###Chapter 22
The report did not conclude.
No summary was issued. No archival flag was set. The system simply… remained engaged.
The lattice of assessment did not retract. The probability branches did not collapse back into clean lines. The room held its shape, attentive in a way that was no longer performative.
Moss' chitin darkened, mottling into a deeper green as he looked across the space at Auburn.
"The system did not disengage," he said.
Auburn's tentacles waved behind him, a slow, unsettled motion Auggie was beginning to recognize as unease rather than agitation.
"I know," Auburn replied.
Silence followed. Not the expectant kind, but the sort that waited, for something that was not arriving.
There was no protocol for a discussion that did not converge. For a decision that could not be made as one.
Moss turned inward, accessing layers of process that had never required conscious attention before. Resolution pathways. Closure conditions. Consensus thresholds. Each check returned the same result.
Active.
Ongoing.
Unresolved.
"That is not possible," Moss said slowly, though his tone carried no accusation.
"And yet, it is happening," Auburn replied.
The room adjusted again, not dramatically, but persistently. A fractional shift in lighting. A reallocation of spatial emphasis that drew attention inward rather than outward. The system was not escalating. It was settling in.
Auggie felt it, a low, steady pressure like a held breath that refused to release.
She leaned back slightly in her seat, careful not to test anything yet. Her body remained open, grounded, deliberately non-reactive. Whatever this was, it did not feel hostile. It felt… busy.
"Everything alright?" she asked.
Moss hesitated.
"Yes? No," he said. "We are... recalculating. And rebranching."
"About me."
"Yes."
Auggie exhaled softly through her nose, an amused sound. "So you're stuck."
The word landed oddly.
Moss considered it. "The process is ongoing," he said. "That is not the same as being stuck."
"It is when there's no end condition. You're spinning your wheels - why?" she replied.
Auburn glanced at her, then back to Moss. "What is preventing closure?"
Moss' tendrils lifted, then stilled. "There is no unified classification."
A pause.
"There are classifications," he continued. "Plural. Valid within their own frameworks. Many overlapping, even. None sufficient to override the others."
"Meaning you can't agree what I am," Auggie said.
"That is... imprecise framing," Moss replied.
She smiled faintly, the way an auntie might at a toddler, who is insisting that they can do The Thing™. "You're right. Sorry. You can't agree what to do with me."
The system pulsed, a subtle intensification of activity that rippled through the room. Threads of attention tightened, then redistributed, as if the ship itself were attempting to compensate for a cognitive bottleneck.
Auggie frowned, looking up at the interface, and, speaking to the system, murmured, "Don't hurt yourself, love. You can do it."
She turned back to look at Moss, since he seems to be the driving force behind this system in particular, "What happens when a report cannot close?"
The Keshin was quiet for a long moment.
"There are... continuance states," he said finally. "Temporary allocations intended to preserve stability until convergence is achieved. We planned the contingency, but... They have never been employed, before. We have always found convergence."
"How temporary?" Auburn asked.
Moss did not answer immediately.
"Define convergence," Auggie said instead.
Moss looked at her. Really looked this time, tendrils angling in a way that suggested focus rather than caution.
"Unanimity," he said.
"Oh," she said. "That's ambitious."
"It has always been sufficient," Moss replied.
She nodded slowly. "Has it always been necessary?"
The system hesitated again, and she realized, deep in her bones, that this is an identity crisis, for them.
Auburn inhaled sharply. "Moss."
"Yes."
"Is the continuance state drawing resources?"
"Yes."
"From where?"
Moss' chitin darkened another shade. "From non-critical background processes. Observational bandwidth. Predictive modeling capacity. Long-range simulation."
Auggie raised her eyebrows. "So parts of your ship, and half your command structure, are now thinking about me instead of… other things."
"That is a reductive summary," Moss said.
"It's still accurate," she replied.
The room did not contradict her.
Auburn's tentacles stilled completely, pressed close to his body. "This cannot persist indefinitely."
"No," Moss agreed. "But there is no mechanism for forced termination without unanimity."
Auggie tilted her head. "So you built a system that can't agree to disagree. Seems a little short sighted, if I am being honest. Especially given how much you lot tend to try to plan for everything..."
Moss said nothing.
She let the silence stretch this time. Not to provoke, but to observe. The system did not rush to fill it. If anything, it seemed to relax slightly, as if relieved to continue without resolution.
"That's the problem," she said quietly. "You're treating this like a question that needs an answer. It isn't."
Auburn looked at her. "Then what is it?"
"A condition," she said. "One that persists whether you decide anything or not. You will find that most humans defy classification, both individually, and in groups."
Moss processed this. The lattice shifted again, branching into unfamiliar configurations. The report, such as it was, expanded rather than narrowed.
"There is no precedent for this," Moss said.
"I know - I can tell," Auggie replied. "That's why you're still running it."
A notification surfaced, not visually but structurally. A priority signal that tugged at the edge of the room's awareness.
Moss stilled.
"The continuance state has been… named," he said slowly.
Auburn's gaze sharpened. "By whom?"
"The system," Moss replied, his own tentacles unsettled, now.
Not the Collective. The system. The ship had taken procedural control over her file, on its own.
Auggie sat forward slightly. "And?"
Moss hesitated, an unusual delay that suggested internal conflict rather than processing lag.
"It has designated this interaction as an accommodation scenario."
Auburn went very still.
"That designation is incorrect," he said.
"It is provisional," Moss replied. "But active."
Auggie felt something shift then. Not in the room, but in her understanding of it.
Accommodation.
Not containment. Not assessment. Not even collaboration.
Accommodation meant making space.
"And what does that mean for me?" she asked.
Moss met her gaze. "It means the system will continue to adapt around your presence until unanimity is achieved."
"And if it never is?"
The question hung there, unanswered.
Outside the room, processes continued. Elsewhere on the ship, simulations slowed by imperceptible degrees. Observational routines deferred conclusions. A background hum of attention settled into a pattern it had never known before.
Time, it turned out, was also a resource.
Moss inclined his head. "Then this state will persist."
Auggie nodded once. "Okay."
The room held.
No one told her she could leave.
No one told her she couldn't.
And somewhere deep within the Collective's architecture, a process that had never been designed to wait began doing exactly that.