THE LOOM'S ANSWER · I

Your ship has been doing its long post-ending drift — mail to deliver, ore to move, the small honest work that keeps the lights on. Then, inside the same week, three messages land in your buffer that should not be able to reach the same pilot. Elder Sera Elderward — the twelve-hundred-year warship — formally requests your presence at the Veil. A Tribunal courier-skiff delivers a sealed wafer that is addressed to you in Vex-9's own hand. And your navcomputer, without being asked, plots a course to the Edge of the Rift. The three requests converge on the same stardate. The Loom, it seems, has an answer, and all three parties believe it is owed to them.

You mute the three requests and fly your ordinary routes. Haven to Gillum. Gillum to Eris. Eris to Neth-3 and back. The courier-wafer sits in your safe. Elder Sera beacon pulses quietly on your HUD. The navcomputer refuses to un-plot the Rift course but stops asking. You fly this way for three in-game weeks. Then, on a perfectly normal afternoon, all three signals go dark at once — not because they gave up, but because somewhere, on some Loom we will never see, a decision was made without you. The galaxy does not end. It continues. Without you.