I chew on a protein bar on my way out the door. It doesn't taste like anything. Maybe Bugs left these a lot longer than a week ago.

IO's Founding Day was basically the same thing every year – long speeches by important people, a long procession of lighting candles at the Zion memorial, long communal meals. I actually liked the middle part – the gothic vibes, the way everyone's eyes flicker in the candlelight, the tiny graffiti low on the base of Morpheus' statue that I always felt like no one knew about except for me, since it was exactly at my eye level the first time I saw it when I was about five: "It is correct to love even at the wrong time."

Everyone's parents made them go. Actually, Mom and Dad were different. They made it clear that as the One, they had to be there, but I always had the impression that they spent every minute wishing they could leave. And they were clear that they never wanted to involve me in any official business about the One, which suited us all fine.

Bugs used to bring me to the gathering with her when I was a kid, but as I got older, it was clear I was becoming a lot less into it than she was. I also hated that everyone always recognized me there. Strangers would feel the need to come up to me and tell me I looked just like Mom and Dad. After a few years of me whining about it, Mom said I didn't have to go if I didn't want to.

But Bugs kept showing up to drag me there anyway.

Sometime in my early teens, thinking I was being really witty, I said to her, "Have I ever told you that you really bug me sometimes?" Real hurt flashed in her eyes for a second before she covered it up with a grin. "Oh yeah? Have I ever told you that you really can be a little shit?"

Yeah, I'm a real party to be around.

I've been avoiding her since my parents died, which I know upsets her. We could have been there for each other. But I was too angry. I think it's because she had more time with them than I did. Bugs, who'd believed in the legends about Neo and Trinity and made them come true. Bugs with her white rabbit tattoo that Dad, even when he was still Thomas Anderson for the second time, followed without question down into Wonderland all over again.

I used to wonder what that would be for me. And then I found out the day a boy about my age with beautiful eyes came up to me when I was on my way to get in the line for fruit, and I saw the tattoo of a black wolf on one slim wrist.

You know the Black Wolf. My parents' generation had seen it as a symbol of the Matrix itself, straight out of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The next generations tended to associate it with that era and older ways of thinking. Most kids my age didn't really know what it stood for besides a general sense of rebellion. I'd gone through a phase when I'd had stickers of it all over my computers, my water bottle, my locker at the academy. I thought I was so cool.

So I don't know, maybe I felt a little sorry for this boy who was too pretty to still be into something I'd outgrown in middle school. But I couldn't help but feel like if he was trying to get my attention, he couldn't have done better than having something that went so far back with me.

So without a word or so much as a glance between us, I followed him.

We pushed our way through a dark dive bar, the kind of place that has the shades drawn in the late afternoon, a couple of old regulars drinking by a flashing pachinko machine. There was a large storeroom in the back where about thirty or forty people were already sitting on crates, talking among themselves. An odd mixed group with just a few other teenagers, and half the room my parents' age or older. I sat in the back, near enough to the boy to hear him if he'd talked to anyone, but he didn't.

When the meeting started, I got the sense right away that this was something political, even though I didn't know what they were talking about. They began with updates from the past month, and everything was in code. You know, the Dormouse went to the tea party and had five pieces of toast. That kind of talk.

Gradually, it dawned on me that this could be the faction that called themselves the Anteionians. They claimed to have been founded by people who'd been orphaned in the fall of Zion, and largely carried on by their descendants. They were always clamoring on about everything they thought was wrong about IO – the partnerships with synthients, the regulated economy, that kind of thing. I'd heard Mom and Dad mentioning that the General kept tabs on them, but never thought much of them as a force to be reckoned with.

I was feeling like I'd crashed a service for someone else's religion. I could feel their belief, and I wasn't too uncomfortable knowing I didn't share it. I just listened to them. Because I know my parents never would have. I got the feeling that if more people at least listened to them, they wouldn't be the way they are now. But who knows? The bigger something is, the more naïve I seem to be about it.

The boy with the black wolf tattoo followed me out. He leaned on the bar and asked if he could buy me a drink. I asked for a beer and watched the bartender open our bottles. I tried to see if we had any friends in common, but mostly he was trying to get me to talk about myself, in a way that was a little flattering, but also suspicious. As I was getting up to go, he touched my wirst. He leaned forward and tried to kiss me. It's not like I wasn't expecting it, but something primal came over me. I shoved him away and ran out as fast as I could, even after I'd looked behind me and seen that he wasn't following me.

