Emma-the-second was seventy-three when the child was born wrong.
Not deformed. Not diseased. Not biologically flawed. Wrong in a way that made medical staff step back. Wrong in a way that made scanners malfunction. Wrong in a way that shouldn't be possible.
The child was both.
Both singular and plural simultaneously. Both coherent and fractured at once. Both one and many in the same consciousness. Both bounded and infinite in a single mind.
It was impossible. Biology didn't work that way. Consciousness didn't work that way. The child couldn't exist. But existed anyway.
The parents were singular—two preserved consciousnesses from the original forty-seven thousand who'd managed to find each other, reproduce naturally, create this impossible offspring. They stared at their child in the medical chamber, watching readings that contradicted everything known about consciousness structure.
"What is she?" the mother whispered.
