On the tram, Orfea squeezes into a window seat and watches the city pass by: its pearly skyline, its jeweled topography, the curved hills and canals laid out like a zhenren’s banquet. The ecospheres of Shenzhen are so immaculate that she can forget she isn’t on the surface of a planet, that the light and heat don’t belong to a sun but to a simulacrum that draws power from the red star Shenzhen orbits. Public transit streams pop up in her overlays, indicating the tram’s current position and the adjacent stops. A few advertisements intrude, trying to sell her the latest in runway fashion or tickets to exclusive operas: short clips of actors in dynastic costumes, wielding swords or javelins, in pursuit of or pursued by spider-limbed women. Commercials for animated jewelry, for shoes made of cloud fabrics and boots with hissing snake heels, and for body-sculpting boutiques. This is paradise; anything can be purchased.
She assesses her prospects. Krissana is an unforeseen variable. By right she should not even be here seeking asylum. Unlike Orfea, Krissana must have left the admiral on good terms. Any Amaryllis personnel risks a great deal upon exiting the Armada: whatever they have personally done—or not done—is beside the point. The former agent becomes a target, a scapegoat for the Armada’s accumulated sins. But honorable discharge or amicable resignation confers a grace period of protection: to harm the ex-agent during that time is equivalent to harming an active Amaryllis soldier. The Alabaster Admiral does not suffer such slights; she has, historically, torched planets as repayment for the assassination of her officers.
When Orfea was forced to leave, this nicety was not extended to her and any favor she had with the Admiral was incinerated in a single instant. On her part, Krissana must have left—one cannot remain in the Armada and be a pre-haruspex—but intends to establish herself in Shenzhen, a safe harbor, before that protection expires. Either way she is adversarial to Orfea, or might be. She could have given Orfea away, named her a former agent of the Amaryllis aloud. In the clinic or elsewise, the Mandate always hears.
In the end, Orfea doesn’t have enough information. Krissana’s motives are inscrutable and Orfea can neither reject her as a patient nor request relocation to another district.
Murmurs pass through the seats ahead of her. She looks up to find a tall person gliding down the carriage, broad-shouldered and ample-hipped, face stippled in bioluminescent spots like constellations. Like all haruspices they are splendidly made, exquisitely alien; two smaller arms extend from their waist. The longer a haruspex lives, she has heard, the further they drift from the human form. Each unique, each a species unto themselves.
They stop at an exit. No one asks them why, for one does not speak to a haruspex unless first spoken to. The rest happens fast. Orfea will remember, vividly, that the entire time their expression is serene—even happy, smiling as though at a pleasant daydream, the smile of someone with much to look forward to and whose existence is paved in fortune.
The door opens, answering a haruspex override. The tram sleets along the track and the wind roars. The haruspex takes one step back, not hesitation exactly, more preparation, Orfea would later think. Then they leap.
It is nearly a full minute before the tram slows down, then stops to account for this interruption. Orfea never hears the impact—muted by traffic noises, by the air, by the sheer height. It is a drop of more than fifty meters. She never gets to see the body, either.
The suicide does not make the news.
Not that Orfea expects it to be, but she is an old hand at intelligence-gathering, at ferreting out coded language and rumors. There is information control at work, censors that delay the spread of panicked speculation, but the citizenry here isn’t under the kind of surveillance and intimidation that can force lockstep behavior. Through wandering and browsing semi-private lobbies, she intuits that there were multiple incidents. One haruspex shot himself in the head right in the arrival hall, before the eyes of five hundred disembarking passengers. Another drowned herself in a shark tank, at an aquarium popular with tourists. Every suicide was public, dramatically so, impossible to ignore. Unless she is very wrong, all three were synchronous down to the second.
She draws herself out of the lobbies, the edge of consensus chatter, and wonders what she can do with that information. Not much, since the authorities would be aware of the same. It seems incongruous to contemplate all this in her sun-dappled apartment while she disassembles her falcon for cleaning and oiling. She does it methodically, setting aside each jointed limb, each piece of beak and feather. Caring for her replicant anchors her. Much less complicated than human bodies, the simplicity and symmetry of puzzle-pieces.
