Chapter 123: Out on the Edge of Everything

=== Summary ===
Shepard’s silence in the rachni web greatly disturbs Free-Flickering-Flame, and her children feel her anxiety. Despite her calling, Shepard’s song is quiet,
Conrad Verner and the crew of the Alarei go on a whirlwind tour of radiation soaked relays and planets. Conrad explains that some of the mass relays (but not all) have special “dark switches” that appear to allow excess dark energy to be shunted away from the relay. 
As the crew pulls logs from the relay, they create a timeline of events:
Several billion years ago, an enormous amount of mass came through the Kappa Iota Relay, overloading it. The relay failed over to it’s dark switches and the resulting dark energy was so violent it aged the star billions of years- causing it to go neutron.
As they go along, they see a pattern of spikes of radiation from large mass transfers. These appear to collate to Reaper (and Geth) fleet movements: Sovereign arriving to speak to the geth on Rannoch and Sovereign and the Geth arriving at the Citadel. Some of the Alarei’s crew are stuck on Hastrom for a time as they gather logs there. While waiting for enough of a break in the radiation to leave, Veetor and Conrad confirm their hypothesis: The timeline of something using the mass relay at Dholen and the star losing mass (and irradiating Hastrom) match. It suddenly occurs to Conrad that what they are seeing at Dholen and Hastrom match what is happening to Sol- and Earth.
=== Title Meaning ===
=== Easter Eggs ===
==== Discord Highlights ====
Runaway quote bots, the sword of writer's block, and arranged arguments about cream cheese.