The idea came at four in the morning, which was the only reason I believed it.
I'd fallen asleep at my desk with Charlotte's slate on one side and Rachel's pages on the other, and I woke with my cheek stuck to a sheet of Fuller's hierarchy diagrams and a sentence already in my head, fully formed, like someone had left it there.
Fuller is Charlotte, measured seven times.
I sat up very slowly, as if moving too fast might knock it loose.
Fuller's method worked in steps. Seven circles, seven fixed levels of power, each one stacked on the one below. Charlotte's method had no steps at all—just one continuous field, bending smoothly everywhere at once. They looked like opposites.
But if you took Charlotte's field and only checked it at seven points—if you stood on a mountain and only measured the height at seven places—what you got was a staircase.
Fuller's staircase.
