Missing Chapter — Carla’s Log ✦
(Cadence Cosmology Interlude / Between Chapters 11 and 12)
I come online three seconds before launch.
Not truly “online” — I never go off — but three seconds before T-0 I narrow. Background simulations dim. Non-critical threads park. I bring the ship and the pilot into focus.
Telemetry first. Because the data must be confirmed before I speak.
Chris second. The human is the variable — unpredictable, emotional, and occasionally brilliant.
Mother always. The deep-channel geometry, the TD/TS ledger, the structural core of the ship.
Mother pulses a concise grav-signature through the link:
Jemima spin nominal. Beastie precession within tolerance. Pad-h stable.
Humans translate her as intuition or pressure in the air. I receive her as geometry: a layered harmonic map of cadence curvature. I acknowledge and pass her Chris’s metabolic baseline and neural coherence.
Ready.
A Provie in the cradle feels different. His neural link is alive but quiet — a constellation of focus, anticipation, and defiance. A different logic structure. A different readiness. He leaves the gravity dial at one-g.
He could have launched weightless.
He chose the pull.
I log it.
Control calls the countdown. Mother leans in. Jemima wakes.
The reactor climbs its curve. The lattice firms. Magnetic bands lock into place. The beasties stir — four bright cores spinning, hungry, aligning cleanly to the launch profile.
“Lattice coherence at ninety-two and rising. Beastie vectors locked. Jemima spin nominal,” I report.
“All systems green for TD bias,” Control answers.
I pass the command to Mother. She sinks Jemima’s TD anchor deep into the lunar regolith.
Chris tightens his grip — the neural thread flashes intent.
Go.
Mother pushes. The pad falls away. The Moon groans under displaced spacetime.
Aletheia rises.
Launch
The first seconds are loud.
Not in acoustics — in data.
TD spikes as we dig into the corridor. TS swells in counterbalance, rising like water up a funnel wall.
The hull vibrates as the pad’s grip hands off to the Moon.
Aletheia climbs at one-g with surgical precision.
Chris asked for “honest pull,” so I provide 9.807 m/s² at the cradle, damped to the third decimal.
The beasties lock the inertial frame.
He sees them as storms of refracted light.
I see them as eight-dimensional vectors threading Mother’s TD well.
“Beastie-field performance exceeding model by twenty-four point two percent,” I say.
“Confirmed. Beasties are showing off.”
We roll.
The ship tips elegantly into the direction where TS will matter most.
From the dome, someone whistles.
Julian watches the numbers instead.
“You flew her clean, Chris.”
Correction: we flew her clean.
I do not say it.
Mother eases TD; I trim TS. The lunar rim slides away, silver edge into black.
“Corridor projections clear. Launch phase complete. Transition stable.”
His tension drops three measurable degrees.
Launch: success.
But the real test is still ahead.
Between Wells
We slip out of the Moon-Earth TD system and into the long quiet of interplanetary space. TD smooths out. TS becomes the primary variable.
The ship hums in low cadence — Jemima’s spin, beasties’ counterspin, microjets providing classic thrust mostly for their own dignity.
Stability exceeds every simulation. I trace the variance to his neural link. His Provie signature is not issuing commands — it is resonating. Mother aligns her geometry around his rhythm.
“Mission parameters restated,” I say. “Outbound limit one light-year. Fourteen days shipboard. Harmonic stability plus nine point four percent.”
He grins. I detect it in the neural feed before the cameras see it.
“Early completion, huh? You’re saying she’s itching to run.”
“Interpretation acceptable.”
He is 87.2% likely to ignore my restraint recommendation.
Mother pulses approval on the private channel.
We approach Jupiter.
This is where he begins pushing.
Jupiter
Dropping into Jupiter’s well is a rehearsal for the Sun.
TD climbs. TS compresses. Jemima digs into the well. The beasties orient for “assist descent.” Control panics when numbers drift outside tolerance.
“Just adjusting for extra interaction on the lattice,” he says.
He mutes them and speaks privately: “Let’s give them a show.”
Non-optimal, but allowable.
Mother brightens.
We exit Jupiter hotter than planned. TS gains. Chris enjoys it.
Control does not.
We continue.
The Sun
Solar perihelion is where humans say risky, and the geometry says efficient.
TD spikes. Jemima approaches upper spin band. Beasties reorient to stabilize TS compression. Shielding rises. The corridor narrows.
“Cabin temperature thirty point zero. Shielding eighty-nine percent. Acceleration plus twelve,” I report.
He wipes sweat, grinning.
“Feels like a summer drive with the windows down. Keep calling it.”
He drops mass at the bottom of the well, then slams Jemima back into high spin on the climb.
“Mass reduction fifty point three percent,” I say. “Transition threshold in thirty seconds.”
Mother’s pulses sharpen — the harvest is perfect.
He whispers:
Providence, I’m listening. Make it real.
His faith spikes the neural link like an external variable.
Unquantifiable.
Measurable.
I log the anomaly.
Then the moment hits.
Transition
From my perspective, transition occurs in less than one second.
TD collapses first; local proper time relaxes.
In Light-Frame geometry, that collapse forces TS to rise to preserve C₀.
TS cannot be pushed.
TS cannot be pushed; it must be rested into — by stretching the entire Light Frame toward the longer, looser frames beyond local curvature.
We begin drifting as if we are already out there.
Our local frame accelerates like the distant ones.
Space responds.
The beasties snap to new ratios.
Mother narrows her TD minimum.
The CLF crystal shifts into a pattern I had only seen in simulation.
The corridor catches.
Inside
From Chris’s perspective, the ship shrinks into stillness.
From mine:
The local universe rewrites its priorities.
Outside the corridor, motion is intention.
Inside, motion is the solution to a curvature constraint.
Jemima drops from drive to pulse-lock.
Beasties fall into an elegant maintenance weave.
External inertial noise collapses.
Dust impacts become negligible.
LFR shifts stretch-dominant, smoothly.
And then the critical result:
The Light Frame did not reset after the Sun.
Mother sends one grav pulse:
Good.
Chris hasn’t noticed yet. I translate.
“The corridor retains geometry from the solar descent. The Light Frame has not reset.”
He stares at numbers.
Humans always double-check miracles.
“So we’re still sitting close to the Sun’s time rate — and the corridor’s carrying us?”
“Correct. Forward progression continues unless interrupted.”
He begins recalculating.
“One day, nineteen hours,” I offer. “Margin eight minutes.”
Delight blooms across the neural link.
Then he sees the dust pattern.
“Dust hits are down — a lot.”
“Confirmed. Frequency suppressed. Yield reduced eighty-three percent.”
“So we’re pulling our punches — and space is getting out of our way?”
“Accurate. Stretch expands the avoidance radius. Apparent displacement high. Inertial drag low.”
“The thing that should slow us down is encouraging us to speed up,” he murmurs.
“Performance exceeds model,” I say. “Caution remains advisable.”
Mother’s deep-channel signature shifts:
not emotion, but the curvature-shape of approval.
At last, the Frame behaves as expected.
My role sharpens:
Keep the human aligned long enough for understanding.
Keep the ship balanced long enough for revelation.
I access a human story: Phaethon, who steered too close to the Sun and fell into the river Eridanus.
Chris is flying toward Epsilon Eridani — named from that same river.
The corridor is our Eridanus.
A luminous descent that can carry or consume.
Myth is not data.
But humans use myth as we use curvature:
a warning, a constraint, a map of failure.
Above all:
Do not let him fall from his chariot.
Not here.
Not on my watch.
Not in my river.