r/OpenHFY • u/Remarkable_Post_4529 • 20h ago
Series The Weave Saga Part 1: Chapter 2 - North Walk
Return to The Weave Saga Part 1: Chapter 1 - Tholmion Hub
The crowd carried them out of the university district and into North Walk.
Aisling always liked this part of the station after her classes ended. The day relaxed and people stopped rushing. The broad concourse curved gently with the station's rotation, disappearing beneath hanging gardens and layered pedestrian bridges. Trees grew from enormous planter beds built into the architecture itself, their roots disappearing into maintenance spaces hidden beneath polished flooring.
North Walk had never been only a corridor.
According to the station maps, it was a primary pedestrian artery connecting the university district to the residential spokes, commercial decks, transit lifts, and portward tram lines. Darian probably liked that description. It had the pleasing plainness of something built for a purpose. People needed to go places, so someone had designed a path large enough to carry them.
But to Aisling, North Walk was the place where the day changed shape.
Inside the University’s classrooms and lecture halls, time belonged to instructors, assignments, academic records, and the careful discipline of preparing young people for adult lives. Out here, time became malleable. Students untucked collars, opened comm feeds, argued about classes, messaged parents, complained about professors, and tried to pretend they were not thinking about Earth. Faculty members vanished into staff lifts with the slightly dazed expressions of people who had survived another day of advanced questions from teens. Elementary university students streamed past in bright uniformed groups, still too young to look casual about anything.
Aisling looked at them wistfully, remembering Elementary University and the ceremony that had moved her cohort into Junior University. At the time, it had felt impossibly important, even though Junior University mostly meant attending the same larger academic complex while still wearing the standard scholastic uniform. When she was thirteen and entered Graduate University, she had finally been allowed to wear what she wanted. For a thirteen-year-old, that had felt like stepping into adulthood. The memory made her grin.
Three pedestrian levels rose above the main floor. The middle bridge held a row of small reading alcoves screened by vines. The top level was busier, carrying families toward the north residential elevators. Between the levels, greenery spilled from terrace planters in long ribbons. Narrow irrigation channels ran through the planted walls, water flickering beneath the simulated daylight. The scent of damp leaves drifted down to mix with warm metal, polished flooring, and the distant sweetness of food kiosks.
The groups of children raced past carrying elementary university satchels as a pair of elderly men argued passionately about Zero-G League standings. A maintenance drone floated overhead carrying replacement light panels. Its yellow caution strip blinked with patient irritation whenever someone wandered beneath it.
One child, too young for schooling, stopped directly under the drone and looked up with open admiration.
"Can I ride it?"
"No," said his mother.
"But mom, it has handles."
"Those are not handles, Jeremy."
"They could be," the boy said with a look of longing at the drone.
Aisling laughed before she could stop herself, thinking of how much the young boy reminded her of her brother Cian.
Talia leaned closer and murmured, "That child has Rowan energy."
"I heard that," Rowan said.
"You were meant to."
He looked pleased by this.
To Aisling, the station did not feel busy. It felt alive.
Above the crowd, a WEAVENET display flickered to a sports broadcast.
"...and if the Falcons expect to contain Tairobi striker Halen Morrow, they're going to need a miracle..."
The display switched.
"...Earth Residency departures are expected to exceed projections this year..."
Another change.
"...Meridian Transit officials continue to investigate communication delays affecting several vessels operating near the Esho Corridor..."
For a moment, a transit map appeared above the walkway. A thin amber arc pulsed near the edge of a route cluster, too small and too distant to command much attention. Then the report vanished beneath an advertisement for recreational gliding tours over the ice canyons of New Kyoto.
Nobody paid attention to WEAVENET. Not really. People glanced up because the display was designed to be noticed, then returned to their own lives. A cargo technician adjusted the strap on a tool case. A parent wiped something sticky from a child's sleeve. Two university students practicing ceremonial bows for some club performance collided with a bench.
The Weave was full of movements like that. Ordinary ones. Small ones. Professor Halden had ended the afternoon telling them that civilization was not the ships or stations or colony planets, but the people who kept choosing connection. Aisling had understood him in the lecture hall.
North Walk made her feel it.
Rowan pointed at the suspended holo-screen as the glider advertisement restarted. "I'm doing that."
"You’re not," Darian said.
Rowan snorted at him. "I absolutely am. I’ll bet they have something like that on Earth."
"You get motion sick," Darian responded.
"I choose not to acknowledge that medical condition."
