He sat in the uncompressed possibility for a long time.
Not the sitting of the Fifth Gate's room, which had been the sitting of someone who had arrived at something and was waiting for the arrival's content to reveal itself through presence rather than through reaching. Not the sitting of the contact zone's hundreds of cycles, which had been the sitting of sustained genuine collaboration in an ongoing rhythm.
This sitting was the sitting of something the path had not previously required.
Being genuinely what he was in the source of all he might be.
The Outer Heaven's question did not have the structure of the questions the previous stages had presented. The sphere's question had been externally posed and required a yes-or-no equivalent for an answer. The mountain's gates had posed conditions that required expressed responses through genuine engagement. The Outer Heaven's question was not external in the same sense and did not require a response through engagement or expression.
