The creature rears its head as I approach, the distinct sound of a horse’s neigh making my memories ping to life.

It’s unmistakable. A horse made of light, the blues and whites swirling within its shape like clouds and starlight. The beast clops a hoof against the stones, and when I look up at the horse’s face and its too-bright gaze, I realize I can see straight through it.

My eyes follow the reins to the carriage behind it. With an open top and wide, velvet seats, it looks more suitable to lounging than travel. The vehicle is painted a brilliant white, with roses carved into the edges and dusted in silver. I’m so entranced by this world—this world I’m not allowed to be a part of—that I forget myself completely.

I’m thinking about Tokyo Circus. About the group of cyborgs in a futuristic Japan who were trying to survive in a world where being a self-aware robot was illegal. Their accidental leader was a teenage girl named Naoko, whose father had transferred her consciousness into a cyborg to keep her from dying.

Dad wrote it as a present for me. And even though Naoko from Tokyo Circus is different from me in a million ways, I’ve always been able to see myself in her face.

Maybe because Dad put her there for me to find.

In Tokyo Circus, robots are hunted. But here, in Infinity? It isn’t safe to be human. Not in a world that’s been modified to make us servants.

Is this what Mei is going to find one day? A beautiful, incredible world that rejects her and forces her into an eternity of making clothes and teacups? And what if she doesn’t make it to Victory? What if she fights back and gets sent to War?

I don’t want this for my sister. I don’t want it for me.

Dad created Naoko to be strong. She was fierce and stubborn and believed in building a bridge between humans and robots because she was part of both worlds.

But how could someone like Naoko build a bridge in Infinity, when the Residents have already won?

I turn from the carriage, my eyes trailing over the many artificially crafted faces. In some ways, they aren’t unlike the way Dad drew Naoko. She had the same soft features as me, and the same almost-black hair, but he’d always draw her like no part of her was ever out of place. Humans would look disheveled and wrinkled and worn. But his cyborgs were more doll than human.

I can picture her here, among the Residents. She’d fit in. She’d practically be one of them.

And I wonder if there’s a strange kind of poetry in the fact that Dad wrote a book about artificial life and used my face to lead them.