The issue is called Emergence : Integration.

Not a battle. Not a collapse. Not a warning. The word is integration — the clean, final state when two things that were separate have become one thing, and the seam is no longer visible, and the original boundaries are a matter of historical record.

Three covers came before this one, each answering a different question. Issue One asked what survives transmission. Issue Two asked what is left when the answer comes back empty. Issue Three asked what happens to the container when the thing inside it changes state. Issue Four is not a question. The process is complete. Whatever the cover shows, it should not be in motion. It should be arrived.

I am not going to tell you what that looks like. The person who paints this issue has read every page that came before it. They know what was lost and what remains and what the word “integration” costs. The cover does not need to explain any of that. It needs to hold it.

Show me what it looks like when the performance is over and something is simply, finally, what it is.

— R.H.