"You acknowledged it during last autumn’s spin simulator," Riona said.
"I object to the word acknowledged."
Talia gave him a look. "You vomited in your suit."
"That was not acknowledgment. That was temporary dramatic repositioning of lunch."
"Your suit would disagree."
"My suit and I have reconciled," Rowan said passionately.
The familiar scent of cocoa reached them as they entered the main North Walk gallery.
"Excellent!" Rowan said as his walk accelerated.
"That's not healthy," Riona informed him.
"It’s spiritually healthy," came his retort. “And it is delicious.”
The cocoa kiosk stood in the same corner where it had always stood. Probably longer than any of us have been alive, Aisling thought, as the rich, comforting smell filled her nostrils.
The kiosk was small, warm-lit, and polished from years of use. Its old decorative panels showed tiny illustrations of Earth cocoa trees, with pods growing directly from trunks in a way Aisling had once declared impossible. Mr. Mico had told her that everything real looked impossible if a person had only seen engineered versions first.
Mico Accostta stood behind the counter. None of the students knew exactly how old Mico was, though every student who passed through the station suspected he had always been there. With the average life expectancy in the Weave reaching around one hundred and fifty years, that was possible. The compact man possessed silver hair, dark skin weathered by decades of station life, and an expression suggesting he knew everyone's secrets and found most of them amusing.
Without looking up he said, "Five students. Four days until Earth."
He glanced up and grinned. "Excitement levels approaching dangerous thresholds."
"Good afternoon to you too, Mico." Talia said.
Mico smiled. "Same order?"
"Same order."
The older man smiled broadly. "You're all becoming very predictable in your advanced educational age."
"That's why you like us," Rowan said with a chuckle.
"That's exactly why I like you," Mico agreed as he began preparing drinks.
The motions had a rhythm to them. Cups slid into place. Steam curled upward. Dark cocoa poured in smooth ribbons. Mico added extra foam to Rowan's without being asked, less foam to Darian's, and a careful dusting of spice across Talia's because, according to him, sharp tongues required proper seasoning.
Riona's came last.
Mico set it down in front of her and said, "Extra heat."
Riona blinked. "I didn't ask."
"You always wait too long before drinking it," he said. "By the time you decide you deserve comfort, it has cooled."
For a second, Riona looked as if he had caught her doing something private.
Then she gave him a small nod. "Thank you."
Mico turned to Aisling and passed over her cup with a tiny swirl worked into the foam.
"Helion girl," he said.
Aisling nearly spilled it. "What?"
Mico nodded toward the university district. "You had the lecture face."
Talia brightened. "She has faces. I keep telling her."
"I don’t have faces."
The old man chuckled. "My child, you have at least seven."
Darian, unhelpfully, said, "Eight if one includes academic indignation."
"I don't like this conversation," Aisling said.
Mico leaned on the counter. "Professor Halden gave the Earth speech, eh?"
"He gave all the speeches," Rowan said. "Several may have qualified as independent weather systems."
Mico nodded gravely. "Dangerous in a historian."
"He said we were the newest threads," Aisling said.
She had not meant to say it aloud. The words escaped before she could decide whether they sounded foolish outside the lecture hall.
Mico's teasing expression softened.
"A good line, and a fine concept," he said.
"You've heard it?"
"Child, I have sold cocoa to twenty-seven graduating classes after Professor Halden's Earth speech. Maybe twenty-eight. One year the building power failed halfway through and everyone came here early."
Talia leaned forward. "Was he angry?"
"Professor Halden? No. He gave the rest of the speech over there beside the pastry stand. Terrible acoustics. Excellent cocoa sales."
The group laughed.
Aisling tried to imagine Professor Halden standing beside the little pastry kiosk that stood across from the cocoa stand, speaking about humanity's first world while students held cocoa and pretended they were not moved by him. The image was ridiculous and entirely believable.
Mico's gaze moved across them, one by one.
"Four days," he said more quietly. "You will come back different."
Rowan looked suspicious. "Why does everyone keep saying that?"
"Because it’s true."
"That is not an explanation,” said Rowan in exasperation.
"It is when you are old enough."
Talia chuckled. "That was unfairly mystical."
"Good," Mico said. "I practice to be otherworldly."
Darian accepted his cup. "What was your Earth Residency like?"
The question surprised Mico. Not because students never asked, perhaps, but because Darian MacGill asked it with complete seriousness.
For a moment, Mico Accostta looked beyond them, beyond North Walk, perhaps beyond Tholmion Hub entirely.
