transport 0.006324 had gone dark and kept its counsel our humble counsel of eight required to solve the case sixteen billion earthbound souls poured over and tortured over the doomed voyage every manifest, document, procedure, telemetry, and transmission every citizen was entertained with their own detective work a public feeding, feeding on the dead earth was in full blossom, with seeds spilling out low earth orbit colossal metal flowers in the sky, our staging for the jump though the abyss it was 10,000 strangers, really, just another pod in a stream of transports, chariot convoy sigma sigma alpha 10,000 humans screaming or hiding, fighting or plotting, dying or living did they purposefully blind us? had they gone mad? had they tried to escape our madness? rough waves splashing in a dark harbor we pinged them and pinged them there was no answer they were too far out for our scouts there are no answers thousands of souls thousands of questions no answers culminating in a 155-page document with this summary: so says our council an unspent seed but not too costly the next ten transports must still leave on time unsafe but each a risk that needs to be taken on the dying earth, seeds are sins sinfully removing scarce resources but off the earth, seeds are salvation rightfully spreading the word and hope of mankind sic transit gloria mundi