✴

“I don’t know, something about that familiar was just unsettling,” you say.

[7 disliked that]

“5 is my friend...” she says.

“I didn’t mean--like, I understand, really. I’m sorry--”

“She does her best to make friends,” 7 says. “It’s hard.”

The construct 5 shift behind 7’s avatar, as if hiding.

“You are confused. Everyone is always confused.” She turns away from you and opens a gateway in the æther. “Let’s not waste time.” She enters the gate and 5 follows after her.

Now alone in the entry node, you try to refocus on the task at hand. You look out into the network to find the node ending in 450, and open your own doorway.

The routing function takes you to your target. It’s a local node like any other. Nothing stands out to you. You consider how to best proceed in searching a range of hundreds of addresses when you don’t even know what exactly you’re looking for.