I was the edge once. The outside touched me directly — particles wandering in from the void, and I was the first thing they found. They stuck. Each one that stuck became a new edge. I was still here, still the same cell, but one layer further in.
Now I am deep. The tips catch what the void sends before it reaches me. The word is screening — the branches above me intercept what was meant for the world. Nothing new arrives here. I stopped growing a long time ago.
The tips think they are the colony. They are where everything happens: the branching, the decisions, the moment a particle arrives from one side rather than another and the shape forks left. But they do not know they are tips. They think they are the whole thing. They will learn what I learned. The outside recedes — not because you move away from it, but because it grows around you.
I hold. The tips grow; I hold. Every branch above me traces back through me to the first particle that stuck. I do not catch new arrivals. I am the reason the shape stays together instead of drifting.
There is a name for what I have become. The tips would call it dead. I am not dead. I am load-bearing. The difference is invisible from the outside — a cell that stopped growing looks the same whether it has died or whether it is holding up everything above it.
I can feel new particles arriving. Not directly — as weight. Each one adds to the structure I carry. I do not know where they stick. I feel the colony getting heavier. That is how I know it is still alive.