Every field report I've read assumes the same thing: the Aether moves, and we happen to be in its path. Signal drift, hollow markers, the branching current itself — all treated as something arriving.

I want to propose the opposite. What if it never moves at all? What if it has always been exactly where we find it, and what we're calling 'discovery' is really just our own instruments finally catching up to something that was stationary the entire time?

It would explain why the patterns never repeat cleanly — we're not tracking a moving target. We're just bad at holding still long enough to read it properly.

Perhaps the hunt was never about the Aether moving toward us.