“Go make me breakfast,” she ordered, baring her teeth in a fierce and playful grin. “I’m starving.”
“Already done.” He twisted to kick off the ceiling. “I’ve ordered breakfast for everyone.”
They gathered in a large nook on the side of the forest room. Distant birdsong could be heard past the soft rustle of wind in the canopy. The light shifted as clouds drifted past the face of a simulated sun. Bulbs of water and sweet juices budded from the ceiling, low-hanging fruit, ready to pick.
Clemantine plucked a pink bulb. Sipped it as she hooked a foot through a stirrup. Guava, she decided—then pasted the bulb to a pedestal table, freeing her hands to accept a warm bun passed to her by Urban. She bit into it to find a spicy protein filling inside bread rich with calories.
Calories were the cost of physical existence. Though they had retained the look of ancestral humans, internally they were highly evolved. Hosts of Makers inhabited their bodies, continuously repairing damage to their cells and protecting them from infestation—and consuming energy to do it. Their atriums burned calories too, at a terrific rate. So they were burdened with more demanding metabolisms than their ancestors, making frequent large meals a necessity, and an important part of their social culture.
Clemantine took another bite of the bun, relishing the taste of spice and fatty oil. “You were always good with a fabricator,” she told Urban, deliberately bumping up against him.
“Hey!” he objected as water squirted from the bulb in his hand.
A dart glided out of the forest, unfolding into orange and brown butterfly wings that swept forward to embrace the water globule, corralling the spill. The artificial creature released a jet of air that changed its trajectory, sending it to the pergola overhead where it shifted back to a virtual object, and then fluttered out of sight.
“Nice,” Vytet said with admiration.
“Butterfly tenders,” Clemantine told her. “I found the pattern in the library.”
More buns emerged—an easy food to eat in zero gee—and fresh fruits in bite-sized pieces stacked in edible, transparent tubes. Colorful blocks of dense jellies too, packed with nutrients and calories.
Clemantine could not resist playing with the butterflies that swooped among them. By blocking the slow-moving creatures from their task of gathering escaping crumbs, she could induce more butterflies to emerge. Urban joined in, the nook fluttered with wings, and for a few minutes, laughter prevented eating.
“Let them do their job,” Kona urged at last.
“All right,” Clemantine conceded.
She grabbed another bun, just one more.
The air cleared. The last few butterflies fluttered away, their mass reabsorbed by the walls as they transited to virtual creatures.
Clemantine closed her eyes, allowing herself a sigh of contentment.
It turned out Urban was not familiar with such a benign emotion. He touched her shoulder. Asked, “Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes again. “I’m good, thank you. No, I’m good thanks to you. Thank you for not forgetting me.”
He grinned. “Forget you? How could I? Anyway, I knew you’d be missing me.”
“Smart ass.”
Vytet raised her arms in an extravagant stretch that emphasized her height and the thinness of her body. “Ah,” she sighed. “It feels good to be real, to exist in this space. I admire the efficiencies of a virtual existence, but I also love being alive.”
“Sooth,” Kona agreed. “This is a good first step. Still a lot of planning and assembly to do.”
“A lot of people to get out of the archive,” Clemantine added. “I think we should start. There’s room. This warren was designed to accommodate twelve.”
Silence, extending across awkward seconds. Frowning, she turned to Urban to find a distracted look on his face as if he’d checked out of the conversation, checked into some other reality. Vytet looked uneasy, twirling the translucent blue shell of an empty bulb in the air.
Only Kona met her gaze. “I want to do the right thing too,” he rumbled. “But we can’t wake everyone. So how do we choose who to wake? And how do we explain that choice later, to those who weren’t chosen? We’d create a situation in which some are seen as privileged over others.”
Clemantine reached out and caught the twirling bulb, annoyed at its carefree motion. “That’s an easy problem to fix. We’ll rotate. Each of us returns to cold sleep after an allotted time, with the choice to continue as a ghost in the library.” She shoved the bulb against the wall, where it was swiftly absorbed.
“That’s not going to work,” Urban said quietly, his gaze still unfocused as if he was somewhere else. “Right now, the library doesn’t have the capacity to support a high-res existence for everyone. The computational strata are being expanded, but—”
“But it will take time,” Clemantine interrupted, anticipating what he would say because she’d heard it so many times already. “Just like everything else.”
“Yes,” Urban agreed. “This is no easy thing.”
She wrestled her temper down. He was trying. She could not deny it. He was doing what he could, given the unexpected number of recruits. But it was crushing to know the archived ghosts would not even have the choice of a virtual existence.
Moderating her tone, she said, “We could still rotate. Take turns here and in the library. Let people participate in the life of the ship, in the decisions that will need to be made.”
“And if someone refuses to return to cold sleep?” Kona asked her. “If people begin waking out of turn? Once they’re given agency, they’ll be able to do what they want.”
“No,” Urban said, his focus finally returning to the discussion. “I can enforce any restriction.”
Vytet bit a thumbnail, looking worried.
Kona asked, “At what cost? Deprive people of agency and you sow resentment, and dissension.”
Vytet slid her thumbnail out from between her teeth. “We’re better than that,” she argued. “Every archived individual is fifth level. Rational and cooperative. They’ll grasp the necessity of rotation.”
Clemantine sighed, feeling defeated. “I wish it was so,” she said to Vytet. “But we can’t be sure of that.” The idea of further delay vexed her. It was inherently unfair to keep people locked up and helpless in the archive. But Kona had a point.
“I worked security for years,” she reminded them. “Even normal, rational, cooperative people behave in unpredictable ways in extreme circumstances.” She did not want to concede the argument. Still… “Waking in a cramped warren aboard an alien ship to face the consequences of a decision—made in haste—to leave behind loved ones and all that’s familiar, with no way out and no way back, is an extreme circumstance. Who knows how anyone will react?”
Kona was a master politician; easy for him to cast his voice in a grim tone when he said, “All it would take to create a cascade of resentment is one person refusing to return to cold sleep.” He shot a hard look at Urban. “Whether you force the issue or not.”
“I’ll do what’s needed,” Urban responded.
It sounded like a warning. Clemantine heard it that way and felt a need to intervene. “We don’t want to reach that point.”
“Agreed,” Kona said. “Our best path forward is to treat everyone equally.”
Vytet’s fists were shoved deep into the pockets of her tunic. “It’s too late for that. You and Clemantine are exceptions because you were invited by Urban. But I came with the rest. And I’m the only one awake, the only one who can take part in this discussion. It isn’t fair.”