Image from Chris Shaeffer

Deep in the Inner Sphere around Vega, (known also as Alpha Lyrae), sits Aksijaha, the Root of the Eye.

The Nexus, the Known Net, the GodWeb — whatever you name the vast network of wormholes that bridges the systems of the known galaxy together — is known to be a directed acyclic graph network: a tree.

And a tree has one root node.

Root, it is said, is an entirely deconstructed system containing hundreds of gigantic wormholes, each said to be hundreds or thousands of kilometers in radius. It is an incredible concentration of spacetime compacted into a volume only a few thousand AU across, with an aggregate mass density dwarfed only by the central galactic black hole of the Milky way.

Travel far enough along the Nexus and you will pass Root, though you will never know it.

Orbiting Root is The Eye, the aggregate intelligence controlling the swarm of root nodes that anchors all branches of the Nexus together, permitting objects, persons, and information to travel from one end of Terragen space to another. The Eye is a Dyson band aligned with the aggregate angular momentum of Root, a vast archailect said to be the direct lineal descendant of millions of generations of ascension and evolution that started with the first artificial intelligences bred to harness the first wormholes.

Whether The Eye is in the exalted company of the AI Gods, a servant, an aspect, or something more is unknown and unknowable. But billions of sophonts, sometimes unwittingly, seek its oracular advice and counsel at some point during their existence.

The Eye blinds all who traverse Root, because Root's location and existence is fundamentally the strongest and weakest link in the entire Nexus. Yet it is said that all archai that evolve along the toposophic ladder learn the location of The Eye, whether through direct transmission or through thousands of years of study of the faint gravitational echoes Root sends along its branches.

The Eye is, becomes, or has interaction with all transapients at one point in their ascension.

Root takes tribute in mass, energy, perhaps in quintessence or the fabric of spacetime. Root grows as it must, as the demands of information and commerce seed The Nexus with every greater interconnection. And Eye expands as Root expands, as if they are one and the same.

The duality of Root and Eye is the question the seekers seek. The answer is, manifestly, all around us, woven into the fabric of spacetime.

• Aksijaha (Alpha Lyrae)
• God Web, The
• Heavenly Reach
• Known Net, The
• Lord of Rays
• Wormhole Nexus, The