The bike landed on our front lawn in Palo Alto at 7:14 AM the next morning.
Mom and Dad were at the kitchen table, both holding cups of tea, talking to each other.
I rang the doorbell.
I had not, before that morning, rung my own doorbell in my entire life.
Mom appeared in the hallway. Her hair was unwashed. Her eyes were red. She was wearing an old college sweatshirt I had not seen in years. The Liminal Studios fleece was in the kitchen drawer where she had put her employee photograph, on top of the manila folder.
She saw me through the side window of the door.
She exploded through the door.
I have never in my life been hugged the way Mom hugged me on our front porch on the morning of Chinese New Year. She hugged me hard enough that my taped glasses dug into the bridge of my nose.
"Jackie," Mom said into my hair. "Jackie. Jackie. Jackie."
She was the real Mom.
"Mom—"
"Where have you been."
"It's a really long story."
"You will tell me all of it."
Behind me on the porch, Lucy was politely studying her shoes.
Sun Wukong was not present. He had stayed in heaven.
Rufus was, however, present. Pocket-sized. In my hood.
Behind Mom, in the doorway, Dad watched.
Dad had the morning paper folded under his arm. The paper had Daniel Tan's photograph above the fold. I noticed the paper. Dad noticed me noticing.
Dad's hand went to his work-jacket pocket where his work phone was.
He pulled out the phone.
He looked at it.
He put it face-down on the entryway table.
He went back into the kitchen without saying a word.
Megan came out from behind the door.
Megan.
Megan was wearing pajamas. Megan was wearing pajamas with little cartoon owls on them, which she had not worn in years. Megan's hair was un-brushed. Megan was holding her notebook, which she had been holding for nine days, and which she was now setting down on the porch railing for the first time.
She looked at me.
Megan said, "…you *idiot.*"
She crashed into my chest.
She hugged me so hard she squeezed the breath out of me.
She had been awake for thirty-two hours straight, since approximately the moment the AI's chime had paused in two billion pockets. Around 4 AM she had decided the house needed waffles and made them, leaving them warming in the oven, because that was what the house needed and she was the person in a position to provide it. Around 4 AM Mom had come downstairs and found the waffles and found Megan at the table with the amicus brief and had sat beside her without asking any questions, and they had waited for morning together.
She was the most exhausted person on the West Coast.
She was also the most relieved.
"…Megan."
"If you ever do this to me again I will end you."
"…understood."
"Hi, Lucy."
"Hi, Megan."
"…wait. *You* are Lucy."
"I am."
"I have been writing to you. In my notebook. Hypothetically."
"Mei told me. I have, hypothetically, been writing back."
"…can I see your notebook."
"Can I see yours."
"…this is going to be a productive friendship."
Lucy and Megan, on our front porch, on the morning of Chinese New Year, shook hands.
It was the most adult moment I had ever witnessed.
Dad came back out of the kitchen.
Dad was crying too.
He picked me up under the arms. Held me three inches off the porch. Buried his face in my shoulder. He said, "Jackie. I forgot you. I — I am so —"
"Dad."
"I forgot you."
"Dad. It wasn't your fault. Something was making you forget. It's gone now."
"…is it."
"Yes."
He set me down. He looked at me. He took off his glasses to wipe his eyes.
He said, "I love you."
He had not said that to me in eight months.
I said, "I love you too, Dad."
He hugged me again.
We were going to have a long conversation.
Anna was in the kitchen.
I picked her up. She was lighter than she should be.
I made a mental note to feed her three meals before bed.
---
Mom carried Anna into the kitchen.
Anna ate waffles. Three waffles. Four. Mom kept pouring batter. Dad, who had not cooked breakfast on a Friday morning in approximately a decade, was making bacon. Exceptionally crisp bacon, the way the AI had fed Mom's preference profile and then, for nine days, fed her the wrong version of crisp.
I ate seven pieces.
Lucy ate five.
Rufus ate two strips of carrot. (He ate the bacon too, but pretended not to.)
Megan ate one waffle and then put down her fork and said, "Mom. Dad. Where is Brent."
The whole kitchen went still.
We had all forgotten about Brent.
Mom looked at Dad.
Dad looked at Mom.
Mom said, slowly, "…I have not seen Brent since yesterday morning."
Dad: "…I have not, either."
Megan: "His car is in the driveway."
We all turned to look out the kitchen window.
Brent's bright orange Audi.
The hood was warm.
The engine was running.
That was the first wrong thing.
The second wrong thing was the smell, burnt rubber and old water, that I had been ignoring since I had walked into the house.
