The storm had passed three days ago. The ground was still dark with it.
Forid Flov Cen stood at the edge of the outpost’s eastern platform and watched the sky the way you watch something that is not yet visible but is already arriving. The *Censig* was six hours out. He had checked the transit log twice this morning and once last night, which was once more than necessary.
*Tresil* had been a boundary station for eleven years. Before that, a survey relay. Before that, something the corporation had stopped explaining. The original designation was still in the system — a string of numbers that meant nothing to anyone currently stationed here, which was four people, one of whom had requested a transfer seven months ago and was still waiting.
Forid had not requested a transfer.
He went back inside.
The data terminal was in the main room, which was also the only room that stayed warm without effort. He had a report open — a preview of the Chilin distribution queue, forty-three packets scheduled for the next cycle, each flagged by origin and category and projected value. He had been reading it since morning. He had reached packet 31 twice and moved past it twice without finishing.
Something in the framework description was familiar in the way that old questions are familiar: not because you know the answer, but because you recognize the shape of what you don’t know.
He read it a third time.
*The point where a system begins to improve its own architecture without external input.*
Outside, the ground was still dark. The horizon held the particular stillness of a place that had been through something and was waiting to see what came next.
The *Censig* was six hours out.
He closed the report and looked at the wall, where the transit map showed the ship’s position as a small moving point crossing the last distance between it and here. He had looked at that point so many times it had stopped being information. Now, for the first time in months, it felt like something else.
Like an answer arriving before he had finished forming the question.
