They had navigated the K-Pg boundary. They had witnessed through Darwin's eyes. But this dive would be different—older than anything they had attempted, deeper than human consciousness could easily hold.
"Five hundred and forty million years," Susan said, reviewing ARCHIE's temporal parameters. "Initial contact. But the material arrived much earlier—deposits that could be three billion years old."
"Can we even perceive through organisms that ancient?" David's question carried genuine uncertainty. "Microbial life. Single cells. Do they generate observer-patterns in any meaningful sense?"
"Any system that processes information creates patterns the chronicle can record," ARCHIE said. "Bacterial chemotaxis—movement toward nutrients, away from toxins—constitutes perception. Primitive, but real."
Margaret studied her display. "We've accessed the Devonian Rhynie deposits successfully. Four hundred million years. This is just further."
"An order of magnitude further," Amara said. "At minimum. ARCHIE, what's our confidence interval on coherent perception at that depth?"
"Seventy-three percent for structured experience. Eighteen percent for navigable synthesis."
Jennifer turned to Starseed. "Those aren't good odds."
He sat quietly at his navigation station, eyes half-closed. Since the K-Pg return, his modified cognition had stabilized—he could navigate deeper than before without the dissociation that had once threatened to unmoor him entirely….
