Another orbit.

Immersed in water, but breaking to the mirrored surface, the funny old surface tension holding for a second, stretching, and then bursting through, but still hard at work, spawning swarms of white bubbles, vibrating enthusiastically. The sun is reflected brightly, frantically.

Edel contently breathes the evaporation cooled air. Well, it wasn't technically air of course. And it wasn't really water sloshing either, the light reflected all over it wasn't formed from photons, and there wasn't an atom in sight. The light liquid blue sensation that seemed so familar when he stared into the pool was formed out of very different neural connections made of a very different matter. But the particles here did an excellent job of emulating the simple old ones. Indeed each one was almost like a computer itself, capable of storing vast amounts of information and preforming simple calculations on it, easily enough to replicate the old quantized fields. And there was so much of it, more particles in an ephemeral emulated water bubble than had existed in the entire hubble volume of his ancient home when he had left it.

And yet for all this power Edel's mind grows slightly. A subjective thing of course, and damningly tautological. The new ideas still evolved from the old, and invariably, unavoidably most of the new mutations failed. And so in a universe capable of unimaginable wonders, Edel relaxes for a moment, merely recreates the solar system, and plays in the clear water beneath the noon day sun. There was plenty of time to grow up yet.