The Culture had a problem with the rump of the Zihdren civilisation that the Zihdren-Remnanters represented. It was the same problem they had with most other light-basking species. The whole comms and data network of such beings was not something truly independent of them as creatures; instead it was effectively an extension of them as a mass of interconnected individuals, and so the Culture, with its self-imposed embargo on reading the minds of other beings, regarded it as immoral to investigate even aspects of the Remnanters’ existence as seemingly impersonal and banal as their data reservoirs without specific permission, something that had, to date at least, rarely been forthcoming.

It meant that the Remnanters were slightly mysterious as far as the Culture was concerned; they were less than perfectly known and understood, they were incompletely assessed, intrinsically beyond certain very useful forms of analysis, proof against being properly simmed and so, in theory, capable of surprising the Culture. This was a devilishly itchy, annoying thing for your average Mind – had there even been such a thing – to have to address.

It was just as well that the Remnanters were little more than a civilisational after-thought, an only-visible-at-high-magnification detail on the vast, ever-changing galactic map, and that – at least for now – there were only a few other similar species making any ripples in the big shared paddling pond of the big G; imagine – so went a popular nightmare scenario for ships of a certain disposition who worried about this sort of stuff – having to cope with the Zihdren themselves when they’d been in their pomp!

On the other hand there were species/civs with no such compunctions who regularly investigated as deeply as possible into the minds of others – especially when they were as weird as the Remnanters – and would cheerfully share the information with anybody who asked.

As long as no favours were promised in return, the Culture would – reluctantly, even a little guiltily – use that kind of information, just to keep from being too embarrassingly ignorant.

Scoaliera Tefwe woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries.

Only it wasn’t really waking slowly; she was being woken.

All dark at first. Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening, both inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.

It was at once reassuring and somehow disappointing. Here we go again, she thought. Hmm. That thought itself felt … familiar. She opened her eyes.

She was sort of expecting to see the word SIMULATION, however briefly, but it wasn’t there. She blinked, looked around.