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Artist
The observatory was never meant to survive this phase—only to be accurate within
it. Its mirrors, stressed beyond their tolerances, continue to hold alignment long
enough to matter. Fractures propagate. Petals bow. The math remains clean.
Inside, the astronomer proceeds by checklist. Instruments once built for precision
have become instruments of witness, their outputs drifting from utility into record.
Time is measured in half-lives now; temperature in glow. Corrections are entered
without commentary. Anomalies are tagged, not mourned.
The star does what stars do at the end of patience. Fields snap and rethread. Ratios
slide. Rules do not fail so much as rearrange themselves. The observatory responds
as designed—by listening harder. Where language becomes unreliable,
measurement persists.
This is not a last stand. It is a last adjustment. Acknowledgment that the map has
reached the edge of the page, and that the page must still be squared. The final
crystal is seated. The beam steadies. Calibration tones carry outward, stripped of
metaphor, reduced to quantities any future intelligence might recognize.
When light overwhelms color and structure collapses into subtraction, the work is
already done. The signal continues without its source, corrected for time’s drift,
faithful to the end.
Nothing here asks to be remembered.
Everything here insists on being correct.