“Your sister, Khandro, implied that the Machinehood wants to turn everyone into dakini in the future.”

“Something like that. We want to erase the boundaries between different intelligences, to let everyone fall on a spectrum rather than distinct categories. We’d never compel someone to become like us, but we believe everyone should have the choice. If humanity can embrace that, they can be so much more. Imagine what you’d be capable of if your agent weren’t separate from you.”

Welga shuddered. Her body held more tech than most, and losing Por Qué had felt like missing a best friend, but the alternative—to have her agent be part of her body and mind, forever unavoidable and inextricable—that sounded too intrusive. Not everyone would share that attitude, though.

Technology was as habit-forming as every escapist, feel-good drug. Take the attitude shift about pills. People had been horrified at first by the idea of tiny machines tinkering with their bodies, but in less than a decade, they’d accepted and even embraced that way of life. Workers clamored for more to improve their circumstances. Rich funders poured money into better designs, faster output, meeting demand. Governments released daily pill designs to prevent illness and improve health.

“If we merge with WAIs and bots,” Welga said, thinking aloud, “isn’t that as bad as the machines killing us… or us destroying them? We wouldn’t be living, organic creatures anymore.”

“Those are meaningless distinctions,” Clemence said. “Human is a state of being, not a form factor. I’m alive. I can die. And half my body is composed of inorganic parts I wasn’t born with. Half my mind belongs to a WAI. Too many people still think of bots and WAIs as things. If you saw them as people, with rights and privileges, you would realize that the physical parts matter less than their interaction with the world. Instead, you fear them. You’re afraid of what they’ll do when they have the freedom to kill us. I’m more worried about a future where the richest people on Earth divide and conquer humanity from machines. They’re playing you all for fools, using your fear to keep you from realizing your full potential.”

Dr. Kailo clamped Welga’s arm and numbed it. “May I have your permission to inject synthetic and biogenetic material?”

Welga nodded. The needle didn’t pinch as it went in. If smart-matter behaved so differently here, what did pills and drugs do? How far had biotech advanced on the stations? Welga didn’t want to admit that Clemence might be right, that the degree of change scared her. Pills provided temporary enhancements. Por Qué functioned as a hyper-competent personal assistant, working only on Welga’s order. Mech-suits, like the one her father had used, existed apart from the body. Permanent modification, however, felt like a transformation to something not entirely human.