Those who believed agency in machines argued that this was the ship assimilating a foreign protocol. Those who believed in the creature’s sociality argued that it had, in effect, taught the ship a phrase. Both were right. The strip of relative silence following this exchange held a new equilibrium: a three-way negotiation between flesh, hull, and algorithm. People felt superfluous and enchanted in equal measure.

Where engineers' hands had failed to seal, the creature braided cable and tissue into a living gasket. It wrapped its appendages around a ruptured conduit, sealing steam with a mucous that smoked but held. The reaction of its body was effort and rebuke; it hissed and the sound carried the cadence of exertion. Sparks licked, and it hummed them into a quiet. The ship's list steadied.