She also felt some sort of way. Her mood had clearly soured after seeing Leah. No, Amachi now. Names had to be respected, even if personal history wasn’t always. Stacia thought she had braced herself appropriately. The importance of her news and the responsibilities of her mission allowed her to avoid Amachi and dodge an unnecessary complication. Still, the sight of her old friend undid her in ways she hadn’t expected. In ways that demanded a drink of some sort, even if that sort of self-medication was not the Muungano way.

<You are brooding,> Maya interrupted.

“You should mind your own business.” Stacia played with the stack of bracelets on her wrists.

<Monitoring the well-being of personnel is our business.>

“And intruding on our thoughts?”

<Operational parameters allow thirty minutes of personal silent meditation before we are instructed to check in with you.>

“That’s ludicrous. Who programmed those parameters?”

<You.>

“Then it’s the height of compassion. Though the parameters may need to be tweaked.” Stacia smiled, pleased with herself since there was no one else to smile for. Other than Maya.

The Maya AI were a tenth-generation quantum computer array. Conceptually they were both an integrated system and a series of discrete systems. The “aspect” of Maya that ran the Cypher was connected to the greater Maya that ran all of the Muungano systems, but they were shaped and formed by their maintenance of and duties to the Cypher. As if they were a separate personality from the Maya that ran the Dreaming City. The part that Stacia always struggled to wrap her mind around was that even within the Cypher, Maya essentially split themselves off so that each crew member interacted with a version of Maya shaped by their particular relationship with the AI.

So Stacia tried not to think about it too hard.

<The object was to make sure you didn’t spiral into negative thoughts.>

“If you’d interrupted after thirty seconds, you still wouldn’t have prevented that.”

<Noted.>

“Don’t note that.” Stacia studied the star charts and tried not to shiver.

All of Muungano’s territory lit up as a hologram projection, from the Dreaming City to Mars to the mining outpost. No borders, per se, not the way O.E. might define them. Only communities of alliance. This was what they had all fought so hard to forge. They needed a new vocabulary to describe the experiment they embarked on. Empire wasn’t it. A budding cooperative cradled in a sweep of stars. She took comfort even in the deep void between the gleaming pinpricks. This was everything she’d worked for. Everything they had struggled, sacrificed, and fought for. They were on the cusp of … anything.