EPILOGUE
Vasi’s consciousness resumed in a new body, a cheap mass-printed spider bot which wasn’t the chassis its backup insurance was supposed to provide. It had lost more than two thousand hours of memories since its last backup. That was annoying. More than annoying—it suggested something had gone terribly wrong.
The body was new, less than forty hours old, never used. And yet somehow there was a message waiting in its comm buffer, with no origin tags. Vasi opened it, expecting some sort of warranty information or self-maintenance recommendations.
Instead it was from a mech Vasi didn’t know. “Hi! Daslakh here. Never mind who I am—by the time you get this I’ll be off Miranda. Sorry you got blown up. Actually, I’m not. You probably deserved it. I did a little searching and I noticed that Kavita’s plot only got rolling when you returned to Miranda after Adya ditched you at Saturn. That’s also when the family did their asset inventory, and when you inexplicably rated the Oort payload as nearly worthless.
“Those facts are suggestive but of course I can’t show causality. It doesn’t matter: this isn’t a legal or scientific document, it’s a personal threat. I don’t know if you figured you’d be Kavita’s puppeteer, or if you were genuinely trying to help her, or what. I don’t really care. Listen to me: I’ve got some autonomous agents watching you, and a couple of Baseline-plus entities, as well. As long as you stay in Miranda you’re going to behave yourself, because if you don’t, they’ll know—and so will I. I’m a lot nicer than I used to be, which is why your backup self didn’t get erased. But I’ve got limits, and you only get one second chance. Use it well.”
Vasi didn’t know who this Daslakh person was, but felt pretty sure it didn’t like it very much. It seemed to know far too many things Vasi had worked very hard to keep secret. Vasi checked its gigajoule credit balance: less than it expected, but enough for a one-way secure transmission of its mind and a cheap body on arrival. Perhaps it was time to make a new start someplace far from Miranda.
Very far.