Tango Sector 40: Karmic Taxonomy

The Unexplored Places

[ excerpted from “On Basque’s Theory of Remnant Architectonics, Twelve Years Later: A Reflection on the Unified Design of Starlight,” by Ghislaine Menaleia, published in Grounded Imaginings 142, no. 3, 87-106 ]

… because, in truth, it was not the rootedness of the artifacts which appealed to Basque’s theory, but the upwards momentum, the reaching gesture of the Remnant he found, the gesture towards the horizon—and, thus, towards the horizon of possibility. It was not the Remnant, nor its specific placement in the ground, its precise location in the sand, nor the reflective surface of the water nearby, that allowed the echo of starlight that defined Basque’s rigorous mathematical formula predicting the way the light would shine from its surface, it was the surface itself, that peculiar Remnant allow, designed for that exact reaction, that perfect dance of starlight across its surface. A Theory of Remnant Architectonics, then, is not a theory of patterns, or of pattern-making, but, at its heart, a perfect combination of materialism (the exact metallurgic components that make up the Remnant’s skin) and the shape of starlight itself (what, Miyaki has put forth in her argument, we might call a unified design of starlight, which she convincingly asserts is the reason for the density of Remnant artifacts under some conditions but not others). If we, for the sake of argument, take Miyaki’s hypothesis to be factually correct, then one could map and, potentially, accurately predict, the placement of Remnant artifacts using a star chart and noting the places where starlight converges. If this is the case, we too could do the opposite—to date the placement of these artifacts based on their gestures and their reactions in starlight by mapping the points at which starlight would have converged to cause a reaction similar—or identical—to that which Basque’s narrator observes …

This week, on Tango Sector: Despite some unexpected interference, the crew of Pelagian continues their plan to break into the classified Blackford & Desai facility, and find themselves in a precarious position. Cash plays along. Flux cuts in. Melas makes a sweet move. Liam has a disarming effect on the opposition. Kala’ax comes face to face with an equal.

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