Page 9 - gAIa — Advance excerpt

two.
Clio greeted Orphy, then turned to Liang to signal Orphy’s
arrival. Liang, who was watching her, as he always did, raised
a hand toward Orphy; a quiet greeting of his own. Redy left
silently for the kitchen.
The lanterns glowed red against the dusk.
As the party thinned into smaller groups, people seated now,
talking less loudly, closer to each other, sharing deeper, even
darker thoughts, Clio’s eyes swept the garden for Redy. Callie
was curled against Liang, and Orphy sat cross-legged beside

them, laughing at something Callie said, her little finger tracing
a page of a slim book.
Clio left the garden to finally find her daughter in the kitchen.
Redy was washing glasses with hands clumsier than they’d ever
been at a keyboard, clumsier from the emotions that had driven
her to busy them in the first place.
“He asked if Callie knew who he was.” Clio’s voice broke the
rhythm of the drops falling into the sink, broke Redy’s fixed
gaze.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That Callie knows her mother built something im-
portant. She knows her mother and grandparents love her. She
knows she has a father, but she’s never had an actual one.”
Redy lifted her eyes toward the window. Callie, asleep on a
blanket, curled in her grandfather’s arms. “The Archive will
preserve some minds,” she replied. “But I’ll have to build some-
thing for the rest, because their memory must be more than
stored data,” she added, not yet knowing what shape that
promise would take.
Not yet knowing that the Astyarchs, one of the machine
Phyla that would inherit Earth, would awaken her digital con-
sciousness three centuries later.
Not yet knowing that they would install her again and again

9

© Danis Dedes — Advance excerpt, not for redistribution!