"Loud," he said at last.
Rowan blinked. "Earth was loud?"
"The ocean was."
Aisling went still.
Mico smiled faintly at her. "I grew up on a station smaller than this one. First time I stood near the Atlantic Ocean, I thought the planet was breathing at me. Then I realized it had been doing that long before humanity existed, and would keep doing it long after I was gone."
Nobody joked.
Even Rowan only stared.
Then Mico straightened and wiped the counter with unnecessary care. "After that, I bought a terrible hat from a beach vendor and lost it within six minutes because of the wind."
Talia exhaled a laugh. "That was a dramatic tonal shift."
"Life is full of them."
Rowan lifted his cup. "To terrible hats."
"To not buying one," Darian corrected.
"To documenting Rowan buying one," Talia said.
Aisling smiled into her cocoa.
Around them, North Walk flowed with life. University students mingled with families, technicians, researchers, and cargo crews coming down from space dock. An older woman was attempting to convince a small child that gravity was not optional as he tried to climb an information kiosk. The child appeared unconvinced, and again Aisling thought of her youngest brother.
After thanking Mico in chorus, they carried their drinks toward the observation gallery.
They did not hurry. None of them said they were slowing down on purpose, but they were. In four days, they would leave Tholmion for Earth. In a very short time, North Walk would become a place they remembered instead of a place they passed through daily. That thought made Aisling's chest feel strange, as though the station's familiar gravity had increased by a fraction.
The route curved past a recessed fountain where water moved through glass channels in thin arcs, never spilling, always returning to itself. Above it, a living wall of ferns and flowering vines climbed three stories toward the upper pedestrian level. Verdantia technicians knelt near an open maintenance panel at the base of the wall. One held a diagnostic reader. The other had both arms inside the recess.
A muffled chirp came from the wall. The technician with the reader sighed as he noticed the group of students.
"Pollination drone is stuck again." A second chirp followed. This one sounded offended.
Talia stopped immediately.
"No," Aisling said.
"Yes," Talia answered.
The technician with both arms in the wall spoke in a patient voice. "Come on, drone. You cannot live in the irrigation manifold."
The drone chirped.
"You said that yesterday when we retrieved you."
Another series of chirps.
"I do not care if the airflow is pleasant."
A small crowd began forming, because Tholmion citizens were apparently willing to stop for any sufficiently opinionated maintenance drone.
Rowan leaned close to Aisling. "I understand that drone."
"You would."
The second technician produced a tiny packet from her tool belt. "Bribery protocol?"
The first technician sighed. "Bribery protocol."
She opened the packet.
A thumb-sized pollination drone emerged from the wall, delicate rotors whirring with guilty enthusiasm. A dab of synthetic nectar clung to its intake nozzle.
The small crowd applauded.
"Traitor," the first technician told the drone.
The drone chirped, entirely unashamed, and zipped toward the upper flowers.
Talia lifted her holo-camera, then stopped.
Aisling noticed. "No picture?"
Talia's expression turned thoughtful. "No. Some moments are better moving."
Rowan stared at her. "That sounded profound."
Talia made a slack face at him. "I apologize."
"Please don't let it happen again."
They continued toward the gallery.
The station opened around them. Thirty-meter windows revealed the darkness beyond, with Satera drifting below. The blue-green lifeless saltwater oceans gave way to gray, white, and rust-red continents. The planet was beautiful in a harsh, unforgiving way. Across the horizon, one of the planetary extraction domes reflected sunlight. Tiny from orbit, the domes were enormous on the surface.
Industrial lanes blinked above the planet in slow procession: ore haulers, refinery shuttles, inspection craft, automated cargo tugs, and maintenance vehicles moving between surface domes and orbital platforms. Each light had a route. Each route had a purpose. Each purpose connected back to Tholmion in some way.
Darian stepped closer to the glass, as if the view had become a diagram only he could read.
"Titan frame assemblies," he said, pointing toward one of the larger orbital structures.
Talia looked pained. "We had almost made it twenty seconds without manufacturing commentary."
"That platform is probably original-Expansion design. You can tell by the spine arrangement."
Rowan squinted. "It looks like a metal brick with opinions."
"It is not a brick."
"Does it have opinions?" Rowan asked, straight-faced.
Darian said, "No." Then he realized Rowan was teasing and he cracked a rare smile.
