No one remembers...

Are the stories true? The ones in the Pulse, about an infinite sky with stars, comets, and a never-ending void. I ask myself this question sometimes, if there was something before Strata - the infinite machine landscape every life we've ever known began, progressed, and ended in.
Were there really days before the Pulse flowed through its veins - before mechanoid souls like my Nelstrata sang with life? Days before Espers? Days before we Drakina lived and roamed the strata?

If they are, there's no one left who remembers. Not even my Nelstrata who's explored the megastructure for countless cycles, nor any of her kin. It's no matter, though... she's here now.
My ear flicks at the soft whirring of her actuators and the resonant clanking of her steps as she climbs the superstructure, dulled by thin layers of freshly restored polymer grip, and I open my eyes to meet hers. They swirl with Pulse, regarding me gently - fondly. She steps closer and seats herself next to me with her skeletal tail draped along the surface surrounding me.

"Did I wake you, my Fray?" she asked, her voice a chorus of synthesis. "You seemed so serene up here I thought to come join you."

I shake my head softly as I sit up, turning to face the landscape of the biosphere my tribe - our tribe - calls home. I pull my knees up to my bust and cross my arms over them, my chin atop them in turn, and my tail idly drapes itself along Nel's. I can't help but smile as I watch the hatchlings chase each other in the grass by the lake.

My mind wanders back to the stories. In them, the sky is an endless expanse of blue with a self-sustaining mass of fusion burning for eons overhead, crossing the sky only to disappear for the night. It must have been magnificent, but I can't help feel a bit of dread in that idea.
To be surrounded by void; to look up and see what should be a reactor's core simply lingering on its own for ages upon ages; to feel the heat of that fusion beating down on you until nightfall every single day.
Playing in the grass or bathing in the lake, I can't help think you'd burn to a crisp. And how long before the radiation scrambles your essence?

I shake myself out of that thought, dismissing those old stories. True or not, they're nothing but fantasy now. This is our life, our strata - the only home we've ever known, and it provides for us just as those stories claimed "nature" did. Only the light coming from the megastructure overhead is safe to walk in until it fades to let us sleep.

I relax a little more as I see the matte ivory of Nel's plating come into my view and feel the coolness of her arms resting over mine and warmth of her chest against my back, alive with the quiet, rhythmic thrum of circulating Pulse. I must have seemed troubled for a moment there. "I'm just pondering old stories from the Pulse again," I assure her. She says nothing, but I can feel her relax.

After a while, she breaks the silence. "Aruli was looking for you. They wanted to wish you a happy birthday."

"And drag me out of the biosphere to explore and scavenge, I'll bet," I chuckle, turning my head a little to flash a smirk. My cousin had always been obsessed with exploring. By now they were a master of finding little secrets off the beaten path, and I'd lost count of all the hideouts they'd established.

"Not today, no." I can hear the grin in her voice. "Today is yours."