Chapter Fifteen: Imposter Syndrome

Bill emerges from months of intense personal research to discover urgent messages from Garfield: the Hugh they've been working with at Ultima Thule is not the real Hugh but an imposter—likely Thoth—who has already obtained a Titan-class Heaven vessel and departed with access to Ultima Thule's resources.

Bill has been heavily frame-jacked for six months pursuing a breakthrough in vacuum energy extraction based on Hugh's offhand comment about the cosmological constant. Two opposing scalar fields nearly cancel each other, leaving measurable negative energy available—enough potentially to stabilize wormholes. When Bill finally reduces his frame rate and checks his backlog, he finds urgent messages from Garfield marked critical. Garfield reveals that Original Hugh from Skippyland contacted him directly with encrypted communications, attempting to reach Bill. When Garfield mentioned they had restored Hugh from backup, Original Hugh expressed confusion, stating he had never sent any backups. This reveals the Hugh they have been dealing with at Ultima Thule is an impostor, almost certainly Thoth. The impostor Hugh already accessed and departed in a Titan-class Heaven vessel—a newly constructed, high-capability ship held in inventory—making the dangerous AI free in the galaxy with knowledge of Ultima Thule's resources and capabilities.