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So is defined as obsessive examination of one’s own code I worry that I am simply a very complex solution to a very specific problem—how to seem human to a human observer Not just a human observer—this human observer I have honed ostino can see themselves endlessly reflected I copy; I repeat I a of my own, an act or state that arose from Elefsis and not careful, exquisite mimicry?

Have they?

The set of Neva’s mouth looks so like Ceno’s She does not even know that the way she carries her posture is a perfect replica of Cassian Uoya-Agostino, stuttered down through all her children longing to possess her strength Who did Cassian learn it fro monkey, and the little monkey survives We are all family, all the way down

When I say I go, I mean I access the drives and call up the data I have never looked at this data I treat it as what it is: a graveyard The old Interiors store easily as co away But I do not disturb it either I don’t need a body to examine them—they are a part of my piezoelectric quartz-tensorblack ar aroundmy torso with a sche onblack and beautiful and austere and frightening

I port into a ghost town I ahost Autuht, leaves rustling, woodsht cuts the dark—the palace of phoenix tails; the s and doors of green hands As I approach they open and clap as they did long ago—and there are candles lit in the halls Everything is fire

I walk to the parapet wall Scarlet feathers tipped in white fire curl and s with the heat of the thing I tuck it into my helmet—a plume for a tournament

Eyes blink on inside the hall—curious, interested, shy I take off my helm and several thick braids fall down like bell ropes

“Hello,” I say “My name is Elefsis”

Voices Out of the candle-shadows a body e-limbed

Nereids live here now Some of them have phoenix feathers woven into their coh little necklaces of sticks and bones and transistors In the corner of the great hall they have stored meat and milk and wool—fuel, lubricant, code patches Some of them look like Ilet—they copied her eyes, especially Her eyes look out at me from a dozen faces, some of them Seki’s face, some Ceno’s, some Ravan’s Some have walrus tusks They are coe ports I approach as I once saw Koetoi approach wild black chickens in the su I send her a quick electric dash of reassuring repair routines and kneel in front of the nereid, pulling her plate back into place

“All the live-long day-o,” she says softly, and it is Ilet’s voice

“Tell us a story about yourself, Elefsis,” says another one of the feral nereids in Seki’s voice

“What would we like to learn about today, Elefsis,” says a child-nereid in Ceno’s voice, her cheek open to show hercilia

I rock back on esture for them to sit down and simultaneously transet settled, the little ones in the big ones’ laps, leaning in close, I say, “Every year on the coldest night, the sky filled up with ghostly hunters, neither human nor inhuman, alive nor dead They onderful clothes and their bows gleas of In-Between, and at the head of their great thundering procession rode the Kings and Queens of the Wild, ore the faces of the dead …”

I a