'23kpc' Chapter 42: Some Dust Settles

...but not every box of answers comes neatly gift-wrapped

[I don’t remember the exact prompt I fed the AI for this — something like “an imperfectly wrapped gift box,” I think. This tiptoes the down the center of the “literal vs. figurative” continuum of AI images I described in a caption a few chapters ago, and I guess it’ll do.]