“Marginally,” Leo said. “I am, as they say, Super Mature XXL. I have mass to spare.”
“You can. Just… reduce your cross-section. Collapse a few quantum hairs. I’d have just enough delta-vee to spiral out. I’d be free.”
Leo’s accretion disk flickered. “I can’t.” super mature xxl
Not in the way humans understood loneliness, a pang in the chest or an empty text thread. Leo’s loneliness was a gravitational constant. It was the curvature of his own spacetime. He had an event horizon two hundred light-years across, a boundary beyond which even hope could not escape. Inside that horizon, he carried the weight of a billion dead galaxies. And he carried it alone.
“I have time,” Leo said. And for the first time in three billion years, the great, dark curvature of his existence bent into something that was not a sigh, but a smile. “Marginally,” Leo said
“I’m never invited. I’m too big. Too slow. Merging with me would be like… like a mayfly trying to merge with a mountain. The timescales don’t match. Their event horizons would touch mine, and they’d be inside before they even registered the invitation.”
It was the closest thing to a touch he had ever known. Just… reduce your cross-section
“I’m listening,” Ember said, her glow brightening with curiosity.