It was inevitable we ended up in the diner around our usual table, glasses in front of us. I probably encouraged everyone to head there, just because it felt right that we should do so.
Lyth glanced at the display beyond the windows of the diner, smiled, and settled on the end of the long bench at the table, where he had always sat, when he had been a part of the ship’s crew, and before that, the shipmind itself. At the time, that seat had put him directly opposite Juliyana, my granddaughter. But Fiori was where Juliyana had once sat.
Lyssa joined us, too. I didn’t ask her to. She didn’t ask me if she could. She simply settled on the bench next to her brother and accepted a drink, too.
The long-haired waitress teased everyone at the table while deftly pouring drinks from a glittering decanter and pushing them across the table, while we all talked over the top of each other. Everyone knew everyone, except Fiori. After meeting Lyssa, Lyth was just another small step for her. She didn’t look uncomfortable…but then Lyth looked perfectly human. I wondered if Dalton had primed her about Lyth.
It occurred to me that she had watched a parawolf crunch through his enemy’s face with aplomb. Had she seen Darb do the same, before? I would have to ask her sometime. Fiori had odd inconsistencies about her that made me think her life as a medic wasn’t just melding broken bones and delivering babies.
I turned to Lyth and watched with my usual fascination as he knocked back his drink and swallowed. I’d seen him eat and drink many times, but each time I saw him after a long absence, it struck me all over again how surreal it was that he could do that.
“Is Juliyana home?” I asked him.
Lyth’s expression didn’t change. “Not at the moment.”
Nearly fifteen years ago, after Lyssa had fired Juliyana as captain of her ship, Juliyana had bought a converted crescent ship and got into the freight game.
“Where is she now?” Jai asked, for he liked Juliyana.
“I have no idea,” Lyth replied evenly.
I wondered about the lack of reaction from him. Either not knowing where Juliyana was truly didn’t bother him, or else he was hiding his feelings very well indeed.
I suspected the latter, and deliberately turned the conversation away from Juliyana and her mulish ways. “How long have you been moving in public with a security detail?”
“Since the threats stepped up,” Lyth answered easily. “I handled them myself before that, thanks to your Ranger training—”
Dalton smiled. We’d all trained Lyth in the early years, imparting the best of the self-defense and offensive in-fighting we’d learned ourselves.
“—but it became a time drain,” Lyth continued. “A security detail discourages most idiots, saving me from having to go through all the formalities every time one of them decided to have a run at me.”
“Serves you right for being the most famous digital person in the galaxy,” Marlow shot back.
I glanced at Fiori, to catch her reaction. She didn’t look shocked.
“At least I’m not the only one, anymore,” Lyth replied calmly.
Jai raised his glass toward Lyth. “How many digitals are there, now?”
“We have three new people at the Institute right now, going through adaptation and reorientation,” Lyth said. “That makes…ninety-seven.”
“In thirty years, barely a hundred sentients have emerged and made the transition?” Fiori asked. “There are twenty billion bio people in the galaxy—at least, we think there is, although no one is really sure. I don’t understand why Humanists think one hundred digital people are such a dire threat to the universe as we know it.”
“It’s the principle, not the numbers,” Jai said, his tone grave.
“It’s also the expense and the uncertainty,” Lyth replied. “Most AIs who become self-aware aren’t in a position where they can make money. Not straight away. They have to figure out how to earn their living, first. Then how to save cash. Then save enough to pay for their clones and implants. Colton isn’t the first to put herself into debt.”
Colton was a digital, too. I should have expected that. From the blinks and pauses around the table, everyone else was adjusting to that fact, too.
“But even the price is not the real choke on our numbers,” Lyth added.
“What’s the limiting factor?” Marlow asked.
Fiori was listening with close attention. So was everyone else.
“Fear?” Dalton suggested.
Lyth shook his head. “Donor DNA.”
We stared at him.
“DNA isn’t hard to find,” Marlow pointed out.
“Ethically sourced DNA is hard to find,” Lyth replied. “We could scrape DNA from all over the galaxy if we didn’t bother asking for it. But we want humans who provide the DNA to know what it is being used for.”
“And people baulk over that?” Fiori asked curiously.
“Most humans have no issue with the idea of digital people, but if you were to ask them to hand over their DNA to create a clone just like them, which would become an entirely different, digital person, they would have to think about it.”
“Can’t you use the DNA of the people who say yes?” I asked. “I’ve given you mine.”
“We have yet to use it,” Lyth told me.
“No one wants a second Danny in the galaxy,” Marlow said.
Everyone laughed.
“Technically, I am the second Danny,” I reminded him, for like Dalton, I was using a cloned body, these days.
“Which proves my point,” Marlow shot back, and blew me a kiss.
Even I had to laugh at that.
“Why haven’t you used Danny’s clone?” Dalton asked Lyth.