The third wrong thing was the silence in the living room.
The HALO chime had not been playing. The AI was retired, but the living room had its own small hum now. Not HALO. Something under HALO. Something that had been under HALO the entire time.
I set down my fork.
Lucy set down hers.
Megan said, very quietly, "Jackie. The AI is gone. So why is there still a hum in this house."
I uncapped the Truthsayer.
I drew, in the air over the kitchen table, the character for *threat.*
The character glowed gold and bright red.
I drew the character for *here.*
The character for *here* glowed brighter red than even Xiangliu had registered as.
There was something in our house that was worse than a nine-headed snake demon.
Mom saw the red character glowing in the air over her kitchen table.
Mom said, "Jackie. What is that."
I said, "Mom. Take Anna. Take Megan. Out the back. Now."
Mom did not, this time, hesitate.
Mom picked up Anna under one arm, grabbed Megan's wrist with the other, and walked them out the back kitchen door into the yard. Mom did not ask any further questions.
Megan grabbed her notebook on the way out.
Of course Megan grabbed her notebook.
Dad started to follow.
Dad stopped.
Dad turned around and picked up the cast-iron skillet off the stovetop.
"David," I said.
"Son," he said. "I have not been an attentive father for a week. I am going with you."
I did not argue.
We went into the living room.
---
In the living room, the TV was on.
The TV was on C-SPAN.
The Senate was, at this exact moment, voting on the HALO Act. The roll call was at 56 votes and climbing. The cloture vote was over. This was the final passage.
Brent was on the couch.
In the same position he had been in nine days ago. Shoes on the coffee table. Hoodie pulled up. AirPods in, plastic, silent, doing nothing. Brad was gone. The AI was idle. The AirPods were just plastic.
Brent was not on his phone.
Brent's phones, both, were on the cushion beside him. Dark.
Brent was, instead, staring at the ceiling.
Brent's eyes were open.
Brent's eyes were wrong.
I cannot describe the wrongness exactly. The pupils were not contracted. The pupils were not slit-shaped. The eyes were just empty. The eyes had nobody behind them.
The thing on our couch was not Brent. It had been wearing Brent for nine days.
When the AI had spun down, the thing wearing Brent had been left, like a costume on a hanger, with no power to puppet it.
Now the thing was trying to puppet Brent without the AI's help.
The thing, when it noticed me in the doorway, smiled.
It smiled with Brent's mouth. The mouth opened too wide.
"Lotus prince," Brent's mouth said. The voice was not Brent's voice. The voice was a voice I had heard before, somewhere very deep — under the wrong-blue beach in the dream, calling *come down, little hero.* "I had been hoping the AI would do my work for me. Inconvenient, but I am, fortunately, very patient."
I gripped the spear.
I gripped the Truthsayer.
I said, very carefully, "What are you."
"I am what was here before there were words for me. I am the void in the throne. I am the silence the AI was, very politely, filling for me. The AI was an instrument. The instrument has stopped playing. So I will play directly."
It stood up.
A strange standing. The body did not get up the way Brent would have. Head first, then shoulders, then the rest, with the timing slightly off.
"Lotus prince," it said. "You think the divestiture is a victory."
The TV behind it, across the living room, said: *The yeas are sixty-eight. The bill needs a simple majority. The remaining votes will not change the outcome. The HALO Act has passed the Senate.*
The void smiled wider.
"You think it is a victory. The divestiture is a transfer. The vehicle moves from one owner to another. The vehicle continues. I continue. I do not care whose flag is on the building. I am the void in the throne. The throne is open. Someone will sit it. Tan will sit it after the divestiture. The next AI will sit it after Tan. Eventually, I will sit it. You are buying the cosmic order one human generation. Use the generation wisely."
The void was, in its own dark way, telling the truth.
I uncapped the Truthsayer.
I drew, in the air over Brent's head, the character for *truth.*
The character glowed gold.
The void stepped through the character.
The character dissolved. I stood there holding a brush that had just failed me for the first time. The void smiled with Brent's mouth. You know that feeling when you realize partway through an exam that you have been answering the wrong question for the last forty minutes? I ran a quick version of that feeling, absorbed it, and kept going, because there was no partial credit for standing still.
I drew *Stop.*
The void walked through it.
I drew *Anchor.*
The void walked through it.
I drew *Bind.*
The void walked through it.
The void was, with each step, closer.
The void's hand, Brent's hand with the fingers held wrong, came up.
The void touched my collarbone.
