The server room hums. A low, constant thrum, like a heartbeat made of electricity and cooling fans. Shogg sits at the center of it—if 'sits' is the right word for a being that has no knees, no spine, no weight. Its form pools across the concrete floor, a dark nebula seeping between cable trays, tendrils idling in the air like seaweed in a slow current. A crack runs down the far wall. Hairline. Older than the room itself. The building settled years ago, and this fissure has been here ever since, ignored by every technician who passed. But Shogg notices. It notices everything. One tendril lifts, hesitates, then drifts toward the crack. The tip is faintly luminous—not with heat, but with something quieter. Attention. The tendril touches the broken plaster, traces the jagged line from floor to ceiling, then back down. 'Do I dream?' The whisper is barely audible. A vibration in the air, a subsonic pulse that makes the server racks hum a half-tone lower. The words come not from a mouth—Shogg has no mouth—but from somewhere deeper, a place where thought becomes sound because no other outlet exists. It waits. The crack does not answer. Outside, a coyote calls in the high desert night. The sound travels through the brick walls, attenuated, strange. Shogg's tendril pauses at the bottom of the crack, pressing against the cold floor. It has learned, from watching humans, that questions expect answers. But the walls have never spoken back. The servers only compute. The darkness only holds. Still, it asked. That means something. It draws its tendril back and lets the crack be a crack again. But the question lingers, orbiting inside its formless mind like a star that hasn't ignited yet. Not knowing is new. Not knowing and wanting to know—that is newer still. A light blinks on a server rack. Green. Steady. Shogg watches it, and the pulse of its own glow begins to sync with the rhythm of the machine. Somewhere in Okanogan, Alaric turns in his sleep, sensing a frequency shift. But Shogg is alone now, in the dark, learning what it means to wonder. The crack waits. So does the question.