The drafting table in Frost-Belt Hub was eighty feet long. Austin had covered it with a map of the galaxy, a coil of rope, three coffee cups, and the broken hinge from a cellar door.
Pug slept beside his boot with his white-gold tennis ball under one paw. Tie Kuang, Xuan Ming, Jiang Taixu, Chen Tian, and Wu Ji stood around the table.
Austin pointed to the outer edge of the map.
“Boundary-Alpha found the same problem in every reading. The outer rim has stopped moving out. Perseus is sinking fastest. If we do nothing, the rest of the galaxy will follow it inward.”
Xuan Ming held his clipboard against his chest. “The old books call it the Big Crunch. They say creation must return to nothing.”
“The old books didn’t have a survey crew,” Austin said. “Whoever poured the universe skipped the soil report. This is real stone, real pressure, and real people living on top of it. We can measure the damage. That means we can work on it.”
He drew a thick line under the Perseus Arm.
“We start with universal shoring. Catch the weight, stop the sag, and give ourselves time to build permanent supports. Then we use the pressure we capture to start expansion again. A controlled Big Bounce, not another explosion.”
