The girl cut her off with a chopping hand motion. “Let me talk. I uploaded a project update for Synaxel. Stupid WAI finally let me rewrite the code the way I wanted, and now it’s working. Big surprise! You have to run more play-testing to confirm it. For Welga, I can’t put in more time. I’m sorry. I saw your note about the data block. Have they done anything?”

Nithya shook her head. “They won’t lift it, and they won’t say why. I don’t have the right back-channels to dig for that kind of information on Synaxel.”

Zeli chewed her lower lip. “Let me see what I can do. Okay, I’m almost out of time. We’re only forty kilometers from the border. I’ll call again from the refugee camp tomorrow or the next day.”

“See you then, Zeli.”

Across the room, Carma had stopped pouting and was bent over her schoolwork. Nearly time for lunch break. Judging by the aroma from the kitchen, the rice, green-beans curry, and sambar were almost ready.

Nithya went to the balcony. The tiles were warm and slick under her feet, but at least the air had cooled. Rain curtained the view beyond the nearest buildings. She inhaled the scent of wet earth and let the water droplets spray her skin and hair. The steady drumbeat relaxed her thoughts.

What beings roamed out there—in the Maghreb, around the world—and how would she raise her daughter to survive among them? That soldier from Zeli’s video looked like a VeeMod, not an android. The Vee came from voluntary—a person who chose to augment their body with machine parts. Starting in the thirties, people had tried to compete with machine labor by using interfaces that had grown ever more intimate, until it all backfired in the sixties. Three decades of virtual reality, mech-suits, brain implants, limb replacements… it had led to an entire generation with neurological and psychological trouble.

Pills had helped, but they couldn’t fundamentally change the mechanics of the human body. Bots were superior at so many tasks. Their only weakness was their hard-coded obedience. How could humanity compete with a sentient artificial intelligence unless they found new, better ways to integrate with machines? Must the V become an I—involuntary or mandatory modification? Social pressures would lead people there even if laws didn’t. A person who avoided pills couldn’t compete in certain jobs. Once VeeMods became equally safe and widespread, anyone who eschewed them would face a similar disadvantage. Was that what the Machinehood wanted? To eliminate the distinction between human and machine? Or was it truly a malevolent AI that would bring humanity to a more violent end?