Nasu walked through streets she might have known but didn’t. She sought her old self in the city, but Neom was a town built on newness. Was there anything left that the child she had been would know? She could not even remember what name she’d been born with, who her mother was, what it felt like to walk hand in hand through the souk to buy chicken. The sense of a memory was there, a ghostly imprint. But whether it had really happened she had no way to tell.

She went back to the Square of Future Prosperity. The street lights burned and children ran and played about her. A pigeon perched on the Statue of the Unknown Scientist and looked at her critically. A small child tugged at Nasu’s leg.

“Hey, missus,” she said, “you look just like her.”

Nasu stared with some surprise at the statue, where a rather austere woman in a white lab coat stood in stone, studying something the eye couldn’t see since it was not a part of the sculpture. The mystery of what the Unknown Scientist was studying bothered her for a moment, but she could see no similarity between herself and the figure in on the pedestal.

“Hey, missus,” the little child said. “Are you from space?”

“What?”

“I want to go to space,” the child confided. She was a very annoying sort of child, Nasu reflected. She thought briefly of turning her into a toad, but that would take more resources than she currently had and besides, would probably upset the child’s nanny. Who was clearly nowhere to be found. To just allow this child to go up and bother random strangers! Nasu was quite appalled.

She said, “Space is very cold.”

“I’ll be inside, though, won’t I,” the child said.

“Inside what?” Nasu said.

“A spaceship or a suit or something,” the child said, with unassailable logic.

“Where is your mummy?” Nasu said.

The child looked at her critically. “Well, it sure isn’t you,” she said. Then she stuck her tongue out at Nasu and ran off.

The Kunming Toads, Nasu thought. The Kunming Toads genetically modified members of their gang into the semblance of giant, poisonous toads. She’d dealt with them back in the old days, they were based out of the Mekong on the Lao-China border.

She stared at the statue. No, she decided. It didn’t look anything like her.

She walked on.

The Sims Shelter was closed. She felt the tiny virtual lives congregate around her. She sought one that was there, hiding, but she couldn’t find it and she walked on.