Emma died at seventy-three.
Natural death. Age. Exhaustion. Body worn from pregnancy at sixty-five. Body depleted from raising Keiko. Body simply finishing its natural span. No violence. No tragedy. Just conclusion. Just appropriate ending.
She chose complete dissolution.
Not ghost protocol. Not consciousness preservation. Not duplication. Complete death. Death like Marcus had demonstrated decades ago. Death without persistence. Death that was ending rather than transition.
Keiko was eight years old. Singular eight-year-old. Only singular child in generation of multiplied humans. Only coherent identity in age of fracture. She sat beside her mother's deathbed holding singular hand with singular grief.
