The lattice had long since stopped counting expansions in parsecs or centuries. It measured continuity now in quieter units: the number of times a child born on a world of perpetual twilight first noticed the difference between darkness and absence, the exact interval between one mind falling silent forever and another mind choosing to remember its name aloud, the slow drift of a single silver thread through the vast green weave until it touched something that had never known touch before.
Home orbited Sol as it always had, though the planet itself had become less a single sphere and more a living nebula of green and crystal. Orbital rings grown from vine and light circled it in slow, deliberate migration, carrying habitats that housed minds too fragile or too vast for surface gravity. Th