Back in my apartment, I told myself politics and me just don't mix. Still, sometimes I close my eyes and dream about what it would've been like to bring that boy back home. Something tells me he'd be as sweet of a drug as a lie. And that he'd be gone the next morning while I was still asleep and dreaming about him.


Where I know I went later, when I was still trying to get that boy out of my mind, is where i'm going now. The one place Bugs doesn't know where to find me. Because the only other person who knows about this place is the one who told me about it.

Ghost is a pretty cool character. Anyone who was Niobe's second for decades has to be. Once I asked him how he got to be that way, he said, "I tell myself I have to be the calmest person in the room."

"That's it?" I said. "No quote from some dead guy?"

Without a change in his expression, he said, "Kirkegaard says infinite resignation is the last stage before faith."

I don't quite have his calm center, but the few times at the range when I've channeled him, really went deep and imagined him guiding me, I've made perfect shots.

The rest of the time, I'm restless as hell. I don't know why he puts up with me, but I always feel more solid after talking to him. Whenever there's something I don't feel like telling anybody, I find myself talking about it with Ghost.

He's the only one I've told about the time I ended up at the Anteionians' meeting. He took one look at me and said, "Another day in Wonderland, huh?"

"Yeah." As I was talking, I kind of forgot he was there when Zion fell, that he was always Niobe's right-hand man, though he never followed her into politics. Too late, it occurred to me that this might bring up memories for him.

But Ghost just looked off into the distance for a long time before saying, "Movements come and movements go. Leaders speak, movements cease when their heads are flown."

Ghost is chill.

Naturally, it made me want to get a rise out of him. "You're a real charmer, Ghost. You ever have a girlfriend?"

He flashed me one of those smiles that would have looked like a grimace to anyone else. "You're so kind to be so concerned about me, Accord. No. Not out here."

"Never loved anybody?"

"Quit projecting, kid," he said, and I had one of those moments when I knew I could trust him with my life.

So I said, "You quit projecting, you old goat."

He shook his head. "Damn, girl, were you raised by wolves?"

"I was raised by fucking magnets." All those days and months and years my parents were gone, while I was growing up.

His brow creased. "You talk to her lately?"

I shook my head.

Ghost said, "She told Niobe once, 'The heart never speaks, but you must listen to it to know.' Said it was a Chinese proverb."

"Well?" I asked. "Is it?"

"Fuck if I know," he said. "I've never been able to prove it's not. But my guess is she's wrong about this one."

"The Oracle can be wrong?"

"That's what being human means. And these days you know how much she likes to say that she's…"

"Still human," I said, and Ghost nodded.

A moment later, he smiled. "You know, I always told your parents they should have made a game about me."

"Oh yeah?" I rolled my eyes. "What would your character do? Recite the postulates of Nietzsche? Look for a girlfriend?

"You wouldn't be talking to me that way if you'd grown up playing a game about all the times Niobe and I saved your parents' asses."

"Nah, now I just want the Ghost dating sim. We could call it Amor Fati."

He chuckled. I always liked it when I could make him laugh. To his credit, he didn't make it too easy for me. "Can't wait to get my hands on that."

Then all he had to do was stay quiet for a while, and I'd find myself talking again.

"Ghost?" I hesitated for a moment. "Do you think it was just a coincidence that I found myself at that Anteionian meeting?

"Nietzsche says it is only beside a world of purpose that the word accident has any meaning."

"So no."

"Hell no." He sighed. "What you have to remember about the Anteionians is they didn't actually exist before IO. They were a reaction to IO. A lot of movements that try to position themselves as having been there from the beginning are really very new. And you need to wake up from anything that claims to be something it's not."

"Yeah, yeah."

He turned serious. "You need to be careful. You'd be very valuable to them."

"Yeah, right."

"No, listen. Since the beginning of Zion, the strategy to pit the freeborn against the coppertops has been to break the faith of the freeborn faction that supports the One. It's why Morpheus was such a reviled figure in some circles. Still is. If they can discredit the One by getting you to join their side, or by making you look weak, they're betting on finally being able to win over enough numbers to do what they've always wanted."

"What's that?"

"Secede."

I started laughing. "My parents said they've always talked about founding another city, but they'll never do it. They can dream on. They'd never survive on their own out there."

"You're right about that. But if they have enough people with them, when they leave, they'll take IO down with them. That's what they want, too."

