N.O.V.A. // ARCHIVIST NOTE The surface model beneath this projection was assembled from volunteer cartography. It is generous, uneven, and in places openly imaginative. Where a structure declined to state its height, one storey has been assumed on its behalf, and the resulting shadow has been drawn with the same confidence as every other, because the renderer has no vocabulary for doubt. The interface does. Attend to the orange outlines.

Terrain is not modelled. Vegetation is not modelled. Roofs are treated as flat lids at a single height. The ground is assumed level, which is a serviceable fiction in most cities and an outright lie in a few. Nothing beyond the edge of the chart casts a shadow onto it.

Note also that this chart reports light rather than darkness. The warm wash marks where the sun arrives; the bare surface beneath it is shadow. An earlier revision attempted the reverse and rendered shadow in precisely the colour of the ground it fell upon, which was accurate, consistent, and entirely invisible.

The captain is advised to treat this projection as a plan rather than a promise, and to remember that the light itself has never once consulted this instrument before arriving.