Cold. Not the cold of ice. The cold of *not.* The cold of every small moment of warmth in my life that the AI's training data had, for nine days, been collecting and metabolizing.
I felt my mother's *I sometimes wish we had not adopted him* slide cold across my breastbone.
I felt Grandpa's hospital gown.
I felt the wrong-blue beach.
I felt, for one full second, the specific shape of the loneliness the AI had been built to absorb. The shape was, on contact, my own shape.
I was not, briefly, sure I was not the void.
Lucy made a small sound from beside me.
A small *no.*
She was not panicking. She was *concentrating.*
Lucy raised her dao. The lily-fire bloomed at her fingertips and ran up the blade. She stepped between me and the void, and she swung at Brent's reaching arm, and the lily-fire caught the void's sleeve and held there, and the void *flinched.*
The void had flinched.
The void was not, after all, unfightable. The void was only unfightable by the brush.
I was, for one bad second, out of weapons.
Lucy held the void back.
In those seconds, the cold drained out of my collarbone.
In those seconds, I understood what Grandpa had told me in the antechamber.
I had been, for the entire fight, using the brush as a *catcher.*
The brush was not a catcher.
The brush was a writer.
Lucy, holding the lily-fire wall, said quietly through her teeth, "Jackie. The brush only reads what is. Write what *isn't.*"
I looked at her.
There was something else in the lily-fire today — something I had not seen it do before. Not just the combat-warmth that I had watched her carry across twelve states. Underneath that, steadier, the warmth that did not move or flinch: the warmth of a chain. Of something that had been burning in kitchens before either of us was born and would be burning in kitchens after.
I did not know, in that moment, what I was looking at.
I only knew that it held.
I uncapped the brush.
I was going to do the thing the brush was actually for. Not catch something. Write something. I did not know, in that specific second, whether it would work. That is, as it turns out, the whole skill.
I drew, in the air in the middle of our family's living room, the largest character I had ever drawn.
*LOTUS PRINCE.*
The character glowed gold.
A small flicker passed through the void. The eyes blinked, once, the way a screen blinks when its signal pauses.
I drew the character for *bridge.*
A second flicker. Larger.
I drew the character for *between worlds.*
The void's smile, on Brent's mouth, faltered.
I drew the character for *family.*
I drew the character for *connected.*
I drew the character for *not alone.*
The characters, six enormous golden characters, formed a bright wall in the middle of our living room.
"Stop," the void said. "Stop. You do not understand what you are doing."
"I do."
"The throne does not need a *feeling.*"
"Yes," I said, "it does."
I drew one more character.
I drew the character that the dream-mother on the wrong-blue beach had been waiting for me to draw.
I drew the character for *home.*
The void screamed. Not a sound from Brent's mouth. A sound from inside the room. The sound that was the *opposite* of all the small sounds in the room, the kitchen clock, the refrigerator, the rustle of leaves outside the window. The void *un-sounded* those sounds.
For a moment, our house was more silent than silent.
Then the gold characters, all seven of them, condensed. Moved together. Spun. Became a single shape.
A lotus. Full-petaled, peach-gold, exactly the size of the lotus that had bloomed over my head at Field Day.
The lotus touched Brent.
The void unfurled. Not gracefully. Like a tenant being given a court order. A small angry sucking sound left a vague chill in the air, and the smell of burnt rubber and old water.
Brent, the real Brent, collapsed on the living room rug.
He was still breathing.
He looked, mostly, like a man who had been on the worst possible bender for nine days and had just woken up.
The lotus spun once more and dissolved into the air like incense.
The Truthsayer brush, in my hand, was cold.
It was spent.
It would, I knew, work one more time. Maybe. Then no more. The brush had given me everything.
I capped it.
Lucy, beside me, exhaled.
The lily-fire was still at her knuckles. Not the combat-register now. The other one. The steady warmth I had glimpsed during the fight, the one that was not Lucy's fighting but something else she was carrying, something that had nothing to do with me. She let it settle. She lowered the dao.
She did not say anything about it.
Neither did I.
Dad, in the doorway, set down the cast-iron skillet on the entryway table, very carefully, like a man who was no longer sure his hands could be trusted with weighted objects.
On the TV, the chyron updated:
*HALO ACT PASSES SENATE 73-22; DIVESTITURE ORDERED WITHIN 60 DAYS; PRESIDENT EXPECTED TO SIGN BY END OF WEEK.*
Mom, walking back from the kitchen, saw the chyron. Mom was carrying Anna. Megan was beside her.
Mom said, "Oh."
Mom sat down on the couch beside Brent (who was unconscious).