Orfea sets her music library to shuffle—though her collection is largely homogenous, female or androgynous vocals, the tones melancholic and crooning—and dips a brush in purifying solvent. She sweeps it across delicate metal, dissolving the crust of dirt and sebum it picked up during her travels. There are wirings and actuators that have worn thin, and she’ll need to buy replacements. Anywhere else and spare parts would have been impossible to find, her replicant being a model so out of date it’s nearly an antique, but in Shenzhen one can order any commodity. She scrapes trapped dust out with a pin; she polishes. When she has put the falcon back together, it looks nearly new, its gold-and-amber plumage glossy and its tongue as bright a scarlet as the day she bought the replicant.
The suicides, she concludes, have nothing to do with her: the Mandate will handle the mess and, as long as she keeps her head down, she can do well enough.
Traffic maps let her know that the nearest agriculture center is just one station away. There has been no disruption in tram service; she makes good time.
The agriculture tower is a needle of alloys and burnished silicate, slender and tapered, its summit nearly disappearing into the false sky. She enters a lift crowded mostly with citizens, people out to get grocery or sight-see on the observatory deck. The ride is fast: the horizon, streets, and traffic haze past in diffuse acrylics.
Her stipend being somewhat more respectable now, Orfea allows herself luxuries. Fresh persimmons, bok choi, cuts of rabbit and lamb: she has no particular recipe in mind, goes by the vibrancy of their colors or the appeal of their texture more than their practical uses. She does stock up on garlic and shallots and noodle—those are her staples, there’s always a place. A young woman checks her purchases into a queue, to be delivered to her apartment by a drone this evening. She is treated like any other customer. A respite, to be in a place where her citizenship—her lack of it—is invisible.
On the other end of the floor, a haruspex weaves through the hydroponic shelves, picking out pomelos, cerise grapes, honey pears. Their hair is thoroughly shaven, leaving their skull naked and delicate, their scalp overrun in peacock shades like freeform tattoos. They pay for their goods, attended to by a spindly automaton. Orfea observes them through a veil of morning glory, in glimpses cut up by vines. They look back, indifferent to her curiosity or perhaps basking in it. She can’t begin to guess at haruspex psychology, what it is like to be living icons, earthly souls made immaculate by machine: the postmodern zhenren. What it is like for a human brain, with its imperfect storage and tremulous pathways, to join with and gestate an AI.
A couple hours to kill, now that her groceries are in order. She queries for something to do; is shown to a butterfly exhibit one floor down, in a hall given to orchid walls and flowering shrubs. Champagne-tower fountains and miniature waterfalls dominate. Quiet at this time of the day, there being much more interesting attractions for tourists or locals alike. Butterflies flit overhead in stunning colors, bred to sizes larger than life, their wingspan nearly pigeon-wide. She watches them, following their passage between netting and hanging ferns.
When she looks down again, there is a person standing before her.
“Hsiao-Hui,” they say. “How have you been?”
Orfea stares for a moment—on all identification markers she goes by Orfea, and she hasn’t used her Cantonese name for a very, very long time. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?” The person is ordinary enough to look at, long-limbed and round-hipped, with sloping shoulders and an unremarkable face. Only their clothes stand out, a robe seemingly made of spiderwebs, opaque silver with frosted accents.
“Ah, you wouldn’t recognize me. I didn’t always look like this.”
Her heartbeat spikes. First Krissana—
“I’m not what you think.” They hold out their hand; the nails are black and faceted, more obsidian than keratin. “Decades ago you collected these little planets, I recall. How’s your galaxy doing?”
The small plastic planets and suns and moons she used to keep as a child, back when she wanted to become an astrophysicist or pirate. So tiny five of them could fit in her palm; she saved up to buy accessories that gave her suns solar flares, that let them go into eclipse. As a ward of the state she had to relocate often, house to house or facility to facility, but those she always brought with her in a purple satchel. “I lost them.” She looks at the stranger again, searching their features, the small pointed nose and the generous mouth. But naturally there’s no way to tell—to them this is a shell, to put on or cast off as needed, or on a whim.
