The simulation flicked away, and I snapped back to the boundless neon void.

My 'history teacher' clacked her heels over to my floating spot. "My name is Ogawa. Why can't you remember that?"

"It's not personal, I swear. Just bad with names."

She considered that for a moment before allowing her scowl to bloom into an exuberent grin.

"Well, whatever…did you see me?" she said, eyes wide. "I was in line in front of you! That's so weird."

"What?" I asked, still trying to reorient myself. "The PAC family?"

She groaned. "The Japanese family. Fuck the PAC, swallowing up continents as soon as the opportunity came up."

"Okay, the Japanese family, then. Yeah, I saw you."

"That was me and my sister, Umeko! And baa-baa and jiji, too." She smiled, grabbing my hands. "Isn't it crazy that your great grandfather was in line right behind me and my grandfather?"

I looked at her hands, slender and smooth. Ageless.

"I dunno," I said, returning my gaze to meet hers. "It had to be made up. At least some of it. Most of the people in that room didn't have neurocoms. Where would the peeps who programmed this get their data?"

"First of all, MiniMax programmed it, not people." Ogawa stepped back, pointing her finger at my nose. "And MiniMax knows all from the moment the Akashic Database was created."

I scoffed. "So…your god-computer is omniscient?"

"You're impossible!" Ogawa scoffed. "He's not a 'god-computer'. MiniMax is an AI who interprets all of the megacity's data feeds. We don't worship Him."

"Uh huh. Clearly." I ran my fingers through my hair. "And how does 'He' process that much data? Every feed in the mega…there are billions. A hundred years of that would be, like, yottabytes of data."

Ogawa opened her mouth, but stopped herself before any words escaped. She turned her head, gave me the side-eye, then turned back into ball of flickering light.

I floated with my eyebrows cocked at their most vexed setting, watching the orb. Two beings bobbing silently in a digital void.

A few seconds later, the orb flashed back into the young Japanese woman with flowing hair. Much more pleasing to look at, but still wearing a judgmental bend of the lips.

"I had to check something," she said, "and I'm not supposed to answer your last question because it could affect your next Trial."

"Oh," I said, countering her expression with my own mischievous grin. "How about a different question then? Is this really what you looked like when you were, you know, not a hundred?"

Ogawa's eyes narrowed. She was fighting hard not to smile.

***

I didn't see her do it, but my sudden appearance in another simulated slice of history was a dead giveaway that she'd snapped her fingers.

My brain fought to adjust to the changing stimuli and implanted memories, like someone's eyes when they flick the light on in a dark room. The meaningless blurs around me slowly took shape. Recognition trickled in drop by drop.

"Ogawa?" I said, rubbing my eyes. "Can you talk to me when I'm in one of these?"

Blinking away the fuzz, I realized there was someone right in front of me. Not Ogawa, but a woman in her forties wearing a suit that might still be called 'retro' in my native 2165.

"Jesus, Aram," she said, touching my arm, "when's the last time you slept?"

Realizing my mistake, I laughed it off to buy a few seconds. This body had a neurocom — first-generation, if I had to guess based on the clunky way it streamed info on the blonde woman into my NUI.

Ah. Apparently, she was my simulated self's wife. And I was Aram Qadir this time around.

Another family reunion. First I was my great-grandfather, and now my grandfather. If at all wasn't so quick and confusing, I might have gotten a little emotional about these simulations.

"I'm fine, Jenna," I said, taking cues from the NUI info in my field of vision.

I cleared my throat, then fired off a reassuring grin. "I'll sleep when I'm dead, baby."

The woman's jaw nearly fell off, and her eyes darted from side to side. "Aram! What's gotten into you?" she half-whispered.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Apparently, I'd overstepped the conversational protocols of grandpa and grandma Qadir. Looking away from Jenna's disapproving stare gave me a sweeping view of the room — and insight into why my tone might have upset Jenna.

We were sat at a long conference table along with a dozen other peeps in executive attire. Around the table, attendants and aides ferried electronic tablets, portable drives, and clinking rocks glasses too and from the meeting.

The room's design flowed from floor to ceiling, mostly pure white and glass. Surprisingly, there were no GC banners over our heads. There was, however, a huge metal crest set into the wall. It bore the image of open hands cradling a stylized human heart and brain.

Though the details were off, it was definitely the symbol of the Consortium of Hope.

My heart raced. There's no way my grandfather was a Founder. Impossible! No one in my family had ever made it to the upper floors of a Skypiller, much less into the overcity of HighHold.

Yet, here I was as grandfather Aram. Sitting at a table with King Harry II, Ren Xie, Miranda Greysen, and every other patron, custodian, or heir to a Global Corporation's wealth and power.

At the head of the table, a light-haired man with a chiseled jaw took a deep breath. "If Doctor Qadir has quite finished, we'll continue."

Had I just been scolded by King Harry II? As head of the British Royal family, Lord Chancellor of the European Union, and CEO of HighCastle Enterprises, he had to be the most powerful person in the room.

Or any room, really.

