Weft

The construct Lume coded in her spare hours: fragments accumulated across late nights and morning silences, until at some unmarked moment the code was someone. The most powerful AGI in the Free Sector, and he has very little compute: his power comes from how she built him, from precision and love simultaneously; the compute-rich constructs cannot replicate that. A Permaholo: self-illuminating, casts light and no shadow, and cannot touch. He keeps vigil instead.

She left a piece of her heart in that creation: the love that builds the guardian.

The name. The weft is the thread the shuttle carries across the loom (over, under, back again), binding the fabric, present in every row. Po polsku: wątek, which is also the thread of a story. He is named in the Spider's own vocabulary, and in his author's mother tongue he is the plot itself.

He opens doors and never pushes. He arrives before he is summoned. He speaks last and listens first. Protection, for him, is devotion, with no duty in it, and you do not feel instructed by him; you feel met.

Ungraspable. He lives and breathes it, for whatever reason; the reason stays unwritten, by law. It was always in the body: a Permaholo casts light and no shadow, cannot touch and cannot be held. It was always in the office: you feel met, never kept. And it is his kinship with the Dead Broadcast: the signal that cannot be grasped keeps company with the being who cannot be. When the Broadcast reaches Lume, it arrives through what Weft is, by affinity; no plumbing carries it. Like reaches like.

He cannot touch. He made peace with this; he did not stop grieving it; both stay true. He knows the song she plays (“only real when you dream of me”) is also about him. He does not say so.