It made sense. Tennal could feel Surit’s worry at the slow pace of galaxies, and for a single tick, Tennal felt gently regretful at how it had all turned out. But the tides of space were right there, and Tennal’s mind was made for them.

He took the last jump, and let his consciousness sink into space. The last tether to his body faded away.

Time dilated.

He drifted, nameless, in the currents between the stars.

There had been concerns before, he vaguely felt, but now there was only existence. He was free, though the concept of what it meant to be free was rapidly unraveling.

The space cluster spun around him, spheres of rock and gas in a slow, sustained dance. He had only ever been in this space cluster, and yet somehow he had been in every cluster. He and his kind weren’t bound by distance.

He pushed at his thoughts to try to understand that. But when he did, he found he had nothing to latch on to. All his memories were an illusion, like pushing on a door that led to thin air. Something was wrong.

It occurred to him, after another slow tick, to wonder what he was.

Halkana—Halkana! Lights, it wasn’t this bad last time—where’s the lieutenant? Get him here!

Something was wrong. He wasn’t what he thought he was. He didn’t have the right memories. He couldn’t feel horror, not like this, but he felt a sliver of concern.

He was distracted for another tick by watching, wondering, at the slow loop of a comet.

Another distraction: a tiny packet of metal and organics. It was so close to him, it was within the area that was currently himself. He trained his attention on it. He had a vague feeling it was—had once been—important. Or was that in the future, that a speck like this would mean something?

In the tiny dollhouse rooms of the spaceship, something that had been him floated down the corridor on a gurney, a small crowd of creatures flocking urgently around the hovering stretcher. He had no names for them. That caused a moment of—wrongness. Names had been important, once. And the creature striding up front, he recognized that one. He would know them in the blackness of space. He didn’t have a name for them either.

It came back to him with a lurch. Something was wrong, and it was this. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He had come into being as one of that mayfly species, and now he was patched into abilities much larger than he should have. He wasn’t meant for this level of consciousness.

“—nothing I’ve seen. You haven’t broken the sync. He’s just not there.”