SETTLER'S LETTER // PHANES RING, SEGMENT 12

Hi Mum,

You asked what it's like and I've been sat here forty minutes trying to write it down. There's no far bank to the river here. It runs to the horizon and then just keeps on, up and over, till it's a little silver line in the sky. At noon I can point straight up at the far side of it, hundreds of millions of kilometers over my head, and it's a pale band no wider than an eyelash. There's certainly people up there but you can't see them. You can't see anything of them.

When night falls you see towns coming on up the arch, a string of lights climbing out of the horizon until they blur into one line and then into nothing at all, and your granddaughter asked if we built that. We did. We built that.

Come while your hips can still take the lift. Come see what it looks like.

Your loving son,
KJ

(Open to feedback/critiques)

[DAILY BULLETIN FROM THE AIS LONG ANSWER, DAY 291]

Final translation was completed at 04:11 standard ship time. Position: roughly 50 million kilometers from the galactic core, in stable orbit of the black dwarf, which Cartography has entered on the charts as Mimir.

Signals confirm that the precursor device's guidance broadcast, unchanged through all sixteen months from detection to transit, ceased upon arrival and has been replaced by a shorter phrase. Linguistics offers the provisional translation: 'here'.

Crew reporting failed viewports on the forward gallery are advised that the viewports are functioning. There is nothing outside them that shines in the visible spectrum. Astronomy Division asks it be understood that this is the oldest dark in the galaxy, and not a defect the ship can correct. By general request, the forward gallery will remain open through all watches, and the running lights will stay at full. The Captain has declined, against economy guidance, to make this vessel any smaller a lamp than it already is.

The quiet room will remain open at all times. Counsellor's hours are extended.