A species that thinks without abstraction has built a Dyson swarm through billions of years of patient, brute-force engineering. Now their star is dying, and for the first time in their history, the method may not be enough. Two hundred million years later, an artificial mind arrives at the ruins and discovers an intelligence utterly unlike its own.
Two transporter professionals on a supply vessel have each confronted the same truth about the transporter and emerged on opposite sides. One is wounded by it. The other has been using it to conduct experiments on the crew. A philosophical SF novella about identity, continuity, and what it means to be the same person you were a moment ago.