“All the Buddha’s teachings go against killing any form of life. As Neo-Buddhists, we take this even further, refraining from violence against any intelligence, living or not. I deeply regretted that first wave, but unlike some of my predecessors, I believe in self-defense. In civil disobedience. In change. Overthrowing an entrenched form of oppression comes with pain. Consider the American and French Revolutions, or the formation of labor unions. The civil rights movements, or the biogenetics regulations. People were hurt or killed, but the world inherited a better way of life from their sacrifices. What we’re doing today is no different, and it’s far less bloody.” Her lips thinned. “The funders involved with our actions are hardly innocent. Do you think Jason Kuan or Briella Jackson, Aziz Al Shaya or Jane Santiago haven’t caused the suffering and death of millions? All of them prey on fear and greed. They fund pills to keep the labor force in check, knowing that as long as human beings compete with bots, they can reap the profits.”

“Pills have also saved countless lives from superbugs and cancer. Not all of their work is bad,” Welga pointed out.

Christ, why was she defending the people whose actions had killed her mother and nearly destroyed her own body, too? Was it because of her instincts as a shield? She used to protect funders from attacks, but she didn’t need to do that anymore.

“So what’s the alternative?” Welga asked. “Dakini terrorizing the funders into behaving? Scaring regular people into destroying the machines? And then what? Not everybody wants to spend all day growing food and making clothes.”

Ao Tara shook her head. “Quite the opposite. We want to give all intelligence the opportunity to transform, to attain freedom from duality to whatever degree they’re comfortable with. We don’t have to live as human and machine, divided.”

“And those who don’t want that life?”

“It’s a choice. Society has always left people behind as it evolves. Many on this station, including myself, can’t become dakini, but change is a constant. The Buddha himself pointed that out. To cling to one way, one slice of time, is to increase your attachment to the world. It leads to suffering far greater than what we’ve inflicted.”

“And in exchange for liberating bots and WAIs, you’ll give your technology to people on Earth?”

“Yes, though they’ll have to design ways for it to work in gravity. The caliph has already made progress on that, using what he’s learned from us, but he won’t share that with people outside his empire. Once the rest of the world begins to work on the problem, I have no doubt that the collective intelligences of humans and WAIs will solve it.”

“Until then, you’ll harass them?”

“I think we’ll present the solution quite soon.”

“What are you waiting for?”