Our Place in this Cosmos

Our Planet: A great, soaring, passionate intelligence floating in emptiness for time immemorial and beyond..!

Think about this for a moment:

You are currently a passenger (and, indeed, an integral crew member) on board a four-point-five billion-year-old, semi-self-sufficient spacecraft. This spacecraft flies in tight formation with billions of other craft — some, much, much smaller; some, much, much bigger — all relying on a shared external power source, which is billions of times the size of even the largest other ship in your formation. Your formation is just one in a grand fleet consisting of many billions of similar formations, all relying on an even greater shared external power source. Your fleet is currently travelling to intercept and join ranks with another similar fleet, billions of miles away. In billions of years, when the two fleets have successfully integrated, they will adopt a new course: a new mission — and they will continue travelling. United.