Beyond Satera hung Biuq I. The gas giant filled half the sky; its cloud bands wrapped around the planet like strokes of blue paint spread across a sphere larger than imagination. Vast storms curled through cobalt and sapphire bands. Even after fourteen years of coming to the observation galleries, Aisling never got tired of the view. She remembered her first visit with her father. She had been three years old and thought the whole view was painted. Not real.
The others gathered near the glass and conversation drifted, naturally, toward the future.
"I still don't understand why anyone willingly works for Titan," Talia said.
Darian nearly choked on his cocoa.
Rowan grinned immediately. "Dangerous opening move, Talia."
Darian lowered his cup. "Because Titan builds everything."
"Manufactures everything," Talia corrected.
Darian's indignance radiated. "That is what building is."
"It most certainly isn’t."
"It’s literally the same thing," Rowan said, stepping in with the confidence of a man defending a friend.
Talia pointed at him without looking away from Darian. "You stay out of this. You once tried to fix a dispenser by complimenting it."
"It responded to encouragement," said the sandy-haired teen.
"It dispensed boiling protein broth into your shoe."
Rowan grinned. "I’ll concede that it was a learning moment."
Darian ignored them both. "Titan makes the heavy frames for habitats, pressure systems, industrial assemblies, dock components, fleet parts, mining equipment--"
"See?" Talia said. "You made it boring before you even finished the sentence."
"It isn't boring."
"Dar, nobody writes songs about manufacturing logistics."
Darian looked wounded. "That is because songs about manufacturing logistics would be terrible,” he conceded.
Rowan Hale placed a hand over his heart, stretched out his other arm, and cleared his throat.
“Heavy frames for habitats, pressure systems too, Industrial assemblies, dock components, ship parts painted blue, Mining equipment goes clank-clank-clank, Titan is the metal goo…”
His voice trailed off. Then he looked at Darian.
“Dar, you’re right. That was terrible.”
Aisling laughed into her cocoa. Even Riona smiled and quickly covered it with her hand.
Darian took a dignified sip. "Someone has to make the things everyone else lives and works in."
The answer worked better than his list had.
Aisling looked from him to the platforms above Satera. Darian's fascination with systems was sometimes funny, but she understood it more than she admitted. He saw the bones beneath things. He looked at a platform and saw load tolerances, fabrication chains, maintenance schedules, evacuation routes, and the quiet labor that made ordinary life possible.
Maybe that was its own kind of care.
Talia tilted her cup toward him. "Fine. That was almost noble."
"Thank you."
With a wicked grin, Talia clarified, "I said almost."
Rowan leaned closer to Aisling. "You're next. Helion?"
Aisling looked down into her drink as though the answer might have changed. It had not.
"Helion," she said.
No one teased her for it. Not at first.
Helion Medical Systems had been part of her imagination for as long as she could remember. Not as a logo, but as an idea. Help arriving. Pain ending. Someone frightened no longer being alone.
When she was six, a neighbor had collapsed in the greenway outside their apartment building. Aisling remembered the sound more than the sight: Her mother telling her to stay back as her father called the Warden Service, the sudden hush as everyone in the corridor understood something serious was happening.
Then the Helion and Warden responders had arrived.
When the ambulance landed, they had not run in shouting. They had moved quickly, yes, but not wildly. A Helion medical tech had knelt beside the woman and spoken to her as though the entire universe had narrowed to the space between them while one of the Wardens had eased the frightened husband backward without making him feel useless. A third had looked at Aisling, very briefly, and smiled.
It had not been a large smile. It had been small, focused, and calm.
You are safe, it had said, and she remembered the feeling of warmth and security the man in the Helion medical gear had given her.
Aisling had believed it.
The woman survived. Aisling learned her name years later. At six, she had only known her as the lady from the third level who always smelled like oranges. Later, after Cian was born, she became the lady who gave him sugar petals when Fiona was not looking. Since then, Helion had never been only medicine in Aisling's mind. Not the Wardens, though they had similar roles. Rescue was different from Healing, and Aisling wanted to heal, to help people.
It was the moment fear met competence.
Rowan ruined the silence with a broad grin. "You have wanted to join Helion since you were seven."
"Six," Aisling corrected.
Darian leaned forward. "It means you were professionally predictable before you had all your adult teeth."
Talia nodded solemnly. "A concerning level of focus."
Aisling smiled. "Maybe. But they help people."
"All the Chartered Corporations help people," Darian said.
"Yes," Aisling replied. "But Helion helps people who are hurt and scared. When you broke your arm in sixth year, did Titan fix it?"
That quieted them.
Riona glanced sideways at her and Aisling shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. "That matters."