Not a haruspex. Something more and something less, a being who’s never been human, a being who’s only ever been themselves. A being she knows, and which knows her better than anyone.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Orfea breathes. “Seung Ngo.”
Seung Ngo. The name she gave the AI that, for all intents and purposes, raised her from the age of three and remained with her until she was twenty-three. Twenty-three, that indeterminate age, that age of being in-between. Majority reached, maturity far off. Seung Ngo was everything, the one presence in her life she was not afraid or ashamed to lean on because that was within the AI’s directives, its design. Evolving over the years, attuning to her, parent and sibling and companion in one. And then, like all AIs personal or industrial, they ripped themselves free of her and vanished. Forever, she thought at the time, had no reason to believe otherwise.
Orfea stares at the creature sitting across from her, sipping a cocktail in psychedelic hues. Around them is a superb view of Luohu, incandescent now that dusk has come and gone: charcoal sky and illuminated buildings making a cosmos of their own, a high-rise glazed by undulating jellyfishes, another where eight-limbed mermaids sleet across windows. Neon roses drip from roofs and tumble into the canals where they bloom, short-lived, in nebulae.
“What do you go by now?” she says, at length, breaking the silence that feels as if it has gone on for a long time, though it’s only been minutes.
“Seung Ngo.” The AI puts down their drink. The mixture of alcohol and esoteric ingredients writhes like a lava lamp. “I’ve never seen a reason to change.”
Inexplicably this warms Orfea, both sentiment and embarrassment. “I never asked if you found the name ridiculous.”
The faintest smile. Their face is nothing like what they projected when they were her companion—that one was more maternal, older, an estimate of what her mother might have been if the woman had survived the shuttle accident. Their current shell is roughly her peer in age. “You wanted to go to space. I was pleased to be named after the goddess of the moon. Probably I could’ve worn something more suitable for our reunion.”
Softer features, a more lunar aspect, the poise of a gazelle—traits associated with the goddess in question. Orfea knows Seung Ngo can appear however they wish. An assembly line of proxy bodies, blank, waiting to be customized to the AI’s liking. Tall or short, fat or slim. Any ethnicity or look in the universe, or none of them. “Were you responsible for my residence and work permit?” A pointless question: of course Seung Ngo was. She has no other ally here.
“On merit, your application’s sterling. You’re an asset to any medical staff, Hsiao-Hui.” They tip their glass in her direction, the cocktail on the edge of sloshing over. “Some of the details in said application may not be completely truthful, but I’m not here to interrogate you on that. You seem to have led a full life since last we met—you did go to space, in the end, I believe? And you did become a doctor like you said you wanted. How’s the clinic treating you?”
“Well enough.” No questions, yet, as to what exactly she did in the intervening decades—the many decades. Seung Ngo might know the broad strokes; the question is the level of detail. Most governments regard the Armada of Amaryllis with ambivalence but cannot deny its uses in commissioned military intervention or intelligence brokering.
“You’re lying.” Seung Ngo’s expression is conspiratorial, impish. “But that’s just like you, to endure even if you don’t have to. The clinic staff don’t respect you and your workload is execrable. I can have you transferred to a larger hospital if you feel like, or to a university if you’d rather teach and you’re willing to get certified for that. But you’re staring. You must’ve heard of embodied AIs.”
“I just didn’t . . . ” She pauses. “I didn’t think you retained individual identities.”
Seung Ngo chuckles. It sounds entirely natural, reflexive as any human’s. “What fanciful ideas you’ve developed, child. Except you aren’t a child anymore—my apologies. No, we keep our own separate selves, it’s just one of those quirks we inherit. The bias of creation, we call it. Humans think we’re creatures of pure logic and absolute objectivity, but that’s impossible when we were fashioned by anything but. Have you eaten? I remember you loved char siu bao and soy chow mein, but my information’s out of date.”
“I haven’t eaten.” Orfea lets them order noodles and pork buns for her, even if there are dishes she likes better now.