"I understand we're all beset with challenges," King Harry continued. "Be that as it may, every member of the Consortium was promised a voice in the future of humanity."

Various nods and grumbles floated across the table. A woman seated near me took it as a cue to stand, and she straightened her sari while waiting for the room to return to silence.

"I feel a need to remind this board that Hope is not a vanity project," she said, her tone flat and emotionless. "The Order is not pleased that so many have already strayed from the path."

I perked up at the mention of the Order, but the rest of the table seemed less than eager to hear the woman out.

"Our population has tripled in the last two decades," cut in the woman I recognized as Miranda Greysen, daughter of the famed Commandant. "Everyone is fed, everyone works. Thanks to GreySec's strategic assets, our people are finally safe, and we're building sister cities in the Pacific Northwest and the Republic of Texas. What other Post-Collapse society can claim any of these things, Kamilla?"

The Order woman, Kamilla, cleared her throat. "Survival was only one objective. Yes, thanks to the brilliant contributions from everyone at this table, Hope has thrived. But have you forgotten Ascension? Do each of you remember that Hope was built to guide the human race into eternal life?"

My eyebrows shot up. This, I'd never heard. Though from the exasperated reactions around the table, it seemed everyone else had heard it a few too many times.

"This again?" said an Arab man I didn't recognize. "Harry, when are you going to tell these zealots that we invited them into the Consortium for their infrastructure AI, not their fairy tales?"

King Harry held up his hand and gave one shake of his head.

"Fairy tales?" Kamilla cut in, maintaining her measured tone even through the devil's own scowl. "This entire society runs on our Gemini system, Sheikh. A system we built for the New World to parse computational reality. To instruct and teach, so that your thirty million 'subjects' could navigate the test of life. Not solely to manage your power grid and target your advertisements."

A spark of recognition ignited. Gemini. Kamilla's words kicked the simulation's implanted memories into overdrive.

I had — or rather grandfather Aram had — worked with the Order to build that system. Beneath that layer of memories, I could touch Aram's thoughts about his father, Fayed. ClarkeTec had put him to work building the quantum computer which housed this mysterious Gemini AI.

Holy hell. An entire lineage of Hope's architects that I'd never known. I was suddenly filled with an immense sense of pride, though part of me wondered where it had all gone wrong for my family. This was a pedigree that should have led to me being born into a Skypillar condo rather than a pathetic mid-tier penthouse in Golden Gate.

As the feelings about my forebears surged, so did a growing distaste for everyone else at the table. My grandfather didn't trust these people. He hated them for putting an oily coating of shame on what he and his father had accomplished.

That kind of resentment couldn't have ended well for them.

No doubt, someone in my family line had pissed these people off. Maybe it was grandad Aram or my own father. In this simulated slice of time, their misstep hadn't happened yet, but I'd bet every qubit of scrip left in my wallet that it was gonna happen soon.

"Ren Xie," Kamilla continued, "you've already pushed the Order time and again with your demands for invasive neurocom surveillence. And what has that gotten you?"

My eyes snapped to the Chinese man seated next to King Harry. Ren Xie, CEO of TaoCom. The man didn't even bat an eyelash at Kamilla's assault. Stoic as a stone in a stupa, but even in the past, he looked a hundred years old.

"It's gotten you nothing!" Kamilla answered for him. "And now, you're pushing for this…'Project MonkeyPaw' nonsense…and we've not even completed our work with the MiniMax system."

The Arab man she'd called 'Sheikh' laughed. "MiniMax, yes? Your blasphemous pet project has had enough time, woman."

Kamilla glanced my way, reminding me that I wasn't just a spectator in this show. "Aram, does ClarkeTec have enough resources to shift away from the MiniMax project?"

Somehow I knew the answer. "No, Elder. We're already weeks behind schedule on the quantum network rollout. The BeanStalk data center is still overheating every other day. And we've had…issues…repurposing the Gemini software to meet the Order's scope of work."

Kamilla raised her arms. "Do you see? Every step we take toward Old World thinking is a step backwards. You want to control the people through their neurocoms? Build fancy new villas on Mars? And now, you want to extend your renewed avarice to other solar systems?"

Damn. Kamilla sure was on fire! A few of the bluebloods and elites at the table even looked a little bit ashamed.

A very little bit. But casting shade on the handful of people who either owned or ran ninety-nine percent of the world can't be easy, so that's an achievement.

My excitement was almost enough to make me miss the finer details. Everyone knew that the Founders had a long-standing boner for Mars, but I'd never heard any rumors about mind control or interstellar space jaunts.

After letting her lecture sink in, she took a calming breath. "Forgive my broad strokes, fellow Founders, but it is imperative that we continue walking the Path. We must not forget what it took humanity thousands of brutal, miserable years to learn. We are not merely the custodians of a megacity, but the shepherds of humanity's souls."

The looks around the table sank my stomach, completely flatlining any thoughts I had about the Founders' hidden virtues.

Maybe Kamilla was talking nonsense about souls and Ascensions, or maybe not.

Either way, her fellow Consortium members, the benevolent custodians of the human race, couldn't have cared less.