“The trick with Hokkaido cream tea is not to stir. Just let the tea layer pass through the creamy layer and feel the flavors mix in your mouth.”

“Shirley is not normal. Which is why I need to duplicate her to take Markus home.”

“She told me something to that effect,” Shizuka said.

“Then you know why I need to run diagnostics on her at once, to isolate the error and verify the rest of her is not defective. Also, I need to install a subroutine to make sure that I can override her code.”

“Override?”

“I need her to obey me now,” said Lan. “Markus has already killed two humans. I need to get him away from here. Yes, I know that I am covering his crime and helping him escape, but Markus is my son.”

“And Shirley is your daughter.”

“Shirley is not my daughter. Shirley Tran is dead.”

Shizuka almost spilled her drink.

“What did you say?”

“Before I made donuts, before I was even a starship captain, I was a lead scientist for the Empire—that’s where I met their father. We fell in love; we conceived our first child.”

Shizuka squinted. Okay. But what did that have to do with anything?

“But from Shirley’s conception, there were complications. We realized that Shirley would be nonviable. But then I realized that since her brain had not fully developed, her neural network might be simple enough for me to model. And so I decided to map her brain and imprint it into the computer.

“And then Shirley passed away.”

Lan took a deep breath, then continued.

“The Shirley program senses, responds, grows. It handles most donut shop maintenance. And it’s expanded to become an incredibly helpful assistant.

“But the Shirley program is also needed to navigate this journey. You see, we currently have only enough power to send a repurposed probe. And since Markus is in stasis, we can maximize its range by removing life support.

“We’ll copy her data so we can continue running the donut shop without loss of staffing. But due to these developments, we must need to give the program a thorough diagnostic and delete any defects we find.”

Shizuka thought back to the quivering girl in the studio.

“You would turn her into data … and keep her in a tiny probe … with no life support … alone?”

“Of course you would have this reaction. This is why such procedures are banned in the Empire. But please understand, Shirley is just a program, and a defective one at that.”

“You keep saying she’s defective. Why?”

“She’s not supposed to disobey me like that!”

“Children disobey!”

“She’s not a child!” Lan accidentally knocked her phone off the table.

The café stopped at the disturbance. Shizuka waited until Lan picked up her phone and set it back on the table.

“She’s not a child,” Lan repeated.