The Wound
The standing gradient
also: the vacuum endowment
The universe's finite endowment of usable order — the thing every crossing actually spends.
In full
The universe was born with a limited stock of usable difference, and every traversal draws on it. The usable headroom is the standing gradient; how much of it is left is what instruments read as the floor. The distinction that matters: you are not burning fuel, you are spending the principal.
Key facts
- Finite, and not replenished.
- The floor is the measure; the gradient is the thing being measured.
- Spending it locally has local consequences.
- No character states it this plainly — it is the shape underneath what they observe.