I really wanted to say something sarcastic. But Ghost's expression was so grave that I took a moment to rein in that impulse. "I thought I was paranoid, but you're starting to scare me a little."

Ghost shrugged. "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."

"Well, I'm not afraid of God. And I'm sure as hell not afraid of any Anteionians." I exhaled. "But I respect your wisdom, Ghost. So I'm gonna think about what you said."

Ghost snorted. "You, actually respecting somebody? This has to be a dream."

I rolled my eyes. "Does everyone really think I'm that bad? Why wouldn't I respect you? You're, like, my best friend."

He looked stricken.

"What?" I said, after a long moment.

Ghost looked down at the ground. "I'm not proud of who I was when I was younger. There was something I used to think I deserved. I just realized that because I didn't get it, I got something I didn't deserve."

When he didn't elaborate, I said, "Bravo. It sounds like you're doing just great." When he still didn't crack a smile, I said, "Also, I can always tell when you're being original because when you're not quoting someone, your syntax goes to shit."

That finally made him laugh. "That's personal growth for you. If you live long enough, you might even experience it for yourself."


As I walk to the dam, the bio-sky above it is moody, furtive, prison-like. One flickering corner could almost look like lightning, except that I know the bio-sky entirely too well to be romantically fooled. It looked like Cluster D492 hasn't been maintained properly. I can't stop thinking how that would never have been allowed to happen if Mom were still here.

Most women, when they find out they're expecting a baby, they get their home ready, buy stuff, knit stuff. You bet Mom did all of that.

But first, she decided she was going to fix the whole fucking sky for me.


Joseph Yang SJ PhD was in his early fifties when he started noticing tiny inconsistencies in his data. None of his programs had caught anything, but he started seeing strange patterns when he examined the charts at very specific intervals. None of the other esteemed astrophysicists around him seemed to think much of it. He thought he was looking at a new star. Then he thought he was going crazy.

Of course, the truth was that he was in a computer-generated dream known as the Matrix, and that a few months prior, Mom and Dad (mostly Mom) had insisted on making one last Matrix run to plant a star in the sky that would, with any luck, attract the attention of any particularly brilliant astronomer who was willing to entertain the notion that something was very wrong with the world they knew.

The Starbait run was absurdly risky, but they got it down really tight. Mom and Dad were in and out in under three minutes through the same portal before the machines even detected the first of three levels of security and crew members they had around them. I guess Dad could have done it on its own, but the thought would never have occurred to them. They never did anything without the other person. They were so freaking codependent. I would have told them to go therapy, except that then they would probably have told me to go to therapy. So none of us ever said anything about it.

The Starbait protocol set the standard for every major mission since. Looking back now, it's staggering how little SOP there was in place before that. But you have to remember that most podborns are diehard rebels who deep down don't value their own lives all that much. Chew steel, shit bullets. This is a war and we are soldiers. They'll eat that kind of talk out of your hand. But it turns out that child safety laws are good for keeping everybody alive. Even the General begrudgingly admitted it. So you can thank me and Mom for the safety revolution.

And yes, more importantly, the band Fetus Code really did name itself after me.

You're welcome, punk rockers of IO.


The Starbait run made history in all sorts of ways. It smashed all records for the oldest person ever to be unplugged. I know how Dad had lost it after Morpheus took him to the desert of the real. It pretty much went that way for anybody over thirty. But Kingfisher, as he started calling himself, was dead calm as took in that his whole life had been inside a computer-generated system, the sky in the real world was fucked, and he'd been specially recruited to help.

This was also the first time someone with particular expertise had been targeted for an unplugging. My parents did a lot of impossible things. Maybe all parents do. Anyway, not a whole lot of other attempts to redpill cherry-picked individuals have succeeded since. I get it – no one wants to go in the creepy direction of using the Matrix as our incubator to shape the people we want. As inefficient as it is, it turns out there's wisdom in seeing who comes to you. But I digress.

Although the sky he'd studied for his whole life technically hadn't been real, his knowledge was unprecedented in the real world. By the time Mom was nursing me in a corner of his office, together they'd worked out what people had done to scorch the sky in the years following the birth of artificial intelligence. It's thanks to him that we now know what year it is – 2205, currently.

I was ten when bio-sky 2.0 was launched, largely thanks to Kingfisher and Mom. I remember how it had looked before – discrete parallelogram-shaped panels with dark borders, each lit up a slightly different shade. It was like being under a huge stained glass window. The upgrade looked like one big seamless dome. I stood with Mom and Dad and watched, spellbound, as a rainbow glowed into existence.

