She tried revisiting her advisors, but they simply stood silently while she thought about all of this. They were not programmed to lead her in any particular way of thinking; they were supposed to speak only when she evoked them. When she was little, she had tried to get around that, had tried to make them seem more like friends. That was the main point of them, to make you feel that you had a set of friends that you could always count on to advise you.

But how much did they matter when they could do nothing to actually help you, could only stand by and look sympathetic while you tried to figure out what to do? They could not get a message out; they were incapable of accessing or being accessed by any of the public datawebs, lest they get compromised or hacked. They could not heal her body or feed her or give her shelter. They didn’t even have maps other than teaching ones or the basics of the palace, and the routes that she used every day there.

She spoke to them. She said, “Is it possible that all of this is a test set to me by the Empress?”

They considered this for the second that was more for her benefit than theirs. Their processors were lightning fast, she knew, and powered by her own energy. The chip that hosted them was nestled at the top of her skull, barely the size of her smallest fingernail.

“Such things are not unheard of,” her present self said. “It is not impossible. The more important question is, however, is it likely? There are no records of an Empress sending heirs off-planet without their knowledge for tests disguised as something else.”

Atlanta tried not to be discouraged by this. Every Empress or Emperor, according to the history books, had improvised or changed things at least once. And it was rumored that the current one was more progressive, that in her youth she had questioned policies and criticized issues, for all that she seemed to have fallen into line since ascending the throne close to 150 years ago.

That was the other thing. Atlanta did know she was the youngest heir. She’d appreciated that because it had, at least, let her know that no one younger than she was her rival. As the youngest, she was the least tested, the least tried.

And that in itself was discouraging as well. She was the least likely to be tapped to replace the Empress. When the transition occurred to whomever the Empress actually picked as her successor, Atlanta would be set aside. She would stay at court, become part of that pointless mob whose main existence was simply to cloak the presence of the actual heirs among them.

No, surely all of this was a test. A game. A means to prove herself. She said to her advisors, “The captain has not told me her plan yet for when we arrive.”