Instantiation would come at first light. In the meantime, Shard woke in her body. As the suppressants wore off her room unblurred around her, every corner, every soft and hard edge taking shape like makers were buzzing it into being from quanta that very instant. When things were sharp enough that she knew she could sit up without the room going into spins around her, she did.

The charge pad beneath her glowed green, as it should, and so she stood. Her alcove sent her its greeting, queried, and she asked for the daal she’d been craving since she’d made the mistake of having cowsteak the night before. The meat always sat heavy in her gut, and she’d spend most of the night on the track working it off. Daal, just a little wheat roti — that would do the trick. That would leave her light enough for a little gaming, maybe a lifedip. The alcove sealed itself against the swarm of makers in its belly, then opened to her when her meal was ready. She hadn’t had to ask for the tea that steamed beside her plate. The alcove knew.

Synn touched her with welcome, and she warmed everywhere. Synn withdrew. Shard took her plate and her cup and went out into the garden. Others were there already, beekeepers all; they greeted her, queried her health, and she sent the same in return. An owl broke the silence, crying out from the stand of pines that pressed up all around the Beekeepers’ Compound.

She sat down in the cool moonlight beside her friend, whose name was also a randomly generated key. He would not get a new name in 39 days time. She ratcheted up her sight a bit to bring him sharply out of the dim, but not so far that she couldn’t enjoy the distant stars. As they ate they shared their day, sitting among the crickets and the owl as the clouds that carried their thoughts swept between them.

Shard wondered idly how things had gone that day. Had she met her quota? Were any of her bees in need of moding or updates?

She set a reminder to check the log she would have filed before wiping, just to make sure she knew where to start in the morning.

The breeze lifted around the compound walls, became a wind. She couldn’t see them, but in the barrens beyond the dome, the turbines would be turning and turning and turning.

After eating, she and her companion left the compound for the plaza, full of light. He climbed the narrow path to where the nightfliers were moored, sent a farewell as he strapped in and lifted into the darkness to fly the fixed route over the millets of Lake Michigan. Shard went on, entered the broad gallery of the library. She queried to see who was new, found the life of an ancient huntress who had lived and died in the jungles of India that was.

She would do. Shard settled herself into an empty pod, and dipped.

Before morning, after watching the sun set from a perch in the jungle canopy, Shard was stirred. She rose from the pod, made her way home. Just before laying down on her chargeport again, she remembered, pulled up the previous day’s log.

She saw she’d lingered at the edge of the green for longer than usual. She wondered if there had been a problem with the agmod she’d ridden, but saw no record of repairs overnight. Strange, but not terribly strange. Maybe the Naqshbandi children had surrounded her — they did sometimes, and Synn encouraged gentleness when they did, and patience. That must have been it.

She felt the surge from the port move through her, felt Synn reach for her, surge through her. All she was thrummed, and as she drifted off to her day’s sleep, she instantiated.

As Shard slept, a Shard awoke in an agmod in a shed at the edge of the Deerborn Green, her belly full of stirring bees.