Disra Senkovi, now 189 years old and believing himself the last human alive, spends his final years in the flooded central section of the Aegean. The human crew areas are abandoned, and Senkovi has stopped considering cold sleep because the ship is decaying, its systems are entangled with the planet below, and Senkovi fears waking centuries later to find Damascus ruined.

Senkovi watches the octopi he helped create and uplift spread across the seas of Damascus, forming many communities and building increasingly complex cities and machines. Octopi visit Senkovi aboard the Aegean, communicating through color, posture, and the ship’s imperfect translation systems. Senkovi can collaborate with the octopi technically, but Senkovi never fully understands them as individuals.

One visiting octopus, whom Senkovi thinks of as Salome, performs a slow, deliberate display that the Aegean translates only fragmentarily. After reflection, Senkovi realizes Salome is asking Senkovi to come down to Damascus and experience the world he made. Senkovi has seen that world through remotes, but has never entered it himself, and he knows the octopi are already surpassing him.

Senkovi’s thoughts turn to the secret he still tries to control: the wrecked shuttle that carried Baltiel after the infection from Nod took hold of him. The shuttle survived re-entry and impact, sealing whatever remains of Baltiel inside. Senkovi has marked the crash site with every warning he can devise and has told the octopi stories of plague and death, successfully keeping them away from the sealed wreck for decades.

Senkovi remains haunted by guilt over Baltiel and the others who died on Nod, in orbit, or during the crashes. He worries that the octopi may someday go to Nod despite his quarantine warnings. Tormented by Baltiel’s infected final words, “We’re going on an adventure,” Senkovi dreams or imagines the transformed Baltiel reaching for him; whether peacefully or in terror, Senkovi dies in the tank, leaving Damascus to the octopi.