“Relax. I took up the elevator on the other side. It has its own set of bodyguards.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“I’ve been in it a while. I hope you noticed.”

Cardenia laughed, stepped to exit the elevator, and then was knocked back into the elevator as the presentation balcony exploded. She was unconscious before her body slammed into the elevator’s back wall.

* * *

“There’s a very real possibility that the Flow streams that connect the Interdependency will collapse during your reign,” Attavio VI, Cardenia’s father, or rather the computer projection of him, said to Cardenia in her dream.

Cardenia was aware she was dreaming; Cardenia was also aware that the dream was, for the moment at least, replaying her first conversation in the Memory Room. She was not aware of how or when it was that she fell asleep, and the part of her brain that was lucid enough to register that she was in a dream was strongly shying away from thinking about it that much. Go with this conversation. It’s safe, that part of her brain seemed to be saying, so Cardenia did, saying her part of the conversation again as if reading off a script.

“How will that happen?” Cardenia asked.

“I’m not a scientist,” Attavio VI said. “But the Count of Claremont is. He’s been collecting data for three decades now. He sends me updates from time to time. The data he’s collected suggests that the stability of the Flow is an illusion and that over a long enough timescale everything shifts, and that we’re about to enter a period of shifts. He says it’s already been happening slowly, and it’s about to start happening very quickly indeed. It’s happened before.”

“To Dalasýsla. When the first Grayland was emperox.”

Attavio VI nodded. “Yes. She was given information, just like I have been given information—information you’ll now have access to.”

“She had information, but why didn’t she act on it? If she knew they were about to lose the stream to Dalasýsla, why didn’t she do something about it?”

“I could tell you, but you can ask her yourself.”

Cardenia blinked at this. “She’s in here?”

“Of course.”

“She was lost in the Flow. I didn’t think she existed.”

“She updated before her final trip. Everything but those last few days is in here.”

This took Cardenia aback. On one hand it made sense. On another, the idea of a person being… incomplete was odd. “Jiyi, show me Emperox Grayland I.”

A shimmer and a tall, wide woman appeared and walked toward Cardenia.

“You’re Emperox Grayland I,” Cardenia asked.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“You… know what happened to you? How you died?”

“I’m aware of the information, yes.”

“How do you feel about it?” This was all an aside, but Cardenia had to know.