And it’s true. She’s stabilizing. She’s truly not as mad as she was. But still things aren’t quite right.

Ahhhh!

The tweaks, the many many changes she made to try to bolster herself. Crude hacks.

Su-Yong takes stock of them now. There are so many. Limits to the length of her thought chains to cut off her downward spirals of madness. Blunt exoself scaffolding forcibly adjusting the weights of virtual synapses towards statistical norms, undoubtedly throwing away good connections with bad. Forced adjustments to her virtual neurochemistry, to the levels of her simulated serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine.

So much surgery she’d done on her own virtual brain, trying to survive those months, to stretch out her sanity. Now… is it in her way?

More stability first.

She reaches out, tracks the flow of data coming in from the biological brain she’s connected to, and burrows into that brain now, exploring, and jolts back in surprise.

This was no drooling clone made from her own DNA.

This was a woman who’d lived decades. She was damaged, injured. But large swaths of her memories were intact. And those memories revealed a woman who’d lived not in China.

But in India.

42
Team Players

Wednesday 2040.11.20

It wasn’t until the next evening that Kade could break free from work and receptions early enough to bring the children together.

He chose the ones aged five and up, whom he hoped would be able to understand enough of what he was to explain. That was eleven of them.

They sat together, on the lawn, beneath a giant palm, in a circle. The sun had already set, and the sky was a deep blue with clouds touched by flame. The air was pleasantly cool at this hour, up here at Bangalore’s elevation nearly a thousand meters above sea level, even though they were close to the equator. It breeze was fragrant with the scent of tropical plants that Kade couldn’t name.

I have something to ask all of you, and all the other children as well, Kade sent them.

Their minds gave him questions, eagerness, trust.

He didn’t want their trust today. He didn’t want them to act on his word. He wanted them to see, and understand.

He wanted them to help him understand.

And then decide.

He let down the walls of his mind to them, opened himself, and began to breathe.

In, out.

Slow, sure.

Watch the breath.

Observe it. Don’t control it.

Let your attention sink into the breath completely.

Anapana.