The world aggregate cost reached five on a Tuesday.
Oren felt it three days before the reading confirmed it — the Cost Sense running at the ambient sensitivity of two years of development, the quality of the world's cost changing character before the number changed.
He announced it quietly at the oversight board session.
His mother noted it.
The session covered its regular business.
Afterward he walked to the well corner node.
The first Framework Inscription still in it.
The teaching signal about advancement after suppression, embedded the morning after Torven couldn't sleep, the signal that had traveled three hundred and forty kilometers to reach Wren and had started the network.
He stood at the well.
Felt five.
Five was different from seven.
Seven had been the morning knowing itself.
Five was —
He reached for the description.
Five felt like breathing.
