Somewhere in the middle of the give and take with the Envisioner I could feel beyond it—through it—to the network of other machines in other universes. How each universe was like a thread with a different tension that, if plucked, would ring out with a different note, and the music would ripple over my ribs. The threads that felt the closest to this universe—Hassan’s world, my own, even an unfamiliar thread that was probably Figueiredo’s—felt like they’d ring out in similar notes.

The machine had told me something before about how adjacent realities seek a zero sum. I never really understood why keeping Yusuf alive meant dooming a whole world. Him and Tiago seemed like a fair trade for each other. A life for a life and all that. Yusuf was everything to me, but what was he in this whole equation? I clenched my jaw and tried to shape this into a question to ask the Envisioner, and before I could even open my mouth, I saw the flashes behind my eyes. I don’t know if they were just my brain cranking out its own theories, or if the machine was trying to get me to understand that Yusuf was part of some chain reaction. That even if he wasn’t saving lives directly—billions of them—something he does will impact humanity. Down the line someone will use his research to get us off Earth before another disaster and we’ll spread to other planets. City spires and traffic jams and fast food on Mars.

Or maybe it was Tiago. Another flash, another premonition through a cracked kaleidoscope. Maybe when Tiago lived like he was supposed to in his world, something he did to the All-Eye backfired. Figueiredo never thought big enough, did he? And hadn’t the All-Eye been Tiago’s idea anyway, and were they really using it to its full potential? Tiago cranked the machine past its red zone for an experiment and the fail safes fizzled, with the whole network of machines across the Afro-Asiatic Union and India shuddering apart. The machines controlling the power plants and the rail lines. The mini modules in every home busting like baby atom bombs. With Tiago gone, all those people wouldn’t turn to ash in one giant explosion that was like the sun leaning in for a big kiss.

I don’t know which vision was real, or right. What I did know was that the machine was trying to tell me that the debt of all those lives had to come from somewhere.