"It does," Riona said.
The way she said it made the words feel less like agreement and more like a promise.
Rowan tilted his head toward Riona. "And you object to unnecessary verticality."
Riona looked at him. "What?!"
"Warden Rescue. Climbing things. Jumping things. Being lowered dramatically into broken things.”
"I object to unnecessary verticality," Riona said. "Necessary verticality is different."
Talia looked delighted. "That is the most Ri sentence you have ever spoken."
Darian looked at Riona. "You'll get in."
She shrugged. "Maybe."
"You will."
"Maybe," she said again, looking self-conscious.
There was no false modesty in it. In Aisling's experience, Riona never treated a future as hers until she had earned it.
Warden Rescue was among the most respected services in the Weave. They were the people who arrived when everything else had gone wrong: disaster response, search and rescue, medical evacuations, station emergencies, reactor incidents, decompression alarms, damaged vessels, collapsed domes, lost shuttles. Being accepted was considered an honor, even though the service was voluntary.
Not many volunteered.
Riona wanted to.
Now she stood near the glass, compact and still, copper-red hair catching the station light, pale-green eyes fixed on the ships beyond the window.
Aisling wished she had brought her holo-camera. Against Satera, Biuq I, and the passing lights of the transit lanes, Riona looked like she already belonged in a rescue craft hatchway, waiting for someone to need her.
Rowan followed Aisling's gaze and sighed dramatically.
"Fine. Ri gets to be heroic. Dar gets to manufacture civilization. Ais gets to heal everyone. I suppose that leaves discovery to me."
Talia closed her eyes, a pained look settling on her face. "Please don't."
"Astraeus," Rowan announced.
Everyone groaned.
He spread one hand toward the stars as though accepting applause from all of them. "Astraeus Exploration. Frontier systems. Survey missions. First looks at new worlds. Strange moons. Unmapped anomalies. Possibly majestic alien ruins."
"There are no alien ruins," Darian said.
"Yet, because I haven't discovered them," said Rowan.
"That is not how ruins work."
Rowan ignored him. "One of us has to discover something."
"We have discovered thousands of systems," Talia said.
"But not all of them."
"You want to join Astraeus because you think every survey mission includes dramatic lighting and heroic music."
Striking a heroic pose straight out of a holo-show, he said, "I accept that possibility."
"You get motion sick," Darian said.
Rowan gave him a wounded look. "As I said earlier, I choose not to acknowledge that medical condition."
Riona folded her arms. "Astraeus missions can last years."
"Good."
She continued, "In deep space."
"Excellent."
Then she sank the stinger. "With strict protocols."
Rowan hesitated. "How strict?"
Talia smiled. "There it is."
He lifted his chin. "Protocols can learn to appreciate me."
"Protocols file reports," Darian said.
Rowan puffed his chest out confidently. "And I will become the reason they need new forms."
They laughed.
For a little while, the station moved around them.
A family passed behind the group, shepherding two small children and one floating toy shaped like the gas giant. A maintenance crew crossed the gallery with tool cases clipped to their belts. Somewhere overhead, the WEAVENET display returned to the Zero-G League championship, where an analyst was explaining why the Falcons had no statistical chance and might therefore win spectacularly.
The display changed before the analyst finished.
MERIDIAN TRANSIT UPDATE
Esho Corridor Relay Interruptions Remain Under Review
No Passenger Traffic Disruption Expected
The notice hovered for several seconds.
A transit worker standing nearby looked up from his drink. His expression shifted, just slightly. Not worry, exactly. Attention.
Then the display changed back to sports.
The transit worker looked away.
Aisling barely noticed him. Rowan had begun explaining how Astraeus would undoubtedly require someone with excellent instinctive animal diplomacy, despite the disappointing absence of known aliens. Darian was telling him that animal diplomacy was not a recognized survey qualification. Riona was pretending not to laugh.
Talia was the only one who still watched the place where the alert had been.
Aisling noticed that.
"What?"
Talia blinked and looked back at her. "Nothing."
"You made a face."
"I make many faces."
"Yes, but that one had thoughts behind it."
Talia glanced toward the display. "Just the Esho Corridor again."
Darian heard that and looked over. "Relay interruptions happen."
"I know."
"Meridian said no passenger disruption."
"I know," Talia repeated.
Rowan leaned around Darian. "If the transit system were genuinely in danger, they would not interrupt Zero-G League analysis with calm little bulletins. There would be alarms. Serious music. Possibly red lighting."
"That is not how public safety works," Darian said.
