long-term-isolation

Enoch Wallace receives a message about an incoming traveler from Thuban VI and prepares the station accordingly. He reflects on past travelers, particularly a unique liquid tank visitor and a being he named Ulysses, highlighting his long experience and connection with diverse alien life forms. The chapter also reveals Enoch's awareness of an impending threat from watchers who may soon interfere with his work.

The narrator, an anthropologist using a Dissociative Cognition System (DCS) to suppress emotion and make rational decisions, reflects on a past choice to intervene in a local conflict involving a warlord named Ulm who wields ancient technology. Despite protocols against contamination, the narrator decides to assist a visitor resembling a previous ally, grappling with the tension between detached observation and emotional involvement, while facing the isolation of a centuries-long mission with no contact from home. Ultimately, the narrator resolves to accompany the visitor to investigate the warlord's activities, acknowledging a possible failure in professional detachment and the loneliness of being potentially the last of their kind.