fandomhigh | Practical Philosophy, Friday

There was an Ender sitting on the lawn, along with his customary sandwiches and drinks. He wasn't looking at them, though.

He was on his back, looking up at the sky.

"People arrive here from all corners of the multiverse," he said, once everyone had settled in. "From the medieval and further part, to places so far in the future we can barely dream of them. For me, growing up, space was an unknown danger where evil aliens lurked; it was a place I lived and learned and suffered, with zero gravity as familiar to me as the regular kind."

That was about as much as any of them were ever likely to hear about Ender.

"Coming here, where our feet were rooted to the ground and space was merely an unknown - that was strange. I had to adjust my being to the place I was in, and its new rules."

He considered a passing cloud.

"It makes you wonder how much the simple geography of our early days shapes us," he said. "For some of you, this might be the first steps you take outside of the world you knew. For others, that sensation might be familiar. Banal, even. Has coming here changed you? Has going somewhere else before that changed you instead? How much of who you are now is intrinsically linked to the place you first consciously existed in?"