Here in these exposed moments, the capital screamed in her brain. Its billions of minds roared, seethed, shrieked like a host of seagulls tearing at the carcass of some giant creature exposed upon a beach, fighting amongst themselves as they rended their huge find. Even in her madness, though, she knew the source of the psychic screaming: the rotting creature was Empire; the vast chorus of keening voices was all the myriad struggles for power and prestige that animated the Imperial capital. The noise of these contests thundered through her, for a moment obliterating any sense of self, her identity a lone mountaineer engulfed by an avalanche.

Then she heard her apathy bracelet begin its injection sequence, the reassuring hiss audible even through the deluge of sound. Then her empathic abilities began to fade under the drug’s influence. The voices grew dim, and a sense of self returned.

The woman remembered who she was, childhood names spilling through her mind. Naraya, Naya, Nana. And then the titles of adulthood. Dr. Nara Oxham. Electate Oxham of the Vasthold Assembly. Her Excellency Nara Oxham, Representative to His Majesty’s Government from the planet Vasthold. Senator Nara Oxham, Secularist Party whip.

Popularly known as the Mad Senator.

As the psychic howl receded, Oxham steeled herself and concentrated on the city, listening carefully for tone and character as it trailed away. Here on Home, she was always threatened by the crush of voices, the wild psychic noise that had kept her in an asylum for most of her childhood years. But sometimes as the apathy drug entered her veins, in this passing moment between madness and sanity, Nara could make sense of it, could catch a few notes of the multiplex and chaotic music that the capital played. It was a useful ability for a politician.

The sound of the Risen Empire’s politics was troubled today, she heard. Something was coalescing, like an orchestra tuning itself to a single note. She tried to focus, to bring her mind to bear on the theme of unease. But then her empathy faded, extinguished by the drug.

Her insanity was, for the moment, cured, and she was deaf to the city’s cry.

Senator Nara Oxham took a deep breath, flexed her awakening muscles. She sat up on the coldsleep bed, and opened her eyes.

Morning. The sky was salmon and the sun orange through the penthouse’s bubble, the facets of the distant Diamond Palace tinged with blood. The bubble silenced the capital, the transparent woven carbon barely trembling for passing helicopters. But the city still buzzed, flickers of movement and the winking lights of signage shimmering in her vision, distant aircars blurring the air like gnats or heat haze on a desert. In the odd way of coldsleep, her eyes felt clean, as if she had only closed them for a moment.

A moment that had lasted…