“Okay, Lan, have it your way. Let’s say she’s just data. Why stop at one copy? Make three. Make three hundred. Have all the Shirleys you want. Replicate her like a donut.”

“That’s different!”

“Oh, yes. Your replicated donuts didn’t sell, did they? Funny, that. Your technology couldn’t even copy a donut, and now you’re saying you’ll copy Shirley?”

Lan’s shoulders slumped. Shizuka had a point.

“Besides, her code, as you call it, has changed and grown,” Shizuka continued. “What would the correct code look like now? How would you know which changes are defects and which changes are Shirley?”

“It … would be difficult,” Lan finally admitted.

Shizuka shrugged.

“Lan, I am not going to judge your decision to create her. Most parents have children without thinking the matter through. And yes, you had a daughter named Shirley who was stillborn. But this Shirley … Did you even notice? Out of all your children, she’s the only one who always calls you Mother?”

Lan finished her jasmine tea and reached for a tea egg.

“You’re not taking me back to your house, are you?” she said quietly.

“No. After we’re done, I am taking you back to your shop. And I ask that you please consider your actions more deeply.”

Lan took a deep breath and nodded. “I know you were never a mother. But you would have been a good one.”

Shizuka sipped her Hokkaido cream tea, but all the tea was gone. The wonderful layer of Hokkaido cream that she had so meticulously sipped through now sat at the bottom of the glass, a treasure too rich to be tasted alone.

Katrina turned and tossed and opened her eyes. Had she fallen asleep in the studio?

Wait.

There were no ceilings. There were no floors.

Instead, she was afloat, in a radiant fugue of stars, of galaxies. Yet the air was warm and smelled of powdered sugar. There were shooting stars and giant ships that sounded like buses that glowed like rainbows that bloomed like flowers, that took flight like wisps of smoke, like birds. And everything seemed to be dancing, and giggling, walking hand in hand as if in a summer festival that stretched as far as Katrina could see.

“Shirley?”

Katrina looked right in front of her and saw Shirley, clothed in a veil of glow with all the color and immediacy of time.

Hologram or not, Shirley was asleep. Was this how holograms dreamed?

Shirley drifted in the center of creation, as galaxies brushed past the palm of her hand. Gradually, a most beautiful music drifted and coalesced above her.

The new figure took Katrina’s breath away. Then she blushed, as she realized it was her own idealized image.

Wait. She looked closely.

That image … was just her. Her skin and hair. Her eyes. Her shoulders. Her hands.

Shirley was dreaming of her … just the way she was?