Free Heirs of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix Page A

of the objects and the aliens that had left them behind. They were simultaneously a great boon for humanity and an irksome mystery that might never be unraveled. And they were dangerous, too, as misuse of the ftl transmitters had demonstrated. If a single word could bring down the wrath of the Starfish, eradicating all the Spinners’ good works in a single stroke, what other unknown perils might lurk in the alien halls?
    “By the by,” Rob asked, “mind telling me how you’re doing that?”
    “Doing what?”
    “Being... yourself.” The telesensing robot looked like a cross between a monkey and a sea anemone, but somehow it managed a convincing shrug, “You’re in engram form, you don’t have a body, and yet you can obviously still see me. Do you have a processor in there or something? Or are you operating on remote, like me?”
    “I’m not sure,” she said. “When Thor found me, she uploaded me into her hole ship’s operating memory.”
    “Really? I didn’t know that was possible.”
    She wanted to shrug but lacked the physical form with which to do so. “It seems to have worked well enough.”
    “What brought you here?”
    “I became... upset,” she said, keen to avoid the details. “I came here to hide, to be alone.”
    “And here I am, interrupting you, blathering on like an idiot. Christ, Lucia, I’m sorry.” Rob’s voice was genuinely contrite. His robot immediately let go of the door, started to roll away like a surreal tumbleweed. “I should leave you alone.”
    “It’s not your fault, Rob. You weren’t to know.” Astronaut training had reinforced in all the engrams the need for personal space, even in a virtual world. She had been alone for so long in Chung-5, with nothing but her thoughts to keep her amused. But Rob was a completely different person than the others she had spoken to since coming back. He seemed to have no agendas, no demands to make of her.
    “Will you come back later?” she called after him.
    “You can count on it.” There was a smile in his voice. “I’ve still got work to do around here.”
    “Thanks, Rob,” she said, meaning it. “I appreciate it.”
    “Sure thing. Maybe I can show you around the spindles, if you haven’t seen them properly yet.”
    “I’d like that,” she said.
    “Good. Then it’s a date.” With that, the robot trundled off down the wide, white corridor. It tumbled around a comer and disappeared.
    Lucia felt herself relax instantly. She wasn’t ready for people, not without proper control over who she was. She knew that it might not be so easy to attain, but the question of what she was could be more easily explored. In truth, although she had agreed to let Rob show her around the spindles, she didn’t know if she could leave the Dark Room. She had been interrupted in the middle of trying. As she tentatively extended herself now to test her boundaries, she found that she had an awareness of the structure that housed her—an awareness that could neither be put into words or thoughts. It was just there, a part of her, like the innate instinct a normal human had of their body’s posture. With it, also, came a vague understanding of all the other spindles that girded the planet and of the transmitter they comprised.
    Deciding not to wait on Rob’s return. Lucia took the virtual equivalent of a deep breath and urged her pov toward the doorway.
    The darkness fell smoothly behind her as she suddenly found herself—or her pov, at least—in bright light.
    Embracing this newfound freedom, she began to explore.

    1.2.3

    A haze of stars surrounded Caryl Hatzis like a glowing mist. She took a moment to admire it, to bathe in the light of 200 billion suns. When she breathed in, she imagined that she wasn’t breathing ordinary air but the ionized atoms and far-flung molecules that bubbled and roiled in interstellar space. She felt like a god, existing on star stuff, bathing in the primordial fires of creation.
    She exhaled, letting the