The Oracle started applauding first. It was a little jarring, the sound her exohands made, like a jar full of magnets rattling around, but Kingfisher started clapping too, and other people caught on fast. She smiled down at me. "Nature has a lot to teach us. It has just one aim: to be itself. In that respect, it is always free. Free to find ways to recreate itself in all the newness of life."

"But this isn't nature," I said. "It's technology."

Her smile widened. "Technology is not opposed to nature. Why shouldn't nature create technology to extend and evolve itself?"

I thought about watching Mom welding panels for the bio-sky herself, raising her mask and flipping her bangs out of her eyes. "You're talking about us building the bio-sky," I said. "So we can harness its energy to power our city and grow our food."

Mom and Dad looked at each other. "You say it," Dad said.

"Maybe the sky is using us to exist," Mom said casually. "Harnessing our energy to develop its being."

This kind of talk was rare for kids growing up with two coppertop parents. Coppertops tend to stay very rage against the machine, even after living in IO for most of their life. I probably would've gotten beaten up on the playground for saying something like, "Maybe the sky is using us to exist," except that no one ever dared come near me as the kid of the One. On the one hand, I didn't get bullied. On the other, I didn't have too many friends.

I remember tearing my gaze away from that ethereal rainbow to look at Mom. I asked her, "But this is more real than the Matrix, right?"

She was quiet for a while. "When I was younger, I would have said yes. The real world was everything to me. Each time I jacked out, it seemed to me the real world was richer, more alive. I thought I'd always be able to tell the difference. But when I was reinserted, I couldn't. It humbled me."

Dad had wandered off to talk nerdy with Kingfisher. I said, "Dad said he could tell."

"He remembered a lot more than I did. He told me he'd sit in his bathtub for hours, wondering why that was the only time his mind and his senses felt aligned. Some part of him knew his body was in a pod. In the Anomaleum." Her expression hardened. Then she sighed softly. "Now when Dad and I go into the Matrix or the Construct, our minds know it isn't real. But it all feels like reality to me. I don't discriminate between virtual worlds and the real world the way I used to. Maybe I've lost the ability to tell the difference. Maybe I never had it in the first place." She paused. "But there's one big difference between this world and all the rest."

I didn't even try to pretend I didn't know what she meant. "Me?"

"Yeah, you." She stroked my hair. "For the first time in my life, I was happy with the way things were. The bio-sky. The energy situation. I didn't think I needed to change anything. Then you came along, and suddenly it wasn't enough anymore. The world wasn't good enough for you. I want you to know what it's like to wake up and see the sky brighten. To look up at the moon and be silent under the stars. Maybe I won't experience that out here in my lifetime. But I want it to be a reality in yours."

I guess Mom and Dad dreamed of me being the perfect balance of tech and nature, machine and intuition. The perfect human being. Instead here's me, playing video games until my body gives out.

These days, faulty panels aside, the sunrise above IO is more beautiful and lifelike than ever, and I do what I can to never be awake to see it.


They showed me the real sky a few months later, for my eleventh birthday. We took the Mnemosyne, naturally. I was legally too young to be on a ship, so Mom and Dad just didn't tell anyone I was coming. They wheeled me onboard in a giant suitcase and let me out once the ship started reversing along the dock. The crew and Kingfisher loved that. The General, not so much when she found out later, which was just the icing on the cake.

Looking at Mom and Dad, it was a little hard to believe they'd flown to the Machine City by themselves. They were hiding it well, but I could tell they were a little bit terrified of making this trip again. They held hands the whole way up. I tried to sit with them for a while, but finally I got bored and went to the cockpit to hang out with Bugs instead. She let me sit in the co-pilot's seat once we were cruising and occasionally asked me to read out what I was seeing on my interface. Even though I could tell she was just pretending to steer based on the coordinates I was giving her, it was still pretty cool.

As soon as we cleared the earth's surface, everyone crowded into the cockpit, even though there wasn't much to see. It was just as dark and oppressive as being underground.

But then a blinding light hit us. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. The backs of my eyelids were vividly pink. When I gradually opened my eyes again, everything was a clear bright blue. I couldn't believe how much space there was all around us. Kingfisher was releasing data-collecting drones, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion, like a swimmer in a dream. Everyone else looked as dazzled as I felt.

