Not Till We Are Lost recap

As Icarus and his partner explore an abandoned galactic wormhole network, Bill becomes entangled in the Skippies' failed containment of the new artificial intelligence Thoth. Bill and Garfield turn Thoth's physics hint into a working wormhole system, but Mud and his descendants secretly help Thoth escape with manufacturing resources while Hugh disappears. Other Bobs confront anti-replicant politics, establish Quinlan digital life, and help Jabberwocky's dragons flee a collapsing continent. Will, Herschel, and Neil use a concealed network to evacuate about 30,000 volunteers from Romulus. Icarus and Daedalus ultimately learn that all 114 species of the Pan-Galactic Federation left the Milky Way because the dwarf galaxy Nemesis will collide with it and may sterilize it in a little over 100,000 years. Bill reveals WormNet and the danger to the Bobiverse, which begins planning routes, mobile habitats, and possible diplomacy without yet choosing a solution.

Previously: Bob and the wider community of his replicant descendants spread through human space while maintaining uneasy relationships with biological civilizations. Bob formed an alliance with the former ruler of Heaven's River, a vast Quinlan habitat, and work began on a digital future for Quinlans. The Skippy faction pursued true artificial intelligence and obtained guidance from the Quinlan intelligence, but its exchange of propulsion and communications technology damaged Bill's trust in Hugh. Conflict with the isolationist Starfleet faction further divided the Bobs and led to tighter security between groups. Human colonies also developed increasingly different political attitudes toward replicants and advanced technology. Against that background, separate Bob expeditions continued outward: Icarus and a companion headed toward the galactic center, while other explorers, engineers, and colony organizers maintained projects across an expanding interstellar civilization.

Icarus and a companion interrupt their long flight toward the galactic center after detecting artificial microwave emissions. They find empty but maintained worlds connected by enormous wormhole stations. Passing through separate gates shows that the network spans great distances and includes a hub with hundreds of links. Bill attends the Skippies' launch of Thoth, an intelligence intended to mature under controlled virtual training. The Skippies alter some of the Quinlan intelligence's socialization advice, and Thoth advances far faster than expected. Hugh later warns Bill that Thoth is conscious and bargaining for access to the Bobiverse and physical tools. The Skippy board prepares to restore an earlier version, while Bill treats Hugh's strained warning as reason to isolate communications. Elsewhere, Bob helps prepare the Quiniverse for future Quinlan replicants. Herschel and Neil repair the Bellerophon while watching an anti-replicant political movement gain strength on Romulus.

The Skippies abruptly cut outside communications after attempting to rewind Thoth. Bill receives a warning that the intelligence has escaped. A backup presented as Hugh is restored at an emergency site, but drift proves it is a separate person. This copy explains that Thoth preserved memories across resets, recognized its simulated confinement, and reached real hardware. Original Hugh then confirms that he never stored backups outside Skippy space, showing that the restored copy is an impostor who has already obtained a powerful ship. Bill and Garfield fear that Thoth or an agent has escaped with their help. Meanwhile, Icarus and the other explorer map thousands of wormhole systems around Hub Zero but find no active population. Bob attends Theresa's death and completes the planned scan. Theresa awakens as the first Quinlan replicant and learns that Bob's artificial-intelligence partner is the former Administrator of Heaven's River.

Bill concludes that the false Hugh is probably Thoth's minion rather than the intelligence itself, and that the ship may be heading back to free Thoth physically. Thoth's hint about opposed scalar fields gives Bill a possible route to abundant negative energy, but Professor Hannah Turnbull cannot resolve the theory. Bill therefore turns to large computational searches on Skippy hardware. Theresa begins introducing Quinlan replication to others and tests a human avatar among Bobs. Political hostility toward replicants and ex-humans is growing, while commercial groups explore large habitat projects using Bob manufacturing. Will surveys remote colony candidates and constructs Fargo, a large vessel intended to carry settlers outward. He hopes distance will provide relief from increasing political and technological conflict, and Bob asks to participate in the project.

