The
Seams
Microscopic tears in the fabric of spacetime that grew, across the decades, into something humans can navigate. The work of The Drift is the work of navigating them.
A Seam is a small region of spacetime where the local fabric does not behave the way it does on either side. The instruments call it a junction. The first generation of people who worked near one called it a wound. The institutional term is Seam boundary.
Seams formed in 2047 in the wake of the signal's arrival. They were microscopic for decades — undetectable without specialised equipment. By the 2070s they were large enough to move things. By the 2130s they were stable enough to be catalogued, labelled, and approached by an institution that had decided it could train people to work near them.
Approach
The vessel positions itself within the boundary-interface range of the junction (typically 2.3 – 8.7 km, junction-dependent). The harmonic array begins generating the resonance frequency required to engage the boundary.
Resonance
The array operates at the hydrogen-line frequency (1420.40575 MHz) — the same frequency on which the original signal arrived. Tolerance is tight: ±0.008% frequency stability. A drift outside that band collapses the engagement.
Engagement
When the array holds resonance and the local junction is stable, the boundary becomes traversable. The vessel passes through. The traversal itself is instantaneous from the crew's perspective; instruments record between 0.4 and 4.7 seconds of boundary contact.
Drift
Every traversal involves some spatial displacement. The further the junction's effective range from its catalogued reference point, the larger the drift. Calibration is most of a Drift Engineer's job.
Junction
A specific Seam catalogued and labelled by ISNA. Junctions are named alphanumerically — Junction 14-A, Junction 22-C, Junction 14-F.
Traversal
A vessel's passage through a junction. Logged. Witnessed. Filed against the ship and the navigators on duty.
Harmonic Array
The shipboard equipment that generates the resonance required to engage a Seam boundary. Standard T-class: dual stack (primary + secondary).
T-class
The vessel class designed for routine Seam traversal. Crew capacity 15–20. The NV Erika Magnusdóttir is a T-class.
ISNI
International Seam Navigation Institute. Founded 2135. Trains navigators.
ISNA
The licensing and registry authority. Distinct from the training institute. Issues vessel registries, mission classifications, and the casualty notices nobody wants to write.