“The room was moved from Hubfall, with other elements of the palace, when Xi’an was founded. The rest of the palace was built around it.”

The image of the space station of Xi’an being built around the imperial palace popped into Cardenia’s mind, so absurd as to be almost comical. “So you are a thousand years old,” she said, to Jiyi.

“The information I store dates back to the founding of the Interdependency,” Jiyi said. “The physical machinery it is stored on is regularly updated, as are the functional elements of this room and the manifestation you see in front of you.”

“I thought you said no one may enter this room but the emperox.”

“Automated maintenance, ma’am,” Jiyi said, and Cardenia thought she heard just the slightest edge of humor in the voice. Which made her first feel a bit stupid, and then curious.

“Are you alive, Jiyi?” she asked.

“No,” Jiyi said. “Nothing you encounter in this room is alive, excepting you, ma’am.”

“Of course,” Cardenia said, only a little disappointed.

“I sense we have carried this specific conversation to an end,” Jiyi said. “May I assist you otherwise?”

“Yes,” Cardenia said. “I would like to speak to my father.”

Jiyi nodded and faded out. As it did so, another form coalesced, in the center of the room.

It was Cardenia’s father, Batrin, lately Emperox Attavio VI. He appeared, looked toward his daughter, smiled, and walked over to her.

The Memory Room was established by the Prophet-Emperox Rachela I not long after the foundation of the Interdependency, and her ascendance as its first emperox. Each emperox was fitted with a personal network of sensors running through their body that captured not only every sight seen, and every sound heard or spoken by the emperox, but every other sensation, action, emotion, thought, and desire apprehended or produced by them as well.

Within the Memory Room were the thoughts and memories of every emperox of the Interdependency, dating back to the very first, the Prophet-Emperox Rachela I herself. If Cardenia wanted, she could ask any one of her predecessors any question, about them, about their reign, about their time. They would answer from memory, from the thoughts and recordings and the computer modeling of who they were, girded on decades of every single thing about their internal lives recorded for this very room.

There was only one destination for this information: the Memory Room. There was only one audience for it: the current emperox.

Cardenia subconsciously touched the back of her neck again, in the place where the network seed was implanted, to grow inside her. One day, everything I do as emperox will be in here, she thought. For my own child and their children to see. Every emperox will know who I was, better than history will.

She looked at the apparition of her father, now directly in front of her, and shuddered.