A sketch for a space opera. Long, long ago, there was war in the heart of the galaxy. The core stars were ripped apart by the fury of that conflict. Lucky is a survivor from it; she is lucky to even exist. Her people, the flowing people, were destroyed by the measuring people. War separates the victors from the losers. The victors survive and the losers are crushed from existence and from memory. To go home would have been death, so Lucky fled. She programmed her ship, the Expedient, to take her away from the galactic core, away from the planets where her people once lived and into the skeins of stars that make up the spiral arms of the galaxy. That was a long time ago. Few of the places she once knew can now support life. She has been a refugee since, drifting from star to star, in a half-life of suspended animation, known as slowtime. The Expedient charts a careful course, ploughing its lonely furrow between the stars, always away from what she once knew. She'd stop running but it's now all she knows.