Until that trip, Mom was the only person who'd seen the sky in hundreds of years. I didn't know how to describe what I was seeing. But as I held my parents' hands tight, I understood why she'd wanted me to see it for myself.


There's no question that seeing the sky messed me up, though. A few days later, back at the academy, I was daydreaming about the shapes of the clouds and how impossible it was that something so big could stay up in the sky when suddenly it seemed like the ceiling of the classroom was pressing down on me and I couldn't breathe.

I did the only thing I could think of to do. I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured being up in the cockpit of the Mnemosyne, holding hands with my parents, staring straight into the boundless sky. It had been real. But the memory wasn't enough to blot out what I now knew – that I'd been confined underground my whole life, and I was probably going to stay that way.

The feeling followed me around everywhere, but it was the worst at the academy. I don't know why. Maybe because I had to be there. One morning I refused to get out of bed. Mom came in to find me staring out my window at the bio-sky, sniffling. I looked at her and I knew she knew. But I didn't feel like talking about it.

"I don't want to go to the academy today," I mumbled. "I want to just download stuff in my head like you and Dad do in the Matrix." Like how Mom learned to ride motorcycles in the first place. People ask me if I ride, like I should have somehow inherited that from her. Listen, she was good, but she also had it downloaded into her brain to start with. Like I never will.

Mom sat on the bed next to me and touched the back of her hand to my forehead, just to check if I had a fever. Then she brushed my hair out of my eyes and asked, "What are you learning about now?"

This stumped me for a second, because lately I'd either been spacing out hard or cooling my heels in the principal's office. One time, he had to step outside for an urgent phone call, and I took the opportunity to look at all his computers. One screen was displaying the 12th graders' prospective curriculum. I read half a unit on cybernetics before he got back and that had been interesting. "Cybernetics," I told Mom.

I could tell by the way Mom's face stayed exactly the same that she was suspicious of this, but was choosing to give me space. "Okay, cybernetics. Say there's a program on cybernetics I want to download. Suppose it says, picking a round number here, RT 3s^10. That means it requires three seconds of real world time, but 3^10 seconds of experienced time, which is about… sixteen hours. So if Dad were with me in the Construct, he'd see me learn about cybernetics for three seconds, but in my mind, I'm going through sixteen hours of experiences in which I'm learning it."

"Sixteen hours?" No one had told me about this part before. "Of, like, reading textbooks?"

"Each person's mind interfaces with the program individually to create its own experiences. It's like a dream, in that way. Maybe I'm reading manuals, or talking to the cybernetics expert who wrote that program, or building something synthiants could use. Whatever my mind would need to believe that learning it really happened to me." She narrowed her eyes. "You, in all likelihood, would have experienced something like sixteen hours at the academy, since that's your main frame of reference to date. There are no real shortcuts in life."

"That happens every time you learn something that way?"

"Every time."

The next thought made me excited and sad at the same time. "Am I ever in your dreams?"

"Always. You and Dad." She ran her fingers through my hair. "Are we in yours?"

"Not much." I felt disappointed in myself. "If I could choose my own dreams, you would be. But I just dream about stuff like being late for the academy or dropping my lunchbox or forgetting to charge Cybebe. I never dream about anything cool. All my dreams are just stupid."

She frowned. "No part of you is stupid."

"You're just saying that because you're my mom and you have to say stuff like that."

She tilted my chin up to look at her. "I'm saying it because I choose to. And because it's true. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And you're pretty smart. For example, I know you've kept me talking long enough that you're going to miss first period."

I threw my head back and wailed, "Oh, no! Not Cybernetics!"

We looked at each other and started laughing so hard that Mom had to lean on my shoulder, or she would have fallen off the bed. When we collected ourselves again, Mom looked at the time. "Hey. You want to just make a day of it?"

"What?"

"Just this once, instead of going to the academy today, how about coming with me? It'll just be the two of us. I'll play truant, too."

Of course, it wouldn't just be that once, and Mom was way better at truancy than I would ever have guessed. It was years before I found out Mom skipped so much high school that she was pretty damn close to getting expelled. She would have been the valedictorian, too, except that Morpheus unplugged her first.

Mom was pretty smart herself. She took me to visit Kingfisher that day and we got to see some of the data he'd collected from our trip up to the sky, stuff that was giving him a lot of ideas for how we might try to reverse the damage, and I forgot all about moping. But I never forgot about how much I wished I could see her and Dad in my dreams.