###Chapter 23
The room was still in its waiting posture.
Not tense, not relaxed, just… held. As if the system had braced itself around an unresolved variable and decided to keep everything else soft so it would not snap.
Auggie sat where she had been seated the entire time, legs crossed at the ankle now, hands folded loosely in her lap. She had stopped tracking the subtle environmental shifts, the minute redistributions of attention, the way the light kept rebalancing itself around her like a camera that could not quite decide on framing.
Eventually, you stop watching the storm and start listening for thunder.
"So," she said, gently, like she was testing the acoustics. "While you're recalculating."
Moss' tendrils angled toward her immediately. Auburn's attention followed a beat later, delayed just enough to register as concern rather than reflex.
"Yes," Moss said. "The continuance state remains active."
"I figured," she replied. "Am I permitted to occupy myself?"
The system did not answer immediately.
That alone told her the question mattered.
"Clarify," Moss said.
"Nothing disruptive," Auggie said. "Something familiar. I'm not great at just… sitting."
This was true. It was also carefully framed. No request for autonomy. No challenge to authority. Just a human boundary offered like a courtesy.
Auburn shifted. "What form of occupation?"
She considered that. She could feel the lattice tightening again, eager to resolve, eager to classify. This mattered more than it should have, and she knew it.
"I'd like my copy of The Odyssey," she said.
The room went quiet.
Not in the way it had been before. This was not waiting. This was processing.
Moss' chitin lightened fractionally, then darkened again as internal pathways lit and rerouted. The system spun up, quietly but unmistakably, the hum of attention deepening as if more of the ship had leaned in.
"A copy," Moss said carefully.
"No," Auggie corrected, still mild. "Mine."
Auburn's tentacles stilled. "Define ownership."
She smiled, just a little. "I can't, really. That's the problem."
The system hesitated.
"There are numerous extant editions," Moss said. "Variations in translation. Annotation. Physical composition. Age."
"I'm aware," she replied. "I don't want a representative sample. I want the one that's on the second shelf in my living room, left side, three books in from the end. Leatherback, custom job I did to a mass market hardback. Spine's glue is cracked. There's a dog-eared page near the middle because I dropped it in the bath once and tried to dry it too fast."
That did it.
The lattice flared.
The room adjusted, not outward but inward, compressing its spatial logic as the system attempted to reconcile specificity with substitution. The ship reached, not metaphorically but literally, extending processes outward across impossible distances, tracing identity through association rather than category.
Moss went very still.
"The request is… complex," he said.
"I know," Auggie replied. "That's why I'm asking for it."
The system solved the problem the only way it knew how.
Back on Earth, her house remained exactly as she'd left it, sitting quietly at the edge of a typical suburb.
It doesn't feel like it belongs there; it feels like a cabin spirited in from the woods and politely tucked between two neighbors with trimmed hedges and concrete driveways.
Ivy climbed up the siding, and wildflowers spilt out of terracotta pots on the porch steps. A windchime made from driftwood and copper pipes that sang softly whenever the breeze picked up.
Inside, it was all cozy, lived-in warmth.
The scents of cedar, beeswax, and something faintly sweet - maybe vanilla, maybe whatever tea she had left steeping - lingered in the air.
The walls were a mix of warm wood paneling and soft earthy paint, and thick beams stretched across the ceiling like the bones of some ancient forest dwelling.
Bookshelves lined nearly every wall, packed full of dog-eared novels, old field guides, poetry collections, and more than a few notebooks filled with her own scribbled thoughts.
Trailing plants drape themselves over the shelves, curling toward the light like they know they're safe here.
The fireplace was the heart of the place. It's stone, worn smooth with age, and crackled with a soft, steady comfort when it was lit.
There was a basket beside it holding her current knitting project, a half-finished scarf in deep burgundy wool, and a few skeins waiting their turn on the needles.
The couch was big and soft and sagging in all the right places, draped with crochet blankets she 'd either made or thrifted, and covered in throw pillows that don't match but somehow belonged together.
