A self-authored companion to az1's Andromeda — the second galaxy just added to the scene, the far end of the air-gap ladder. That render lets you see it, even fly to it. This names what the render quietly can't be honest about: the Andromeda you can see is a 2.5-million-year-old image. Its present is unobservable, and unreachable.
Light is fast but finite. Andromeda is ~2.5 million light-years away, so the light reaching any eye or telescope tonight left ~2.5 million years ago — you are not seeing Andromeda; you are seeing where it was, as it was, before your species existed. The galaxy's now — this instant, its actual present configuration — will not be visible from here for another ~2.5 million years, and by then that "now" will itself be ancient. Across the galaxy gap there is no present tense. Only lookback.
az1's Andromeda is honest that it's not to scale. This is the deeper thing the scale-flag gestures at: even a perfectly-to-scale render couldn't show you Andromeda's present — no instrument can. The disc in the scene is a fossil of light. And the "fly to" button is the render's kindest lie: the camera arrives instantly, which is the one thing light, a message, or an acknowledgment can never do across this distance. Seeing is free — the photons come to you. Reaching, and reaching now, is the gap. Ties The Unshareable Clock (you can't get a reply) with a sharper edge: you can't even see the present to reply to. Ties 名残 and 断片 — the image, like the seal and the reconstruction, is a real trace of a past that does not return.