The failure of an experiment is a hard pill to swallow.

Each step you take committing yourself to the unknown – moving closer to the hazy, shining promise of the future – takes you farther away from what you started with. Someday, you might find yourself so far out you can't remember where you started, or where you planned on going. You might be forced to stop walking – to abandon your project, something you love.

But therein lies the essentiality of progress.

The day after the Gazette announced the emergency hiatus of the Science & Technology column, the Editor received a concerned call from a certain E. Clark, of the Seldona Royal University. Informed that the department had recently been emptied, having suffered an astonishing number of transfers and resignations, and merged with another to preserve it (creating the eclectic placeholder Science & Fiction), Clark expressed that the 2025 cohort had produced several prospective interns – keen researchers, excellent writers, and starry-eyed with enthusiasm. In a few months, the Science page will return honourably to being third from the front.

To move forward – to move at all, anywhere in the wide world – you have to stare into the vast and uncertain expanse of the future, and decide, nevertheless, to start walking.

The doors of the Innovations department swing shut behind its last employees. The empty desks, drawers cleared and chairs stacked, are left in the dark, awaiting future instructions. Light reflects off the glass doors as they close, rippling forth, multicoloured, dappling the floor as it paves their diverging paths forward.