About the diaspora – I have written a story where we were doing just that (of course, many sci-fi people have). In my version, the people are not DNA in a jar, but frozen in time, aboard a kind of Ark Ship—something so alien it defies easy description (I have them in screenplay format, so have yet to convert it to prose). On this ship, our minds awaken only every 190 years for a diagnostic—that’s when we experience reality, or what passes for it. We don’t realise we’re in a diagnostic - our “life” is really just a series of 1-minute sessions, each separated by a 190-year gulf of darkness and silence. ---

I know this sounds like a nightmare, but after you get use to it - of course, as a sci-fi reader, as you have said - you are more than familiar with "generational ship" stories no doubt. But on most of the stories I have read - it always has people on them like living their lives and then dying and then new generations - that is what makes them interesting of course, they have people doing things. I just think, if it was done for real - it would extremely abstract. For instance, right now we could be in a simulation - on ship - maybe if we wake up, if we can wake up, and we have bodies - maybe when we look out the windows things are more real.

it would be weird to wake up from something like that to darkness and all your memories of what you are doing return to you- like the reverse of a fading dream. Probably why I have thought about this so much is I only really remember one nightmare as a child - it was a dozy - and it was something along the lines of the piror - I woke up though, and I was in a small white white - all the memories of being on some type of ship flooded back to me and then I back to this reality.

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of moving through darkness to get home. I think all humans understand that concept—it’s woven into our design, with the cycle of day and night, sleep and waking. But I like the idea of expanding that: stretching the darkness, stretching the journey, so that time and space themselves become part of the odyssey.

About the DNA in a jar - Of course, if we are talking about really advanced civilisations - then they could probably would have have Atomic-level printing abilities - we can already kind of move around atoms here on Earth, although to align them into something is of course at this point fantastical - but there are signs of a possible tech tree there - but if you had that, then who knows how small the probes could be - l guess it would still have to have like engines on it, and the ability to convert energy as well as the machinery needed to repair itself on such a long journey - that would be important, plus the machinery to use its atomic printer.