She sees her assistant at a patient’s bed, which is elevated to a sitting position. Ify’s assistant, brown hair tied back in a messy bun with strands falling over her face, fingers folded to keep her fingers from twitching, probably bubbling from the caffeine streaming into her from the patches on her skin beneath her top and lab coat, is smiling. Grace.

Ify taps her temple to activate the Augment in her neck and enhances her audio input to better hear what Grace is saying. She tells herself it’s to observe and critique her assistant’s work, but she sees something human in the connection between Grace and the Chinese woman with blanched skin and fading black hair, and a part of her longs for that. So, she enhances and listens and starts when she realizes Grace isn’t speaking English.

A frown creases her brow. Grace isn’t cyberized, not even partially. She has no language translation software downloaded into her, and Ify spies no Augment on Grace’s body, nothing in her hair, nothing on her temple, no small half-sphere attached to the back of her neck. Ify scrolls through her languages and alights on Cantonese. Then it all comes through clearly.

“You’ve never had durian?” the patient asks Grace, shocked.

Grace chuckles. “No, ma’am, I have not. My grandfather says it is popular on Earthland and is always complaining that he can never find it in the markets here.”

“Does he not live on Earthland?”

“No, we brought him to the Colonies several years ago. He’s getting older, and my parents wanted him to be near family.”

“That is so sweet. Well, when you see him again, tell him I know where he can get good durian. I know where the good Hong Kong market is.”

Grace laughs. “But where will he eat it?” she exclaims. “The whites will complain about the smell before it even leaves the bag!”

Which gets both of them laughing loud enough for Ify to hear without her enhanced audio. She wants to chastise Grace for displaying such boisterous mirth in a place where people are suffering, where people will look to her and see joy and be plunged even deeper into their own despair—Ask the patient about her medical condition! Ask her about her sleep patterns or her food intake or her stool!—but she can’t bring herself to stay angry at her assistant.

“Come close, child,” the woman says, when they’re done laughing.