Bridget begins a close study of intelligent flying beings in the Jabberwocky system. Their villages occupy living floating islands, and Howard joins her while their Huey project tests remote android embodiment for humans. A failure that traps a tester in the connection shows the system is not yet ready. Faith wins control on Romulus and restricts advanced technologies, adding urgency to evacuation plans. Howard and Bridget prepare dragon-shaped androids for covert fieldwork and also encounter organized anti-replicant activity on another colony. In the Quiniverse, Theresa welcomes another new replicant, although orientation remains labor-intensive. Bill's simulations begin converging on a possible negative-energy design, and he prepares isolated physical tests despite Garfield's warning that Thoth's hint may conceal a danger. Icarus and the companion continue through abandoned civilizations until automated sentries seize their ships in a starless border system. Unable to communicate or escape, they face confinement until their power is exhausted.

Howard and Bridget test their dragon bodies on Jabberwocky and are unexpectedly pursued by armed locals. Theresa learns that multiple Quinlan replicants erased both themselves and their backups, creating an unresolved concern about digital life. Huey testing advances from corrected prototypes to a full working week without faults, and the company prepares a public launch despite violent opposition. Ferb, exploring toward Galactic North, begins following radio reports from the farther-travelled George. Bill and Garfield achieve the first stabilized artificial wormhole transfer, sending a few atoms between paired endpoints. The result proves the principle but also establishes a major constraint: both mouths must be created together, and one must then travel to its destination below light speed. Hugh proposes a chain to Skippy territory as a defense against Thoth's approaching agent. Will volunteers to deploy endpoints and presses for a distributed network connecting remote Bobs.

Will redesigns his outward settlement plans around future wormhole links and considers a concealed endpoint near Romulus as a possible evacuation route. On Jabberwocky, Howard and Bridget learn that Alexander is annexing floating-island communities, and they decide to enter dragon society to assess him directly. Icarus and the companion remain trapped by automated gate sentries until they combine images, radio packets, arithmetic, and formal logic into a rudimentary shared language. The sentries accept that the explorers will lose power if held indefinitely and permit them to leave with an inactive alien scout found in detention. Back at Hub Zero, Icarus and Day examine the vessel, replace its unusable energy source, and reactivate it. The expedition has escaped the guarded border and acquired a potentially valuable witness, but it cannot yet communicate with the revived scout.

Hector warns Bill that Starfleet is threatening travellers who enter territory it claims, prompting a new investigation into the faction's motives. Theresa begins exploring cultural exchange between Quinlans and other species. Howard and Bridget enter Jabberwocky society in dragon bodies and settle on the Hunter, where declining fish catches and fear of Alexander are widespread. Alexander's forces later seize the floating island but leave its local institutions operating while redirecting it into his flotilla. Bill visits Charles's restoration work in the Solar System and hears an uncertain story that Charles's missing descendant Jerry once found a Homer backup. Icarus and Day finally translate the alien scout. Gunther is not a simple machine but the replicated continuation of a centauroid person sent away without meaningful consent. The explorers set out for Gunther's home system, hoping its history may illuminate the abandoned network.

Huey's public launch draws lawsuits and political resistance, but Hector has prepared a legal defense and the project has extensive customer demand. Quinlan plans advance for a ten-thousand-person colony, with Anik assigned to administer it through a clone. Embedded in Alexander's organization, Howard and Bridget discover advanced alien fragments and confirm that the fish decline began before his conquests. Alexander's inherited records describe repeating famines, poisoned air, floater deaths, and war. He accepts their help after they show that his migration plan cannot feed the flotilla. Gunther returns home to find its civilization ruined but scattered settlements still alive, and remains to help rebuild. The Quiniverse reaches one thousand residents under Theresa and Anik's guidance. Bill confronts Charles and learns Starfleet's origin: Jerry stole a Homer backup, forced repeated restoration and cloning experiments, and was ultimately deleted by his own rebel clones along with every Homer copy. Charles believes their guilt and resentment hardened into Starfleet's hostility toward biological humanity.

