EPILOGUE

Nine months after Darius, Elyria lay on the bed and relaxed, feeling her enhanced body slowly repairing itself after giving birth. The whole procedure had been uncomfortable even with the enhancements, explaining why so many women preferred to use external wombs rather than gestate their children naturally. A strange sense of pleasure suffused her as she recovered, just before the midwife held the child up in front of her. The baby looked... like a baby.

“Thank you,” she breathed, as she took her daughter into her arms. The baby felt delicate to her, despite the enhancements that had been a core part of her genetic inheritance. “Were... were there any complications?”

“None,” the AI drone reported. “The birth was textbook perfect.”

Elyria allowed herself a moment of relief. The child she had been carrying – the child in her arms – was perhaps the most famous person in the entire Confederation, even though she’d done nothing. Ever since the news about Darius had spread across the datanet, the entire universe had been speculating on what her child might become – and some of their speculations had been nightmarish. One group had suggested that her child would become a minor god, a being with the power of an Elder and the body of a human; another had suggested that she would be an eldritch abomination and Elyria herself would die in childbirth. It hadn’t been very reassuring.

“Good,” she said, finally. Despite her enhancements, she still felt tired. “Have you registered the birth with the Confederation’s datanet?”

“You have yet to select a name,” the AIs reminded her. The child would carry her birth-name until she reached maturity, whereupon she would be able to change her name if she wanted to be called something different. “And there is a more important matter.”

Elyria looked up, alarmed. “We have been unable to send nanites inside her body,” the AIs added. “They just die the moment they enter her skin.”

“Just like the snoops on Darius,” Elyria said. She looked down at her daughter’s bright green eyes. “Is she generating a portable Dead Zone, instinctively?”

“We are uncertain,” the AIs admitted. “It is possible that her abilities are defending her body from intrusion, even though we mean no harm. In the long run, she may be unable to accept rejuvenation if we cannot use nanotech inside her.”

Elyria shook her head in disbelief. None of the former magicians from Darius had ever been able to do more than sense the quantum foam, even on an Ancient world. There was no longer any magic, until now. Her daughter was minutes old and she was already stunning the AIs with powers that she simply shouldn’t be able to have. The entire Confederation would be astonished when they found out.

But she was still Elyria’s child.

She pulled her daughter to her breast protectively and looked up, at the drone. “But what can cause this?” she asked, plaintively. Might her child never be anything more than an experimental subject? “What did the machine do to her? How did it even happen?”

“Sufficiently advanced technology,” the AIs said. “Magic.”

 

 

The End