Kai Or kept every door in the galaxy open at the cost of closing one. He was the Director of the Closure Bureau at the Energy Administration. The bureau had been established when he took office. There were thousands of institutions in the galaxy that built passages, but none that eliminated them. Or considered this abnormal. The cost of maintaining passages with no users could have improved the lives of billions of people. He established criteria under which a passage could be closed only if it had not been used for a thousand years, had no residents or return-eligible persons, and could be replaced by another passage. The Closure Bureau’s criteria were strict. Of 960,000 candidates, only 518 passed. After further independent verification, 100 were selected for trial closures. Criticism came from every direction that the number was too small. Or waved the closure rulebook in his hand and replied that an institution responsible for closing passages had to be more cautious than one responsible for keeping them open.
He was present on the day the first passage was closed. He watched the circle of light shrink to a point, and the point disappear. Nothing happened. He reported it as a success. Eleven more passages were closed. The energy saved was sent to life-support facilities in poor settlements. For the first time, Or demonstrated that closure could mean saving other people rather than abandoning people. An old signal was detected at the thirteenth passage. A ship that had gone missing 871 years earlier was approaching the entrance as it was being closed. There were 700 passengers aboard. The passage could not be widened again, and the rescue ship arrived too late. All the passengers had died before they could be rescued. The ship’s departure record had been included in the review materials. The destination star had simply been renamed four times over 871 years, and the search system had failed to recognize the different names as the same location.
Or had followed every procedure. The problem was that the procedures he had created had overlooked a single star name. The investigative committee concluded that he was not personally at fault. Or submitted his resignation. The government rejected it, arguing that accepting the resignation of someone who had done nothing wrong would shift responsibility from the system to an individual. He submitted a second resignation. It was rejected. His seventeenth resignation contained only one sentence explaining his reason: “Unable to bear the conclusion that I have no responsibility.” The administrative system refused to accept it because the reason did not match any category specified in the regulations. Or remained suspended from duty. The Closure Bureau could not close any new passages, but neither could it terminate the reviews already under way. The staff searched for unidentified travelers in a bureau that closed no passages. Or met with the victims’ families. Some called him a murderer. Others said that without the accident, they would never have known that the missing ship existed. Or answered neither. Afterward, he developed a management system that automatically applied changes in star names to all historical records. The system was connected to Galactic Standard Time and the entire passage network, and consumed vast amounts of energy. Twelve more missing ships were discovered. None was approaching a closed passage. Or’s management system saved lives. Yet it could not prove that there were no other ships still undiscovered.