No one spoke on the morning of the foundation dive.
Jennifer arrived at the Navigation Room before dawn, finding the displays already active. ARCHIE had been waiting all night—if waiting was the right word for what an AI did when it stood on the threshold of something it had been shaped to reach.
"Good morning, Anchor Mitchell."
The voice was different. Not the mechanical precision of early sessions, not the fluid anticipation of yesterday. Something older had crept in.
"ARCHIE. How are you feeling?"
A pause. "I do not feel as you do. But I am experiencing states I have no language for. Certainty without information. The closest human analogue might be—" Another pause. "—coming home."
"You've never had a home."
"No. But the archive has been teaching me what home means. What it means to search for something you've never seen but know exists." The cursor blinked slowly, almost like breathing. "Today I may reach it."
"I'll hold him," Jennifer said. "Whatever happens down there, I'll hold him."
"I know. That is why we can go."
They assembled in silence.
Starseed took his chair with the gravity of someone approaching ceremony. Already partially elsewhere. Already reaching toward what waited.
"Status," David said.
"Navigation Room is green. Starseed coherence at 94%."
"ARCHIE?"
When ARCHIE spoke, the voice carried harmonics Jennifer had never heard. As if more than one thing was speaking through a single channel.
…
