I smiled.
“I take that back,” I said. “The real me is the me I’ve decided to be. Somebody decided to be that person. Somebody built her. That’s the real me. And not the me anybody else thinks I ought to be, or ought to have been.”
She frowned.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
“Goodbye, Zanya,” I said. “I hope you figure some stuff out, eventually.”
I turned away.
The deck plates rattled faintly as she stepped forward. Two constables stepped forward as well. They didn’t touch her yet, and I approved.
She said, “Enjoy belonging to the machine, babes.”
Another rustle as she stepped back, while I walked away. I let her have the last word. I didn’t really need to answer.
It didn’t feel so bad, to belong.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I started writing this book in 2014, because my friend and occasional editor Simon Spanton, then with Gollancz, was looking for a big-idea space opera and I happened to have a big idea lying around waiting for an excuse to stretch. It is now 2018. Writing this novel has taken longer than I anticipated to get it finished (sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes creativity does not operate on schedule), and the world this book is being born into is not the world it was conceived in. There have been a lot of changes along the way—personal, professional, and political—but I think the book is stronger for all of that.
I’m pretty happy with it. I hope you, the reader, find it worth the wait.
I would like to offer my very sincere thanks to everyone who helped along the way with getting it off the ground. This is a diverse cast of characters that includes but is not limited to:
Ben Tippett and Benjamin C. Kinney, who respectively helped me out with cosmology and neuroscience. Mistakes and willful deviations are of course my own.
Jennifer Jackson and Michael Curry of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
My fine editors Simon Spanton (who acquired it); Gillian Redfearn and Navah Wolfe (who edited it); and Deanna Hoak, who copyedited it.
The design, production, marketing, and publicity teams at Gollancz and Saga, who are responsible for the gorgeous package you hold in your hands (or read on your screen) and the fact that you even heard about it and that it then made its way into your possession in the first place.
Marissa Lingen and Amanda Downum, who beta-read the first draft and talked me off the roof about it.
Liz Bourke, Fran Wilde, Amal El-Mohtar, Jamie Rosen, Fade Manley, Celia Marsh, Alex Haist, Max Gladstone, Devin Singer, C. L. Polk, Arkady Martine, Vivian Shaw, Jodi Meadows, John Wiswell, Sarah Monette, Amber van Dyk, and Stella Evans: all the critters in the ZOO. (Yes, it’s a terrible pun. I didn’t start it. Haimey would love it, though.)
Andre Norton, Iain Banks, C. J. Cherryh, and James White, whose works grew me into the person who would want to write this book.
My family, who are those rare birds when it comes to artist relatives: they never doubted me once. And my many friends who have listened to me alternately kvetch and crow as I worked my way through the inevitable black holes and supernovae of composition.
The Wijktory Kjittens and the Giant Ridiculous Dog, who conspired between them to keep me from taking myself or my deadlines too seriously.
My friend Jon Singer, who kindly allowed me to borrow his last name for a boat, and is so much cooler and gentler and more fascinating of a person than I could ever be able to render in these words.
And of course and most of all, my beloved Scott, who makes all things possible.
—Elizabeth Bear
Hopeful House
South Hadley, Massachusetts
4 February 2018