It’s a funding problem. Money flows to market needs, and right now, the bot and WAI industries are booming. Which means that’s where people need to apply more scrutiny and regulation. Our oversight extends only to biotech. The BGA has done so well, they say, that our legacy will prevent labor abuses for decades to come.

Such a pile of blanker bullshit.

The world will change, and we’ll have to rewrite everything. You can’t anticipate loopholes when the walls haven’t been built. Look at the gigsters. Scrabbling for a living with no guarantee of employment. Working as supervisors for bots but getting paid piecemeal. How long until the next generation decides they don’t need a human holding a WAI’s hand anymore? How long until nobody’s worried about the AIs making a bad decision? What work will they have left?

JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, APRIL 18, 2090

My daughter is now a teenager. I don’t like where she’s heading in life—some new trend the kids are calling VeeMod. Apparently it’s shorthand for voluntary modification, and it goes beyond mech-suits to where you incorporate the machine into your body. Basically, half human, half machine. They used to call that a cyborg, but the kids don’t want to use old terminology.

Of course I haven’t given her permission to do anything permanent to her body. She already resents me for restricting her pill use, but I don’t know what triggered Jun-ha’s disease, and I want to prolong Soo-ha’s health as long as I can. This is the baby who chose a stick and a circuit board, after all.

Don won the lawsuit against SK Partners for the mishandling of Jun-ha’s data. Not that winning brings back our child, but it seems to give Don some measure of peace. I can understand his need to do something, but I feel dirty taking their money. My anger won’t be bought off. The compensation—I wondered at Jun-ha never living long enough to become rich. Now I understand.

What is Soo-ha’s fate? She chose a weapon and she chose tech. I know it’s all superstition, but I don’t like it. It scares me.

JOURNAL ENTRY: JOSEPHINE LEE, AUGUST 18, 2090

Here’s an interesting twist: Don is moving to Eko-Yi Station. We’ve been living separate lives for so long that it doesn’t feel like it, but technically we’re still married. I thought he’d discuss something that monumental with me first. Instead, he consulted Kanata-san, who sent me a long letter shortly after I finished talking to Don. Kanata-san apologized profusely for keeping me in the dark, but he said he had to honor Don’s wishes.

Soo-ha wants to go with her dad.

I had a good scream over that news.