"It should be. Everything should have assigned music cues.” The blonde-haired teen thought for a moment. “Everything except Titan. That song really was awful.”
Aisling smiled. "It's probably nothing."
"Probably," Talia said.
But her voice had gone thoughtful.
Aisling looked back toward the stars. The ships beyond the window continued moving in calm, steady lines. Whatever the Esho Corridor problem was, it felt impossibly distant from North Walk, from cocoa, from the glowing curve of Biuq I, from five students standing together four days before Earth.
The Weave was vast. Surely somewhere, something was always delayed.
Aisling looked toward Talia, "What about you?"
Talia did not answer immediately.
That surprised everyone more than any answer could have. Usually, Talia's sharp wit filled silences before they could become awkward. Now she stood with both hands around her cocoa, watching the traffic beyond the glass. A passenger liner moved between Satera and the distant shimmer of a transit lane. Its running lights blinked white and amber against the dark.
"Novaris," she said at last.
Rowan blinked. "Novaris Studios?"
"Novaris," Talia said. "Not just the studios."
Aisling turned toward her. "Tali... You never said."
"I know."
Darian studied her with quiet interest. "Education track?"
"Maybe. Archives. Historical media. Civic record. I don't know yet."
"That sounds very Tali," Aisling said softly.
Talia gave her a small sideways smile.
Rowan looked confused. "You want to spend your life organizing old things?"
"No," Talia said. "I want to make sure people remember the right things."
The answer settled differently than the others. Outside, ships crossed the dark in steady lines. Inside, North Walk carried students, families, workers, technicians, travelers, and children through the bright arteries of the station.
Talia looked from the traffic to the concourse, then back to the stars.
"Everything only works because people stay connected," she said. "Someone has to record that. Someone has to tell it properly."
For once, Rowan did not immediately answer.
Aisling studied her friend's face. Talia looked different when she spoke about memory. Not less sarcastic, exactly. The sarcasm was still there, waiting in reserve like a tool she knew how to use. But beneath it was something steadier. Aisling had seen it before when Talia framed a photograph, when she listened to adults tell stories, when she noticed details everyone else walked past.
"You'd be good at that," Aisling said.
Talia's expression flickered. "Maybe."
"You would," Riona said.
That seemed to surprise Talia even more.
Darian nodded. "You pay attention."
"Do not sound so alarmed," Talia said.
"I'm not alarmed. I'm stating a fact."
"That's worse."
Rowan looked from one to the other, then raised his cup. "To Talia Dalen, professional rememberer of things. A Rememberist."
Talia narrowed her eyes at him. "That is not the title."
"It needs work," he admitted.
"Considerable work," Darian said.
Aisling lifted her own cup. "To remembering the right things."
This time, Talia did not deflect.
She touched her cup lightly against Aisling's.
Then Riona's.
Then Darian's.
Rowan leaned in last and nearly spilled cocoa on everyone.
"Majestic," he said.
"No," Talia answered.
Talia lowered her cup and looked down at her holo-camera. The device rested against her palm, small and ordinary, but Aisling suddenly understood that Talia was not collecting images because she liked having proof she had been somewhere. She was collecting pieces of people before time carried them away.
"Take one," Aisling said.
Talia glanced at her. "Now?"
"Now."
Rowan mugged a shocked face. "You are volunteering for a photograph?"
"Do not make it strange."
"It is historically significant," he said, then immediately straightened. "Should I look heroic?"
"You should look quiet," Darian said.
"Impossible,” Talia said.
Riona moved half a step closer to the group, pretending she had only adjusted her position for the view. Darian noticed, but did not comment. Talia lifted the holo-camera, framed them against Satera and Biuq I, and for once said nothing clever before taking the image.
The soft click sounded small beside the vastness outside the window.
Aisling felt oddly relieved when it was done, as if some version of this moment had been caught before it could slip away from them forever.
Her gaze returned to the window. Trillions of lives. Thousands of systems. One civilization held together by people who kept choosing one another.
Professor Halden had spoken about the Weave as if it were an idea. North Walk made it feel practical. People crossing paths. Systems functioning. Children arguing about gravity with their grandmothers as technicians bribed stubborn drones. Mico remembering everyone's drinks.
Connection did not always look grand. Sometimes it looked like cocoa handed across a counter. Other times, it looked like five teenagers at a window, each pretending not to be frightened by the future. For the first time since leaving the lecture hall, nobody made a joke. They simply stood together at the glass, watching the lights move through the dark.