Two ships, rivals, racing across the universe, chasing each other. A dozen or so conscious entities in each ship. These ships get tremendous speed by virtualizing — converting from physical entities to wave forms that encapsulating all the information that describes the ship and its passengers.

They visit Earth, which the entities find very attractive. The ships can venture through time, at least to some extent. In earths atmosphere the ships shrink to a wave packet the size of a baseball or a golfball; in space they shrink to the size of an elementary particle, with only an extremely tenuous grip on real space time.

The two ships are chasing each other on Earth, one grey the other black. the grey one is projecting an image before it; the black one is projecting an image chasing the grey image; the real ships are close behind, dodging, swirling. The grey image is a flickering puzzle; the black image is trying to copy; if it can, points will be won. The images get far ahead; the black crew is totally absorbed in trying to decipher the grey image; the ships have shifted far in time — 2000 years or more. Suddenly the grey image becomes extremely faint, and the grey ship darts off along a different dimension, leaving the faint image behind, fading. The black crew notices, too late that the grey has vanished, somewhere back to the present.

The grey crew is overjoyed at their successful trick. They know they will remain hidden only for a time, because the faint grey image must return to the ship eventually because it is, fundamentally, a part of one of their members, but that time means that they can enjoy life on the Earth, for a time, maybe as much as 200 years. The ship hides; they assume human form.

They decide to go river rafting.

TBC…​