The Interstice: A Field Guide to Disappearing
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The first explorers called it the Interstice, thinking it was empty space between galaxies. They didn't realize emptiness could be a habitat. It wasn't until the crew of the Apsara vanished without distress signal or debris that we began to understand: some distances are alive, and some gaps can swallow you whole. Not with gravity or hunger, but with belonging. The Apsara didn't crash or explode. She simply realized she was always meant to be the space between her own atoms. Her final transmission, repeated for seventeen hours before silence: "We are home in the between. We are home. We are. We." Now, whenever an explorer disappears from a star chart in a quorum colony, we call her location the Interstice. We prepare our voyagers to realize they will be swallowed by collective light, and never again made of whole atoms, but we hope that as they disappear, they will say, "We are home in the between.◆ About the ending
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