Cass exported the results and stored them in a mental box labeled "list." There might have been, perhaps, in this list, a word that, once sufficiently pondered, would alert the Transients (though, having traveled through the cables of the Dark Unit, the risk was already as great as real).
She rose back onto the Fortress floor, donned her Armor which sealed around her, and activated the Entangled Gate leading to the Sanctum.
This required several manipulations: first, the gate activated for a millisecond to send an alert to the Wau present in the Sanctum. They refrained from having any thoughts whatsoever during the following minute, after which the gate reactivated fully, allowing Cass to pass through.
The gate was usually round to maximize surface usage from available energy, but, as the ultimate luxury, the Sanctum's gate was rectangular, resembling double doors leading into some esoteric realm. When it activated, it shone brightly, a flash illuminating the Fortress, since stray air molecules were abruptly severed (gates also served to cut masses or beings in half upon activation or deactivation, though obviously never used that way). And then there was simply continuity of space, as if the corridor of black metal streaked with gold had always been there.
One step, the gate closed behind her. Flash. Corridor.
The Wau never encountered each other, even accidentally. Each had their own Fortress, their Entangled Gates, their business, presumably. A Wau was sufficient unto themselves, she had been told during recruitment when an AI drone guided her from the rendezvous point on Lennox to Francisco-1 and then this space.
This place also featured an Hypnos on the right door and a more conventional living area, but above all, a place for remote visual exchanges with other Wau, located at the end of the corridor behind august double doors, and finally, to the left, a space dedicated to meditation.
This meditation room was also constructed of black metal streaked with hyperchalcum gold. The lighting was dim and warm. A single large armchair faced a bay window revealing absolute darkness.
An absolute darkness demonstrating precisely what the Sanctum was.
The question the Wau posed upon first encountering the Transients was: where could we hide so that they could not eavesdrop on our thoughts? Unable, unlike certain Xenos, to slip into decimal or higher dimensions, the answer was: as far away as possible.
Thus, they created a vessel loaded with Entangled Gates and initiated a Drift of force 6 in a random direction. Unfortunately, the first vessel, by an extraordinarily unlucky, highly improbable, and perhaps even suspicious twist of fate, incinerated itself within a star. Well, there was a Sanctum 2, and that one had a safer destiny: this was the ship the Wau currently inhabited.
The Wau had never seen this ship from outside; he could only imagine its appearance. Its walls were strangely impervious to any form of probing—striking them yielded only a hollow sound. Yet sometimes he placed his hand upon a wall or the floor, trying to detect a faint vibration indicating that somewhere, in inaccessible chambers, a Brother of the Order was near, acting, doubting, enduring the solitude of their status.
Through this bay window, his predecessors had witnessed galaxies dancing during the Drift of force 6. Initially, the ship had crossed our perceptible bubble of 15 billion light-years, allowing the Wau to observe stars unseen by any human before. Then the vessel surpassed the boundary of the expanding universe: 93 billion light-years. There was a final galaxy, a final star, perhaps even a last molecule of wandering hydrogen in the great abyss, and the ship entered absolute nothingness—one that would someday be conquered by the expanding Universe but was now just a bubble of emptiness welcoming the slow evolution of cooling fusion masses, occasionally hosting individuals who thought, fought, stirred, and sometimes loved.
Five years ago, melancholically, the vessel passed the 110 billion light-years mark. The universe, first a wall of stars, compressed over the years into a shrinking ball, and eventually, even that ball disappeared. The vessel traveled beyond where the light of the last star reached. Only absolute emptiness remained, as testified by the darkened bay window.
The Wau knew that the Sanctum would drift endlessly toward the edge of this void, which itself possessed a boundary of sorts. Reality is a bubble in slightly more than five dimensions. Just as walking straight on a spherical planet eventually brings you back to your starting point, upon reaching the "end" of a five-dimensional bubble, you reappear on the other side. It's not actually reappearing, since the process is continuous, but that's how it would look on a two-dimensional diagram. This boundary was set at 160 billion light-years from the vessel's point of origin. Drift processes ensured that the ship would wander until the end of time toward this Omega point, the extreme distance from everything. Yet, perhaps upon arrival, there would not merely be emptiness: perhaps shy or daring Xenos had had the same idea before the Wau. Perhaps there existed, in that absolute darkness and distance, a galaxy free of all control harboring advanced civilizations. This Omega point, however, the Wau would never see in his lifetime.
In the meantime, hidden within this black ocean, the Waus believed they had their best chance at finally thinking without being spied on by gods.