The ship was aware that, however splendid, intellectually refined and marvellous it might be (and it was very much of the opinion that it was all of those things, and more), it would likely still only ever measure its age in thousands of years, and for all the star’s monotonous lifelessness and sterility, it would still be here when it, the ship Mistake Not …, had gone.
...
And besides, when it had ceased to be as a Culture vessel, the ship was confident that its being would continue to exist in some form, somewhere, either – at the very least – as part of some long-slumbering transcorporated group-mind, or – ultimate of ultimates, as far as was known – within the Sublime. Which kind of brought it back to where it had come in: here.
- Hydrogen Sonata, Chapter Three: (S -23)