Transporting the Ambassador

More about Transporting the Ambassador

The encounter did not occur in a council chamber, nor beneath banners or recorded
oaths, but in transit—where decisions are carried, not declared. The cargo bay had
been cleared, the decks marked and measured, the route approved by authorities
who understood that some meetings cannot be staged, only permitted.

At the center of the space hovered the object: smooth, luminous, and deliberately
inscrutable. Its form resisted classification, offering no seams, no interfaces, no
suggestion of function. Instruments agreed only on what it was not. It emitted no
signals, made no demands, and yet its presence reorganized the room around it, as
if meaning itself had acquired mass.

Opposite it stood the woman, still and attentive. She bore no insignia of rank, no
visible augmentation beyond what was customary for long voyages. Her role, as
recorded, was procedural: oversight, continuity, representation. Whether she was
there to observe the object—or to be observed by it—was not specified in the
mission brief.

The vessel remained on course throughout. No attempt was made to initiate contact
beyond proximity. No language was exchanged, unless one counts alignment,
distance, and restraint as forms of speech. The moment was logged, timestamped,
and archived under diplomatic protocols that predate the voyage itself.

Later analyses would debate the nature of the meeting: whether something was
being delivered, or someone conveyed; whether the exchange had already occurred
before either party entered the room. The records do not clarify. They were never
meant to.

What matters is that, for a brief interval between destinations, two representatives
shared the same space under mutually accepted conditions—and the journey
continued.