Aabria Iyengar

Running so fast.

And the feet are so synchronized.

There is zero.

Wisest of all is the ant that can tell shade from shadow and flees the approaching boot.

Western Karooish adage.

Three phrases written on a window.

Lean in.

There's a fucking mole.

Good luck.

Let's talk quite briefly about the phraseology behind lean in.

It might be obvious that it means to focus or to consider something closely.

Its origins stem from what little the average person in the 40 suns understands of faster than light space travel via ORM.

To lean in but not pass through is a death sentence.

That's a phrase people know but don't understand.

And though the what might be vaguely intuited, something about the portal, the wormhole, we don't have the word for it.

We call it a lean.

The why is a mystery.

And yet, somehow across centuries of common use, the phrase lean in remains no longer a warning to would-be pilots in their first days of training.

Though I suppose in this instance, scrawled messily in Jemis Octavo soldier's blood across the Kenner's cockpit window, some spirit of the original mystery has been preserved.

Ooh, okay.