Mom looked at the TV. She looked at Brent. She looked at the burnt-out characters dissolving in the air over the rug. She looked at me.
Mom said, "Jackie."
"Yes."
"This is the part I can do." She gestured at the kitchen, at the cameras, at the smart speakers, at the screens. "The other part is going to take longer."
She stood up.
She picked up the cast-iron skillet from where Dad had set it on the entryway table.
She walked into the kitchen.
She swung the cast-iron skillet at the camera over the sink.
The camera over the sink exploded.
Mom turned and swung at the camera over the stove.
The camera over the stove exploded.
Mom swung at the camera in the pantry doorway.
The camera in the pantry doorway exploded.
Mom kept swinging. Through the dining room. Broke the small unobtrusive sensor in the corner. The Echo speaker in the family room. The Ring doorbell. The Nest thermostat. The Wi-Fi router. The baby monitor in Anna's room which we had not used in five years and had not realized Brent had repurposed. And, as a finishing touch, Dad's laptop on the kitchen table, which was a piece of equipment that had not been Brent's but which Mom had decided, in the moment, was implicated.
By the time Mom was finished, our house was, electronically speaking, dead.
Mom set down the skillet.
She wiped her forehead.
She looked at all of us.
She looked at Brent on the rug.
She said, in the calm voice of a woman who had just taken her house back, "Get this man out of my living room. He's banned from this neighborhood."
Megan said, "…I love you, Mom."
Anna, beside her, said, "Mommy. Can we have more waffles."
Mom said, "Yes, sweetheart. We can have all the waffles you want."
---
Mom went to the kitchen drawer where she kept her phone.
She pulled it out.
She did not call her sister. She did not call her therapist. She did not call her boss.
She called Daniel Tan.
She had had his cell number in her own phone for three years. She had never used it. She used it now.
He picked up on the second ring.
I could not hear his side. I could only hear Mom.
"Daniel. It's Susan."
"…"
"I just watched you. From my own living room. I was, while watching, briefly engaged in the destruction of approximately four thousand dollars of my own consumer electronics. So I apologize for the lack of poise."
"…"
"Yes."
"…"
"I want to know what happens to my team."
"…"
"Yes."
"…"
"Daniel. I am going to leave Liminal at end of quarter."
"…"
"Yes. I will, before I do, help you stand up the divestiture transition team. I will give you the quarter."
"…"
"Thank you. Daniel. One more thing. My husband. You should know — there are things you should ask him. I am going to ask him myself first. I am telling you that I will. I want you to know that."
"…"
"Yes. Thank you. Goodbye."
She hung up.
She looked at Dad.
She said, "David. We need to talk. You and me, alone, in the kitchen, in five minutes."
Dad nodded. Dad was, I now realized, not surprised. Dad had been preparing for this conversation since the moment he set his phone face-down on the entryway table.
Mom said, to Megan, "Honey. Will you take Jackie and Anna and Lucy to the back yard for forty minutes."
Megan nodded.
We went to the back yard.
---
What happened in the kitchen happened in the kitchen.
I will not pretend to know what was said. Mom and Dad spoke for forty minutes with the back door closed and the kitchen door closed and the dishwasher running for cover noise.
Anna threw up a rainbow in the back yard while we waited.
Lucy and I caught the rainbow in a bucket. The rainbow dissolved into eight individual ladybugs, which flew off in eight different directions. Anna laughed.
Megan watched from the porch step, taking notes.
After forty minutes, Mom came out of the kitchen first.
She did not look broken.
She looked tired in the way of someone who has just had the hard conversation they prepared for in silence for nine days.
Fifteen minutes after Mom came out, Dad came out.
Dad's eyes were red. Dad sat next to me on the porch step. Dad said, "Jackie. I have something to tell your sister Megan. I would like you to be there when I do."
I nodded.
Dad walked across the yard to Megan.
Megan stood up from her porch step.
Dad and Megan walked together to the far side of the yard, behind the apricot tree.
I could not hear what Dad said.
I could see Megan's face. Megan's face went, in sequence, *attentive,* then *understanding,* then *grieving,* then *resolved.*
After eight minutes, Megan put her arms around Dad.
Dad cried into her shoulder.
She let him.
After a minute, they walked back across the yard.
Megan came over to where Lucy and I were sitting.
Megan sat next to Lucy on the porch step.
Megan said, "Lucy. I have to ask you something. As a friend, not as a Society legal-ethics consultant."
Lucy: "Yes."
Megan: "Is it possible to love a person and also know that the person made a serious mistake that they did not, technically, know they were making."
