“We are different species. It is perverse. It is bestial.”

There it was, the word she’d been avoiding. She pressed her cheek into the nape of his neck. Bestial.

“But this desire cannot be acted on, regardless. You are incapable of high language, so my desire to know you can only remain a hypothetical desire.”

She didn’t know why the thought was so frightening, the “absence of medium.” Maybe he’d die wondering what it would be like to remove the medium between his mind and hers, but it didn’t matter; it couldn’t be acted upon.

Not like her weird impulses.

She shuddered. Ugh, if he got in her head, then he’d see the thoughts she’d just had, that she’d just considered . . . whatever, and thought, hey, maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. What would he think of that?

“At least we can’t act on these . . . desires,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s for the best.”

She tried to relax and go to sleep, tried to reassure herself of what felt like something of a consensus—that these thoughts were okay to have, because it wasn’t like they could be acted on, anyway. It was for the best. But even so, as she began to doze, she got the sense that that wasn’t what he wanted her to say.

5

Cora got the email for an all-hands meeting that morning at around 4:30— “ETI LEGAL STATUS CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY.” She had known this was coming for months, as had everyone at ROSA, but as with so many other concerns, it was a can kicked down the road. Sooner or later, the legal status of ETIs on Earth (and more specifically, in the United States) was going to have to be clarified, but it wasn’t something anyone had particularly worried about until an idea called the Third Option started gaining traction.

It had been first pitched by a law professor named Jano Miranda, a young constitutional lawyer with a gift for public speaking. The Third Option, a proposed law that would create an entirely new category of personhood, led to the creation of the nascent Third Party, a bipartisan movement that branded itself as a “repudiation to the establishment.” Miranda’s advocacy for the Third Option had put his star on the map in a big way, but nobody, not even Sol, had seen the surging popularity of the Third Option becoming so relevant as to merit a congressional hearing so soon.

“It’s Julian,” Sol told Cora before the meeting started. “He really thinks he’s got a chance against Cheney in the primary, so this is the horse he’s going to ride into battle.” He meant Todd Julian, the junior senator from Illinois. A libertarian-minded sort (who, regrettably, had also said nice things about Nils, which was how Cora even knew of him), Senator Julian was the biggest champion for the Third Option in the Senate.

So this meeting was a big deal. Ampersand could not do this one remotely.