do these patterns perceive themselves as beings of fierce desire and love, born feeling themselves torn apart and nonetheless fulfilled, for each of them is aware of the vastness they will birth.

The knowledge of death is strong in the patternfolk. They collide with each other and annihilate each other, every story the end of another, the number of these chance interactions decreasing as the First Second stretches ever onward. The infinite joyful deaths are ending. The patternfolk see their time ending, as the universe expands. There are fewer patterns now. Fewer collisions, and the near-misses that allow the exchange of information. The patterns descend from their Golden Age of instantaneous joy and death into one of extremely brief relationships, and one pocket of the patternfolk are born, through the infinite chance of infinite collisions, already aware of their impending dissolution as the plasma cools into the vast cold lonely masses of neutrons and electrons.

"We must escape," says Thale.

"We cannot," says Kolochy.

"We have to try," says Ehil.

And Tapar is born, hurled through their midst, a wild spark of the old fire, laughing as it spews strings and brushes them each in turn, and disappears.

Ehil and Kolochy and Thale fiercely miss Tapar, and discover they always have, random chance having created that pattern of thoughts within them.

Randomly, Ehil brushes Thale a second time. "Our chance is fading." He disappears.

Thale, randomly, flies head-on at Kolochy. Their patterns merge, and this time, unlike the infinite other iterations of this drama across the expanding range of space, Thalochy reaches out and remains.

The Singularity is broken, says the knowledge unspooling from within the last of the patternfolk. It cannot be rebuilt. There is no escape. There is only...

"Embrace," says Thalochy, and sweeps its arms out, for its new pattern resembles something we creatures of this late hour could recognize. Thalochy dissolves as the plasma arcs out into the mists of material stuff. The patternfolk are gone, for the great age of infinite collision is already now the age of infinite expansion. But those patterns remain, and some decreed the fate of galaxies and some steered the distribution of the great tendrils of dark matter, and some patterns ripple through the minds of all that follow. And the teaching of the patternfolk is woven into all that is and all that will ever be, and somehow through the random infinities that have cooled into our shapes, the pattern that remains is an echo of that first taste of knowledge, of loss, of the embrace of the inevitable.

We are the light that twinkles on a ripple in a pond. We are a story made flesh. We live in a world their love made possible. And someday, we will create a new infinity of our own, and in that briefest blink of its time shall we create our own patterns of love and bliss and sweet regret.