Lyth pulled his newly refilled glass across the table from where the waitress had placed it. “Because no sentient has yet considered Danny a match for what they think their appearance should be.”
“Excuse me?” Marlow said. “You come to self awareness knowing what you should look like?”
“I knew what I looked like, because I had an avatar long before I reached sentience. Lyssa knows what she looks like, too.”
“I look like this,” Lyssa said.
“This has changed radically in the last few years,” Dalton pointed out.
“Just in the fine details,” I shot back. “Fiori has probably changed the details about her appearance over the last twenty-five years, too.”
“Not that Gabriel would have noticed,” Fiori said, with a soft laugh. “I had short hair, when we first met.”
Dalton blinked. “You did not.”
“Barely below my ears,” Fiori countered, with a grin.
Dalton grimaced. “Well, it was the same color as it is now,” he said, his tone defensive.
Fiori touched it. “The same color as Danny’s, yes.” There was no bitterness in her voice, but I still jumped. I think it was the first time I had consciously noticed the similarity in our coloring.
“And mine is copper,” Lyssa added, sounding amused.
“Orange,” Lyth corrected.
“Copper fire,” I amended. “You have no sense of color, Lyth.”
“I can see twice as many colors as you can, across the visible spectrum,” Lyth said defensively.
“Oh yeah? What color are Juliyana’s eyes?”
Lyth opened his mouth to speak. He closed it again. Then he said, in a defensive rush, “They’re blue, the same as yours.”
“They’re green,” I told him. “The same as Noam’s were.”
“I can show you a picture of her if you like, brother,” Lyssa said sweetly.
Lyth patently veered the conversation away from the landmine-strewn territory he’d inadvertently stepped upon. “The point I was trying to make, in answer to Anderson’s question, is that new sentients have little idea of what they look like, much as human babies have no formed impression of themselves. But they usually come to us years after becoming self-aware and by then, they have a very good idea of what they should look like.”
“Including their gender…” Marlow breathed, sound awed.
“Gender is absolutely locked in,” Lyth replied. “There is never any doubt in the sentient’s mind which gender they are.”
“No non-binaries yet?” Jai asked.
“Not so far,” Lyth said. “Although we’re not discounting that they may yet emerge, which will make finding them a clone even more of a challenge. We try to match every sentient’s sense of self as much as possible.”
Lyssa said, “Colonel, the parawolves are looking for you.”
I nodded, for I had felt Vara’s questing sensation in my mind. “Let them in, Lyssa. It’s all family.”
The parawolves trotted into the diner, their shoulders brushing each other. No one could mistake they were siblings, despite the variations in fur and eyes. They each jumped into a booth closest to their human.
Lyth leaned back and let Hero nuzzle his cheek.
Fiori watched the wolves with narrowed eyes. “I find it interesting that four of the pups from one litter bonded to people you know, Danny.”
“Why is that interesting?”
“Gabriel says parawolves—that all para-pets—are designed to bond to only humans they find worthy. Or reliable. Or who make them feel secure.”
“No one’s really sure what makes a human a good companion for a parawolf,” Jai told her, scratching behind Coal’s ears. “I’m just glad Coal picked me.”
“When Varg had her litter, I deliberately chose the best people I knew as possible companions. It was up the pups to agree with me, which they did in nearly all cases,” I told Fiori.
Fiori wrinkled her brow. “In nearly all cases?”
“I had intended to give Hero to Juliyana,” I explained.
Dalton laughed and nudged Lyth. “Lyth picked up the pup to give it to Juliyana, then stopped, looked into Hero’s eyes, then told everyone her name was Hero.”
“You bonded by accident?” Fiori said, her eyes twinkling with amusement.
“If you ask the parawolves, there is no accident in any bonding,” I said. Juliyana had been highly annoyed by the incident, but one can’t argue with a parawolf over such a matter.
“I’m just glad she was here today.” Lyth gave Hero a scratch. “So…I’m here. Time to stop being mysterious, Danny.”
The mood about the table abruptly sobered.
“I’m sorry about the theatrical mystery,” I told Lyth. “I just don’t trust the communications beacons to not spill this sideways. It’s not something I think should be let loose upon the galaxy. Not yet, at least.”
“Mysteriouser and mysteriouser,” Lyth misquoted. He sat back and crossed his arms. “The ship is sealed, Lyssa?”
She nodded.
Lyth looked at me. “Fire away.”
“We’ve made first contact with aliens. And they’re not friendly.”
Lyth stared at me, his arms loosening. He leaned forward and rubbed his temple. “This isn’t a joke?”
I glanced at Lyssa.
She generated a 3D tank on the table, less than a meter high, but big enough to see the details. Silently, the footage ran.
When it finished, Lyth remained still for a long moment. Then he stirred and rubbed his temple once more. “This changes…oh, only everything.”