Dead and projected to remain so, Sam really wants to move on. Unfortunately, his arch nemesis (read: a clock) is making that impossible.

They’d last seen the larger universe five hours ago, right before the ship entered the magnetic fold of the Eye and they began the arduous procedure of checking in at the dozen or so checkpoint that lay between them and the star colony. Thousands of glowing pinpricks – pupils without irises or whites or eyelids or lashes – blinked out and replaced by grey walls, dark corridors. Huge and endless and claustrophobic.

Izan needs to remind himself over and over again what he is not and what he might be. Or also: