Holsten, expecting confinement, finds the Gilgamesh’s communications suite and adjacent spaces overtaken by a makeshift shanty town. The adults bear the strain of deprivation and indoctrination, while the children’s play jolts Holsten’s grief over humanity’s long decline. Overwhelmed by despair and tears, he is treated with reverence and escorted away.

He is taken to a shuttle bay transformed into a sprawling tangle of salvaged machinery centered on the ancient upload facility. There he finds Commander Guyen, terrifyingly old and sustained by life-support tubing and machines, effectively outsourcing his failing body. The cult-like atmosphere and Guyen’s condition underscore the cost of the years spent on this project.

Confronted, Guyen admits he didn’t spend a century solely on the uploader: he has overhauled the Gilgamesh—drive, security, and hull—to prepare for war with Kern’s satellite so humanity can seize the green planet. He frames the shanty population as necessary labor across generations to realize this singular vision, insisting only centralized resolve could safeguard the species.

Guyen declares the uploader now works and intends to copy himself into the ship to shepherd the mission after his imminent death, rejecting the idea of personal immortality. He dismisses Lain’s warnings of software ruin, citing Vitas’s support, and calls previous rogue processes mere failed fragments. Holsten contemplates sabotaging Guyen but refrains. Guyen reveals why Holsten was seized: to become the historian who records and legitimizes how humanity reclaims its new home.