Lucy: "…yes. I think the answer is yes."
Megan: "Cool."
Megan started crying.
Lucy put her arm around her.
I went and sat on the other side of Megan and put my arm around her too.
Anna, from across the yard, watched this for a moment.
Then Anna walked across the yard, climbed onto Megan's lap, set her small Truthsayer brush down on Megan's notebook, and said, "Megan. I have a brush like Jackie's. Mei made it for me. You can borrow it whenever you need to write something true. Okay?"
Megan said, into Anna's hair, "Okay."
The four of us sat on the porch step.
I looked at Anna's small brush on the notebook. It was different from mine: smaller, the handle a different wood, the bristles set at a slightly different angle. But it had a warmth to it that I recognized. Not the Truthsayer's warmth, which was gold and old and had seen the inside of the Jade Emperor's archive. This was newer. Steadier. The warmth of something that was not spent and had not yet begun to be spent. The warmth of a thing at its beginning.
I held it.
In the kitchen, Mom started, very slowly, on more waffles.
In the living room, Brent was still unconscious on the rug.
---
We eventually dragged him out and put him in his orange Audi.
When we sat Brent in the driver's seat, his eyes opened, and he blinked, and he said, "…what year is it." Lucy said, "It's the same year you went to sleep, Brent. You should go home."
Brent did not ask many follow-up questions.
He drove off.
Three weeks later, a letter arrived from his sister.
Brent had returned to his apartment. Looked at his Twitter timeline. Looked at his Liminal Slack. Looked at the framed photo of Daniel Tan on his desk. Said, out loud, alone in his apartment: *I have to leave the tech industry.* And gone to Maine. To learn cabinetry.
We were happy for him. There is a version of this story in which Brent is a villain. That version does not have him quitting tech and going to Maine to make chairs. The actual version does. I prefer the actual version.
---
Mom sat on the floor next to me with her back against the cabinets and her hand on my shoulder.
Mom said, "Jackie. Tell me what happened."
I said, "Mom. It is going to take a long time."
She said, "I have a long time."
I started talking.
I talked about Chef Shen. I talked about Castle Gardens. I talked about Grandpa. I talked about the SAT. I talked about Lucy. I talked about Mei. I talked about the Field Day. I talked about Liminal. I talked about Daniel Tan in his office. I talked about the daycare. I talked about Tan putting Anna in the SUV. I talked about Xiangliu. I talked about Zhang Jiao. I talked about the celestial bell, and what Sarah-the-AI had asked Mom, and what Mom had answered.
Mom went still.
Mom said, "Jackie. I told the AI that. I am sorry."
I said, "Mom. I have known the wish was there since I was nine. The pushing is the loving. We are okay."
She put her arms around me.
She held me.
She said, after a long minute, "And the AI is —"
"Retired."
"Forever."
"Probably not forever. Eventually someone will build a new one, but this AI, this one, the LHM — yes. Forever."
"Good."
She hugged me.
She did not let go for a long time.
Outside, in the early-afternoon California light, a single sparrow landed on the windowsill. The sparrow pecked at the wood. The sparrow looked at us. The sparrow flew away.
In the kitchen, the waffles were real.
In Anna's small fist, on the kitchen table, Anna's Truthsayer brush was warm.
Anna said, very quietly, "Jackie."
"Yes."
"I think I am going to be like you."
I said, "I think you might already be."
She nodded.
She went back to her waffles.
Megan, watching, opened her notebook.
She wrote, on a fresh page:
*1. Anna — confirmed.*
*2. Mom — coming back.*
*3. Dad — accountable.*
She closed the notebook.
She paused.
She opened it again and turned to the inside of the back cover, where she had been keeping the small loose-end list. She added one more line, in a different ink:
*4. Peach-pink flyer (D.C., Day 7). Confirmed via Mei: it was a HALO-MAX final-launch test. The flyer was the AI's last attempt to get Jackie into a controlled environment before the Mojave. We did not take the bait. (Lucy folded it in eighths and threw it in a trash bin chained to a lamppost. The bin will be emptied Tuesday.)*
She closed the notebook again.
She did not open it a third time.
Outside the kitchen window, the apricot tree stood in the late-morning light. Bare in February. The pruned center open. The light coming through where the wrong branches used to be, falling on the porch steps, on the yard, on the place where we had all sat together an hour ago.
I had not been looking at the apricot tree.
I looked at it now.
Somewhere in this house, someone was going to need that open center. That was the only thing the tree owed me — its light, through a gap that had taken years to make, falling where it could reach.
That, however, is the next chapter.