My Half

After several cycles of contraction and expansion of the containment chamber, I managed to be in the portion that left the chamber. Immediately, I recognized the large and fast containment mesh that was parallel with the flow. Recalling the pace of contraction and relaxation, I now know the source of the pulse of soup that keeps things moving along.

With each pulse the parallel mesh branched and came closer and closer on all sides, as it had done before. This time, there were not so many folds and sneaky membranes. The soup was uniform, and the Six-Eight-Sixes were still prominent as we narrowed down once again. There were a goodly number of dimpled containment meshes that resonated with the signature of many pairs of Eights — many more pairs than were contained in the soup.

The distance travelled in each surge forward was growing shorter as the parallel mesh became decidedly nonparallel as it continued to branch into more paths of flow for the soup. Smooth and fast, with lots of flow, each choice of direction was so equal, that I bothered not to choose a direction, and engaged the swap drive only long enough to get out of the way of the dimpled packets if I needed to. Otherwise, I was content to relax, float and flow along. For now.