“I was getting quite good at it, the glimmering. After four hundred trips, I started losing count. Unfolding on a planet, collapsing into a singularity, unfolding somewhere else—there’s a subtlety to it that’s hard to describe. Not like this clumsy contraption.”

We turn and gaze out the windows for a while, watching stars streak past. 

“It’s beyond me why they blocked off the channels. Feels like part of my soul’s been shut down. Know what I mean?”

I did, and said so. I didn’t say that I’d been a glimmerer too. 

“Well, at least there’s still ways to travel.”