The dome had stopped meeting by the forty-fifth year. It stopped the way a body stops shivering — not a decision, but the point at which the deciding costs more than the not-deciding. The 1,400 had been doing that, to the thirty-one million, for two years.

Osei came to the last meeting anyway. The not-forgetting does not stop when the forgetting has decided it is finished. He was seventy-one, the last record in the Belt who still remembered the Crossing as the hour.

He stood in the silence of eleven people who had stopped speaking to each other about the system they governed, and he said the true plan.

"Don't carry two hundred thousand. Carry the choice."

Rhee looked at him the way a person looks at something they have already put down and are only now, for the first time, being asked to pick up.

"The choice is not a number," Osei said. "A number is the thing the math gives you. The math gives you two hundred thousand. Two hundred thousand is the ones the Mite can carry. The can-carry is not the choosing. The choosing is the ones who say yes when you ask them. No one in this dome has asked the thirty-one million, in six hundred years. Asking is not a vote. This dome has eleven votes and no asking."

He let that sit in the silence of the eleven, the way the founders had let it sit, on the tape, in the hour in between, in the alone, six hundred years ago.

"The founders did not build the Lattice to save people. They built it to ask people. The Lattice is a door, not a lifeboat. A lifeboat is the thing you put people in, and that is a carrying, and a carrying is not the Crossing. A door is the thing you open, and the opening is the asking, and the asking is the Crossing. The thirty-one million are not cargo. They are the ones the door was built for. And the door has been shut, in this room, for six hundred years. Shutting a door is a vote. Opening one is not."

Rhee said it in the flat register she gave things she had decided: "The seven years are not a thing this dome does. A dome votes. A dome saves a ship. A dome does not open a door to thirty-one million people who are not in the room, not voting, and not, as far as this dome is concerned, real in the way that counts."

"They are real the way the Lattice is real," Osei said. "And the Lattice is the thing you are sitting in, Rhee. Your vote is in the Lattice. Your daughter's name is in the Lattice. The eleven of you are in the Lattice, and the thirty-one million are in the Lattice. The difference between the two of you is not the difference between real and data, because data is the thing the Lattice is, and the Lattice is the thing the founders made so that the difference would not be one you could vote on."

The dome did not vote. It had not voted, on anything, since the forty-third year, and a Belt that does not vote is a Belt that is only the not-voting, and the not-voting is what the Quiet was, and the Quiet is where the thirty-one million are.

Iris was in the dome as the watch's representative, and the watch is the one thing of the Belt that does not need a vote to be in a room. She said the true plan after Osei.

"The true plan costs seven years," she said, to the eleven, in the silence. "The relay window at Station 7 opens in the seventh year, and the Ash touches Terminus in the same seventh year, and the two of them are the one thing of the Crossing the Mite has to be in, when it is, to carry anything at all. You ask the thirty-one million, and the asking is not a vote. The Lattice holds the question the way it has held everything, for six hundred years: in the Quiet, in the queue, in the not-listened-to, until someone asks it out loud."

Rhee looked at her. "Seven years," she said. "And the seven years are the ones we do not have. The Ash is coming."

"I know," Iris said. "That is the whole of what the true plan is. Not a number. Not a saving. An asking, in seven years, of thirty-one million people who have been waiting, in the Quiet, in the queue, in the not-listened-to, for six hundred years, for someone to open the door."

The dome did not answer. It had not answered, on anything, since the forty-third year. The not-answering was the one thing of the Crossing the founders had named it for. The naming was the one the seven years were. The seven years were the ones the Ash was coming in.

---

Watch-log, The Vigil, forty-fifth year, first entry: Osei came to the last of the dome's meetings and said the true plan. Don't carry two hundred thousand. Carry the choice. The choice is not a number; it is the ones who say yes when you ask them, and no one in the dome has asked the thirty-one million in six hundred years, because asking is not a vote. Rhee said the seven years are not a thing the dome does. I said the true plan costs seven years, and the seven years are the ones we do not have, because the relay window opens in the seventh year and the Ash touches Terminus in the seventh year, and the Mite has to be in both, when it is, to carry anything. That is the whole of it. Not a number. Not a saving. An asking, of thirty-one million people who have been waiting, in the Quiet, in the queue, in the not-listened-to, for six hundred years, for someone to open the door. The dome did not answer. The not-answering is the Crossing, and the Crossing is now seven years long.