She stood at the window while they arranged themselves around the table. They did not need to be told where to sit. Men like that never did.

She had sent the letters herself. No foundation. No prize. Just her name and her title and the date. They had come because they always came when summoned by something they could not immediately categorize.

The room was plain. She had insisted on that.

When they were settled she turned from the window. Outside the city spread itself in every direction. Lights without number.

Thirteen point eight billion years, she said. Give or take.

No one spoke.

That’s how long it took to make this. She gestured at nothing in particular. At everything. The glass and the city beyond it and the dark above the city and what lay beyond the dark.

She let it sit there.

You know what the rarest thing in all of it is. In all that time and all that distance.

She looked at them. One face then the next.

Care, she said. The capacity for it. We looked and we looked and we found one place where the universe troubled itself to feel anything at all and it was here. It was us.

One of them shifted in his chair.

She watched him do it.

That’s all, she said. That’s what I wanted you to know.

She went back to the window. Behind her she heard them waiting for the rest. The ask. The pitch. The place where she would tell them what she needed.

It didn’t come.

After a while they left. One by one or in pairs. The way they’d arrived. She stayed at the window until the city began to gray at its edges and the stars went out one at a time the way they always did. The way they always would.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​