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  I knew all the data points from her recon file, of course. Businesses, employment, known associates, education, public events. But who is the person beyond the public records?

  What is in all that space between?

  - Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn, (2778)

  One hand, one foot. Balance. Twist. Change arms. Breathe. I am the breath. I am the flow. The breath moves me. The morning flow ended, and I sat down.

  “I—I had a nightmare last night,” I said to Denten as he joined me on the dojo floor.

  “And I keep thinking about it, trying to figure out why I’m having dreams about being attacked now, after all these months. And it helps sometimes to write, but I think, maybe, it will help to talk about it?”

  “I’m listening, Ryst,” he said matter-of-factly, openly. I could feel him as a steady man next to me, patient, and solid.

  “Before. Well, a couple of days before Darwin tried to kill me, he came onto me and reeked of alcohol. So I pushed him away. He tried to grab me, but I’m too accomplished for that. Does it sound weird that I think that’s why he wanted to kill me?"

  I glanced at Denten, and he looked thoughtful, which matched the sense I had of him.

  "I’m trying to make sense of that, Denten. How do you go from wanting to bed someone to wanting to kill them? It’s illogical."

  Denten’s presence next to me was open and considering, so I plowed ahead.

  "It seems like, really, despite all of his success as a surgeon, and all the accolades, Darwin was really insecure. Like he really felt small and insignificant and needed all that attention. I had to help him keep up the act that he was important. When I rejected him, that was intolerable because it was a reminder that he’s just a tiny man, and not really adored."

  “Hmm,” Denten hummed, and I could feel a growing pride rising in him.

  “Darwin, he couldn’t stand that,” I went on. "He couldn’t stand any reminder that being the best, the most important, was only a facade. So, he had to squash the source of it."

  Compassion. That was what I felt from Denten, and it was like a balm I hadn’t known I needed.

  Bolstered, I kept going. “Is that what we are all doing all the time, Denten? We just react to people, lash out? Destroy anything that makes us feel insignificant? We just stomp around, crushing everything that reminds us that we are tiny?"

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  I couldn’t stop myself; the words kept pouring out of me. “How do we fix that? How do we fix people? It’s taken me so long to come to terms with my own insecurities and trauma. And it feels impossible sometimes. Like I’ll never be able to sort all this out."

  I felt Denten nodding next to me. Obviously, he’d thought about some of this too, or he at least understood what I meant.

  "It’s so confusing, so how do we help change the world, Denten? It’s so much work. All the bad dreams, and the panic attacks, and the journaling, and the reflecting about it. It’s all well and good to do it at a monastery, but how can real people do that when they're busy with jobs and kids and living? How will anything ever change? We will just go on, smashing about, wrecking each other forever?"

  Denten sat back, resting his hands on the floor behind him, but I leaned forward, intense, knowing there was something I needed to get out.

  "Is that what’s wrong with the world? It’s the same everywhere in the 9 Galaxies, isn’t it? We stopped mass killings and wars centuries ago. We don’t slaughter each other because it would be bad for business. So we trade and have prosperity. But what are we really doing? Has humanity really made any progress?"

  Denten cocked his head, listening, and I barely registered the words flooding out of my mouth.

  "People are still suffering. Suffering everywhere. They’re afraid. They’re anxious all the time. I know it. I’ve felt it because I couldn’t block it out. It’s why I’ve been so overwhelmed. Everyone, everywhere, is insecure all the time. Afraid. Anxious. Suffering."

  "It’s not war, but it isn't peace."

  "How do we have real peace, Denten? Is it even possible in the Known Cosmos?"

  Denten shifted, pulling something out of his pocket, but didn’t take his eyes from me, so I kept going.

  "There’s something more out there. I feel it. I connected to it. My skull broke open, and I reached into something beyond the Known Cosmos. It’s mysterious. Mystical. And something in me changed when I connected to it."

  The smile on Denten’s face was broad and satisfied. Everything about him screamed “proud grandfather” and encouraged me to keep talking.

  “How do I get to it, Denten? What’s beyond the 9 Galaxies? What’s stopping us from the tenth galaxy, or the hundredth? What if it isn’t a technological breakthrough that we need to leave behind what we've always known? What if the way out of the Known Cosmos isn’t by starliner? What if the path is mystical? And what if, here, in the 9 Galaxies, we are too broken to find it?”

  Denten reached out, took my hand, put something in it, and left the room.

  You’ll listen to this song.

  Over

  and over.

  And never tire of it.

  Every time

  hearing something new.

  Collected Unpublished Lyrics

  - Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn, (2782)

  I opened my hand and saw three bead bags: Silver, White, Black, and was a little annoyed.

  I had no idea what had just happened, and Denten should've explained it to me. Three more beads made me a Level 9.

  How could I be a Level 9? I wasn’t a Tindin Master yet. I didn’t even know what the bead colors meant! Which color was Level 9?

  I sighed and opened each bag, stretching the strings of beads out on the floor in front of me in a row. What had I even been saying? What had come out of my mouth?

  I'd been talking about how the world was broken. And something about how we can’t leave the Known Cosmos because our way out of the 9 Galaxies wasn’t a technological solution.

  It made a strange kind of sense. Centuries upon centuries, and humanity wasn’t really different. We hadn’t made any large leaps forward.

  So, maybe I was right? Maybe there was something beyond the 9 Galaxies that we just couldn’t reach yet? We all needed to have our heads busted open to experience it?

  I laughed to myself. Ridiculous. All of it. Silliness.

  It dawned on me that I had braided the three strands of beads into a cord. It was kind of similar to the cords of my home world on Starlend, but instead of a twist, I'd made it Shurwinn style.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with my new beads, so I stuffed them in my tight tank and went to find my journal so I could record everything I'd just said to Denten about finding a way out of the 9 Galaxies.