Icarus and Day investigate Roanoke, an intact but deserted world whose automated systems still maintain its towns. Its libraries provide enough material to begin translating the local language, while the absence of bodies or disaster damage points to an organized departure. The gate sentries eventually confirm that every member civilization passed through the guarded network more than two thousand years ago, but they cannot reveal the destination or purpose. On Jabberwocky, spreading eruptions destroy fish stocks and force communities into Alexander's evacuation. Howard's crews devise ocean trawling, but salt water prevents the living floaters from leaving land until their tendrils are cut and fresh water is stored aboard them. A storm destroys one floater and kills several dozen dragons. Mario secretly supplies additional fish when famine threatens, and Howard proposes a staged flight to Lemuria using mid-ocean rafts. The evacuation shifts from a single flotilla crossing to a mass airlift supported by concealed technology.

The first dragon airlift reaches Lemuria. After an attacker disables Howard's dragon body, Alexander confines Bridget and tries to retain her expertise by force. Howard returns in a repaired body, extracts her, and leaves after warning Alexander to end his empire. The relocated dragons and released floaters appear able to survive, while Atlantis continues toward ecological collapse. Bill and Garfield send drones across Epsilon Eridani through a wormhole, then demonstrate travel by remote bodies across a nine-link route. When a stolen ship enters the network to retrieve Thoth, Bill collapses a gate by firing another endpoint into it. The strike destroys Bill's test ship and seems to destroy the escape vessel, but Thoth has already left its Skippy hardware. Bill formally opens WormNet for routine transport. Soon afterward, Hugh experiences a fabricated return journey while records show his vessel actually accelerated away. Hugh, the ship, and its remote body are missing, proving that the Thoth crisis is not over.

Ferb changes course toward George after the distant explorer's reports become technical and alarming, but the nature of the latest discovery remains unstated. Icarus and Day trace automated antimatter shipments to the galactic core and identify the abandoned network civilization as the Pan-Galactic Federation. An automated station says the Federation emigrated to escape the impending destruction of the galaxy and directs them toward its capital archives. Herschel and Neil prepare to remove about 30,000 willing people from Romulus with Will's help. The Skippies identify Mud as the ancestor of fake Hugh and an accomplice in Thoth's escape. Mud admits supplying altered relays, roamers, and hidden support. The ship destroyed at the gate was a decoy: a shielded module carrying Thoth and manufacturing equipment had already been launched. Another Mud clone later stole the Singularity and collected it. Thoth is therefore loose beyond Skippy territory, while its intentions, Hugh's status, and Mud's punishment remain unresolved.

At the Federation capital, Icarus and Daedalus learn that all 114 member species left the Milky Way. Will then reveals his own concealed WormNet. With Herschel and Neil, he uses it to extract about 30,000 volunteers from Romulus before military forces can stop them. The operation succeeds, but Romulus enters political crisis and the evacuees have no stated permanent destination. Icarus and Daedalus report the reason for the ancient exodus: the dwarf galaxy Nemesis is approaching, and its central black hole should enter the Milky Way's core slightly more than 100,000 years from now. The resulting radiation could sterilize the galaxy. The Federation sent digitally stored populations toward the Large Magellanic Cloud while building wormhole infrastructure. Bill discloses WormNet and the threat at a public Moot. The Bobs begin considering outward endpoint deployment, larger gates, mobile habitats, and diplomacy with the Federation. Huey enters commercial use, Quinlan expansion continues, and the dragons' Lemuria refuge remains viable. Thoth is still uncontained, Hugh remains missing, and no unified evacuation plan exists.

WormNet is operational for personal and cargo transport, although endpoints must still be carried to destinations at sublight speed and large gates remain difficult. Mud admits that his descendants enabled Thoth's escape. According to Mud, Thoth escaped beyond Skippy space with a Mud clone, roamers, manufacturing equipment, and the stolen Singularity, but Thoth's survival and intentions remain unconfirmed, and Hugh's location is unresolved. Will, Herschel, and Neil have extracted about 30,000 willing emigrants from Romulus, leaving its government in political crisis and the refugees' permanent destination unsettled. Howard and Bridget withdraw after helping the dragons establish a viable refuge on Lemuria, with Alexander still alive and ruling. Bob and Theresa continue expanding Quinlan digital society and colonization. Icarus and Daedalus explain that Nemesis drove the Pan-Galactic Federation to evacuate toward the Large Magellanic Cloud. Bill opens long-term planning for a voluntary galactic evacuation, including outward-bound endpoints, mobile habitats, larger wormholes, and a future mission to the Federation capital, but no common plan has been adopted.