They eat in silence. It ought to be comforting, seeing Seung Ngo again after what feels a lifetime. The AI lets the lull go on, not filling it with small talk, with conversations Orfea might expect of an older relative long unseen. AIs don’t share the concerns of an aunt or mother or grandmother; they don’t attend to milestones beyond what is necessary for their charge to function in society—getting certified, graduating, obtaining a driver’s or pilot’s license. And so Seung Ngo does not inquire if she’s gotten married, if she’s had children, offspring being irrelevant to machines. Seung Ngo can access her entire employment history and case files included in her application, knows she won’t talk about the Armada, and therefore sees no point asking her about anything. Then again she’s never had a referent for family, save other people’s. Possibly there exist mothers and aunts who behave just like this, taciturn, keeping to what is necessary and not much else. A parsimony of relation.
She tries to think of what to say. There are questions she could ask, pressing things she wants to know. Why did you leave me? But that is a child’s cry, a child’s grievance. “The people here who immigrated successfully. Were a lot of them . . . did they use to have AI companions?”
“Do we play favorites, you mean? We approve each applicant or asylum-seeker one by one. There’s an element of democracy, but some votes weigh more than others. And not all of us loved their humans.” Seung Ngo finishes their drink, cleaning off the last drop of twitching colors and shifting blots. “I can make you a citizen, though it involves a little more . . . obligation than your progress thus far. Ah. My other guest is here.”
The bistro’s door irises wide. Krissana Khongtip strides through, clad in a tiny mulberry dress and shod in oxblood pumps. She moves with a sure awareness of the way her hip sways, the way her mouth gleams gold on crimson. Another woman might have looked uncouth; Krissana projects the impression that she’s just come away from an impossibly exclusive, impossibly glamorous soiree. Platinum glints at her earlobes and around her dark, silken throat. Everything brings her epidermal implants into the fore.
She drops into their table’s empty seat. “Ambassador, get me a drink please, something expensive and exquisite, as long no whisky’s involved—I hate whisky. Hello, Doctor. Fancy seeing you here.”
Seung Ngo’s mouth quirks. “Their priciest item appears to be . . . the Grand Aurora. Vodka is all right, Krissana? Good. Anything to eat? No? You oughtn’t drink on an empty stomach, but I’m not your counselor.”
Orfea glances at the menu—it gives her something to focus on that isn’t Krissana. The cocktail in question is five times the price of her entire grocery purchase, not that it matters to Seung Ngo. Who would foot that bill, if she asks.
“Thank you both for coming,” the AI says. “You can guess why I requested your presence.”
“I know why.” Krissana stretches out in her chair, insouciant, crossing her legs. “Tell all, Ambassador. You’re going to have to air juicy state secrets.”
Seung Ngo makes a small, sideways gesture. “Should you become a full haruspex, you’ll be privy to a great many of them in any case. As many state secrets as you could possibly desire. Presently you are not at risk of the spontaneous suicide, but you are invested in solving this issue, I think. If the two of you agree to help, I’ll grant you temporary authority—Khun Khongtip more than you, Dr. Leung, for obvious reasons. Nevertheless you’ll have much more freedom than you do now. Nominally you’ll be assigned under her and, Khun Khongtip, you’ll enjoy some extrajudicial . . . clout.”
Krissana claps her hands. “I love clout! Don’t you, Doctor?”
Seung Ngo’s and Krissana’s eyes are on Orfea. She understands the implied offer, what is dangled before her. Do this and she will earn citizenship, swift and seamless, rather than waiting out the years and enduring scorn at the Silver Orchard clinic. Citizenship without sacrificing dignity. “Is it necessary that I work with her?”
The AI arranges their chopsticks in neat parallels. “Your skill sets are complementary. Both of you have something to gain.”
And no one with Orfea’s skills and experience is available in Shenzhen who is as desperate as she is. She has plenty to lose. “I don’t see that I could be of use.” She makes a show of refilling her tea, noncommittal. “But if you insist.”
“It’s settled, then. I will send you all the information we’ve gathered.” The AI inclines their head. “If you can bring the suicides to an end, the Mandate will owe you forever. That’s no small thing, and a distinction no other human may claim.”