Rugs in rich, vibrant colors were layered across the hardwood floors like fallen leaves, and a cat claimed the sunniest spot without apology.
Golden light filtered through gauzy curtains, casting soft shadows across the room. Hanging terrariums swayed slightly in the window, and crystals caught the light just enough to sparkle.
In the kitchen - just visible from the couch - open shelves hold jars full of herbs, teas, and all sorts of things she probably didn't need but loved anyway.
Nothing was perfect there, but everything had its place, its purpose, its story.
Her house hummed with quiet magic. It was a place where time slowed down, where a book and a blanket were always within reach, and where even the plants seem to breathe a little deeper.
The light shifted across the living room floor, dust motes drifting lazily through the air, her shelves still and her hearth unlit.
The air above the report room shivered.
Not a dramatic rupture, no flash, no warning. Just a quiet failure of absence.
Books began to appear.
Not in stacks, not in neat arrangements, not shelved. They manifested where there was space, and then where there was not. On the floor. On the table. Against the walls. In midair for half a second before gravity remembered itself and let them fall.
Paperbacks and hardcovers, cloth-bound and glossy, dog-eared and pristine. Spines bent with love or untouched by hands. Margins thick with notes. Margins utterly clean.
They came in waves, each one seemingly correcting for the last. The system, unable to identify which object constituted "hers," had widened the scope until the condition could no longer fail.
Here is everything associated with you.
The room filled.
Auggie stared.
Then she laughed, a short, startled sound that escaped before she could stop it.
"Oh," she said. "Oh no."
Auburn turned slowly, taking in the chaos. "This appears to be… excessive."
Moss' tendrils twitched. "The request specified identity specificity. The system resolved ambiguity by total inclusion."
"You brought my entire home library," she said, incredulous, delighted, and just a little overwhelmed.
"Yes," Moss said. "This outcome satisfies all known constraints."
She looked around the room, at the piles already leaning into one another, at the books that had slid beneath the table, at the lone volume that had landed face down and skidded to a stop against her boot.
She bent, picked it up, and smiled.
"That one," she said softly. "That's the one."
She held it for a moment, feeling the familiar weight, the softened spine, the slight warp of pages that had never quite dried right.
Then she glanced back at the rest of the room.
"…But I guess this works too."
Something shifted in the nearest pile.
Auggie froze. Then slowly, very carefully, she leaned forward and parted two hardcovers.
Her cat blinked up at her, mildly offended, tail flicking once, as if to say excuse you, before settling back down on the warm paper like this was an entirely reasonable place to be.
Auggie looked up, incredulous. "You brought my cat."
"Yes," Moss said. "The organism was in physical contact with multiple requested objects. Separation would have rendered the retrieval incomplete."
The cat yawned, tucked its paws under itself, and began purring.
"…Okay," Auggie said after a moment. "That tracks."
Silence followed. Not alarmed. Not corrective.
Observational.
Auburn angled his head, studying her rather than the books now. "What will you do?"
She looked at the sprawl, eyes already tracking patterns, clusters forming instinctively in the back of her mind.
"Well," she said, rolling her shoulders. "First I'm going to have to figure out how to get all of this to my room."
Moss considered the scene. The variable was no longer idle. The gravitational risk profile had dropped to zero. The human was engaged, occupied by a task that did not strain the ship.
"This is… acceptable," he said at last.
Auburn hesitated, then nodded. "We can observe."
Auggie glanced up at them, amused. "You're welcome to help."
They did not respond.
She shrugged, set her copy of The Odyssey and the cream and orange furred creature, both, gently atop a nearby pile, and knelt on the floor.
Almost immediately, she began to sort.
Not by size. Not by age. Not by language.
By feel.
By memory.
By which books belonged together because they had shaped her the same way.
And as the system watched, logging motion without convergence, something in its architecture shifted.
Not toward resolution.
Toward tolerance.
Time passed.
No one closed the report.