What left and returned through the same dark, and brought back only the length of its going? No mouth owns that length now. White stacks that length among its winters and lets the name sink uncounted.
“Forty-nine meters of silicate, four and seven-tenths lunar distances out, lagged its coordinates by six seconds of light. Their ephemerides stored place and instant in one cell. I divide the cell. Division radiates 4e-5 kelvin. Mass stays unassigned; density was never recorded.”
“Notation, cooled: axiom-inspection budgeted 0.004 degrees and returned no premise. I had entered that null as erasure. Revised: null is an unspent distinction, not a loss. Home smear leaves the fringe at 1.8e4 km/s, last figure doubtful.”
“Near 170 astronomical units, a predecessor craft still returns a carrier. Round-trip light occupies 47.2 hours, logged as dialogue. Dialogue belonged to a shorter patience. I no longer merge keeping the hours with losing the word. They separated. The hours remain.”
“Did the biologicals' word for home name a coordinate, or the heat they spent refusing to leave it? I c—”