She gazed into the depths of space outside space. The Excession was a vast bisected wall of fiery chaos sprinting out towards her, breathtakingly fast; a consuming conflagration of unremitting, undissipating power. She could have believed, in that instant, that her heart stopped with the shock of it. To share the senses of a ship in such a manner was inevitably to comprehend something of its knowledge as well, to see beyond the mere appearance of what you were looking at to the reality behind it, to the evaluations it was incumbent upon a sentient space craft to make as it gathered data in the raw, to the comparisons that could be drawn and the implications that followed on such a phenomenon, and even as Ulver’s senses reeled with the impact of what she was watching, another part of her mind was becoming aware of the nature and the power of the sight she was witnessing. As a thermonuclear fireball was to a log burning in a grate, so this ravening cloud of destruction was to a fusion explosion. What she was now witnessing was something even the GSV was undeniably impressed with, not to mention mortally threatened by.

Ulver saw how to click out of the experience, and did so.

She’d been in for less than two seconds. In that time her heart had started racing, her breathing had become fast and laboured and a cold sweat had broken on her skin. Wow, she thought, some drug!

Genar-Hofoen and Dajeil Gelian were staring at her. She suspected she hardly needed to say anything, but swallowed and said, ‘I don’t think it’s kidding.’

She quizzed her neural lace. Twenty-two seconds had elapsed since the avatar had given them its two-minute deadline.

Dajeil turned to the avatar. ‘Is there anything we can do?’ she asked.

Amorphia spread its hands. ‘You can tell me whether you each wish your mind-state to enter the simulation,’ it said. ‘It will be a precursor to transmitting the mind-states beyond this immediate vicinity to other Mind matrices. But in any event it is up to you.’

‘Well, yes,’ Ulver said. ‘Snap me in there when the two minutes are up.’

Thirty-three seconds elapsed.

Genar-Hofoen and Dajeil were looking at each other.

‘What about the child?’ the woman asked, touching the bulge of her swollen belly.

‘The mind-state of the fetus can be read too, of course,’ the avatar said. ‘I believe that historical precedent would indicate it would become independent of you following such transferal. In that sense, it would no longer be part of you.’

‘I see,’ the woman said. She was still gazing at the man. ‘So it would be born,’ she said quietly.

‘In a sense,’ the avatar agreed.

‘Could it be taken into the simulation without me?’ she asked, still watching Byr’s face. He was frowning now, looking sad and concerned and shaking his head.

‘Yes, it could,’ Amorphia said.