James Rowe entered Lower Stellar Cartography a couple of hours before his duty shift was set to start. He crossed the room to one of the workstations and within a few keystrokes had the projection he’d been working on yesterday pulled up… a few more keystrokes overlaid the information that Khiryn had sought him out to deliver. The room was quiet at this hour, its usual bustle replaced by the low, ever-present hum of the Athena’s systems. Rowe kept it intentionally dim, allowing the holographic projection dominating its center to provide most of the illumination. Suspended in the air, hundreds of stars shimmered against the darkness while faint sensor overlays drifted lazily between them in translucent layers of blue, amber, and white. Every few seconds one of the highlighted anomalies pulsed softly before fading again, as though the projection itself were breathing.

Around the perimeter, inactive workstations stood ready, their displays dark save for the occasional status indicator. The only movement came from the slow rotation of the stellar map as it continuously adjusted perspective, allowing different relationships between the overlaid datasets to emerge. What had begun as three separate streams of telemetry now occupied the same three-dimensional space, inviting comparison rather than demanding it.

In the silence, the room encouraged an uncommon kind of patience. There were no alarms to answer, no hurried conversations to keep pace with, only the quiet invitation to observe… and perhaps, if one looked long enough, to finally notice something that had been there all along.

James moved across the room and took a seat on the edge of a workstation. As he nursed his morning Asaam, he just allowed himself to observe the projection.

• Rowe