“Ruin people’s lives? I doubt the Wode pays that much attention to what I do.”

“I didn’t mean the lives of the Wode,” I said. “I meant the people killed in your State. In the war.”

She waved her fingers. “Those? Just bits in a machine.”

“Just bits in a . . .” I cocked my head. “I think that’s the most primitive thing I’ve ever heard anyone say, and I’ve fought barbarians.”

She shrugged, drinking the rest of her wine.

“You really don’t accept the Machineborn as true people?”

“Of course I don’t,” she said. “Everything they ‘feel’ is just a fabrication.”

“What we feel is a fabrication too.”

“We have a body. Well, a bit of one remaining.”

“What’s so special about a body?” I demanded. Besk and Shale . . . they were my friends. I felt a need to defend them, and their kind. My subjects were more than mere bits in a machine. “Yes, we have brains, you and I. What we ‘feel’ and ‘think’ is the result of chemicals swimming around inside our heads. How is that so different from the emotions of the Machineborn? Bits or hormones, does it matter?”

She looked at me with a flat stare. “Of course it matters. This whole world, every one of these worlds . . . they’re fake.”

“So is the ‘real world.’ When people on the outside touch an object, they ‘feel’ the electromagnetic push of electrons in the substance shoving back on the electrons in their fingers. When they ‘see,’ it’s really just the photons striking their eyes. It’s all energy, programmed on a very small scale.”

“That’s deep science for a Fantasy Statie.”

“Fantastical doesn’t necessarily mean primitive,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve read that the Wode recognizes the rights of Machineborn. Don’t they leave a State running even if the Liveborn in it dies?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But they eventually nudge the State back toward chaos, then inject a newborn real person to grow up and rule it again. That’s beside the point. What have you accomplished in your life? Really accomplished?”

“I unified—”

“Something that they couldn’t have just programmed into the State from the start,” she said. “Something real.”

“I already said I don’t agree with your definition of real.”

“But you agree that they could have started your State with everyone in harmony, right? With a world government in place?”

“I suppose.”

“They feel like they need to give us things to do, to entertain us. Distract us. That’s all our lives are, complex entertainment simulations. They made me be born into a State plagued by an outdated social system from Earth’s past, just so I could transform it—covering ground the real world covered centuries ago. Pointless.”

I folded my arms on the table, looking out the window.

“What?” she asked.

“I hate losing arguments,” I said. “But you’re right. That part . . . that part bothers me.”

“Huh,” she said. “Didn’t expect you to admit it.”

“It’s not the simulation itself that is the problem,” I said. “Machineborn are people, and what they feel—what I feel—is real. What I hate is the way the Wode undermines our authority. I think I’d be all right with it all if I didn’t have this itching worry that they’re making things just hard enough to be exciting, but not hard enough for us to lose. At least we can still die.”

“Ha,” she said, waving a hand. “That’s a myth.”

“What? Of course it’s not.”

“Oh, it is. I promise you. No Liveborn die of anything other than old age—at least, not until they reach their later centuries of life and the Wode starts allowing them to interfere with one another’s States. We can kill each other, but our simulations . . . no, those never hurt us. I’ve seen States where the Liveborn are horribly incompetent, and they still accomplished all the minimum things they were supposed to.”

I didn’t reply.

“You don’t believe me,” she said. “I can provide—”

“I believe you,” I said. “I already knew.”

And I had. Oh, I hadn’t wanted to voice it, or even think it, but I’d suspected this was the case. Ever since my first trip into a Border State, when I’d started worrying.

It was the true reason why I avoided other States, and other Liveborn. Everything we did was like those people playing with paint guns on the streets. Our lives were games.

My secret worry wasn’t just that I might be normal, but that I might also be coddled. Like a baby in a crib.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s better when we can just pretend, isn’t it?”

“Better is an ambiguous term,” I said, looking out the window again. The rain had returned. “I still think there can be a point to our lives. In the progress we make, in who we are.”

“Oh, I’m not saying there’s no point,” she said. “I just don’t think we should let it be the one they give us on a silver platter. Like this meeting. I ignored all the other Liveborn who asked to meet with me.”

“Why come now?”

“Because you’re the first one to ask me from the bottom of the compatibility lists. I was curious.” She regarded me, blinking long lashes. Curious, she said? Then why had she chosen a beautiful dress and makeup?

Lords, I thought, looking at her. Lords, I actually find her interesting. How unexpected. I reached for a new cup. On the table—carved as if into the tablecloth itself—I found that words had appeared near my spilled wine.

I AM COMING, CHILD. YOU WILL SCREAM. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD I MUST DO THIS.

Damn it, Melhi, I thought. Not now. I didn’t even want to guess how he’d hacked a Communal State.

“Let’s leave,” I said, standing, moving my napkin over Melhi’s message.

“Leave?”

“Food doesn’t interest me.”

She shrugged, standing. “We’re both just brains floating in a nutrient solution; the food is a comfort. It helps us pretend.”

We ditched the table, passing a confused servant wheeling a cart full of food toward us. I walked back to the foyer with the box that had lifted me here. I didn’t get in it, however, instead pushing open a door that was labeled stairs.

Sophie followed me in. “What a wonderful change of décor,” she said, regarding the cold stone stairwell.

I began climbing the steps. “These shoes people wear here are ridiculous. What is wrong with good boots?”

“Other than being unsightly?”

“Says the woman wearing heels as long as a handspan.”

“These are considered very fashionable,” she said. “And it enrages my inner feminist to no end to wear them alongside a dress like this.” She was grinning widely.

“You are an unusual woman.”

“It does strange things to you to realize that the conservative establishment is forcing you to be a progressive liberal fighter for universal rights.” She started climbing up the steps beside me. “I had to buck that, but didn’t know what to become instead. The only thing I could come up with—something truly difficult—was to become a complete anarchist. They built a perfect world for me, so I had to burn it down.”

“Destruction isn’t difficult.”

She grinned savagely. “It is if you’re fighting against what the Wode wants. That’s the only way to be a real warrior, the only way to find a true challenge. Defying them.”

I grunted, agreeing with that.

“So anyway,” she said. “What was that writing on the tablecloth all about?”

“You saw that, did you?”

“Of course I did. Thought you were hiding a vial of poison at first. But it was just words.”

“It was a message,” I said as we reached the next floor. “From my nemesis.”

“Nemesis?” she said, amused. “What is this, middle school?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A place for children.”

I said nothing, leaning against the stairwell railing for a moment.

“Seriously,” Sophie said. “How does one go about getting a nemesis? Undefeated dragon back home or something?”