"Regrettable expression," Lowbeer said, "regrettably common usage, here. Inaccurate as well, since your continuum won’t remain short. It appears so to us, but only since it’s just diverged from our shared past. Its birth, as it were. But it also reflects an undeniably imperial aspect of what we’re doing, because we assume our continuum to be that from which so-called stubs branch. The mechanism that permits us to do that appears to be located here, however mysteriously. Stubs, lacking that agency, are unable to initiate stubs of their own."