Nani looks so much like Mom that I gasp. Her skin is uncannily smooth, her hair free of any gray. It’s only some ineffable quality that hints at her age—perhaps the lifetime of experience in her wizened eyes. Nana too appears eerily young and dapper. I’ve heard that medical advancements in the Inner Galaxy are beyond anything we have in the Beltway. My grandparents are living proof.

  As they straighten, I rush forward to touch their feet in respect. “Nani! Nana! It’s so wonderful to meet you.”

  They squeeze me into a tearful hug.

  “You’re too skinny!” My grandmother pulls back to examine me. “Don’t they feed you on that rock you live on?”

  Nana pats my shoulder. “She looks smart, though.”

  “Very serious, too,” Nani agrees. “The kind of girl who wouldn’t get pregnant and run away to the middle of nowhere without informing her parents.”

  Mom sighs. “I knew you’d bring that up.”

  Nani ushers me to the divan. “Sit down, child. Kavya, how long has she been having the seizures?”

  “A few months.” Mom sinks into the chair across from me, and I hate how exhausted she looks. “Thank goodness we got her checked out after the first one.”

  Even if the tumor is hopeless, maybe coming to the Inner Galaxy isn’t such a bad thing. After all, Nani and Nana seem genuinely happy to meet me. My very own grandparents. It’s a relationship I hadn’t known I wanted. Now I just hope we can repair things, move past my mother’s contentious departure.

  “I brought you some gifts,” I say.

  Ignoring the black spots dancing in front of my eyes, I manage to pull off the wrappings to showcase two vivid pieces that depict asteroid surfing in the Sticks. I worked hard to capture the wobbling spaceboard beneath your feet, the adrenaline as you speed over rocks, the scenery racing by faster than the beat of your heart.

  “These are very nice,” Nana replies. “It’s amazing to me that a human could produce anything like them.”

  “Um . . . thanks,” I say, flushing. People have responded to my art in a lot of different ways, but never by marveling that a human could create it.

  “Leela’s work is real art,” Mom says. “Art that comes from the human soul, not a machine.”

  “We appreciate the difference,” Nani says, “but perhaps Leela could learn something from our Artist algorithms. Besides, remember that Deva was once a human, that the Grid was created by people. Therefore, AI artwork does come from us, essentially.”

  “Right.” Mom rolls her eyes at me.

  “Who’s Deva again?” I whisper.

  She winces. “Not who. What. It’s the lead algorithm of the Grid, the network that connects the citizens of the Inner Galaxy. The Grid and Deva control everything: the food you eat, your recreational activities, your job, even your boyfriends.”

  Nani sits beside me. “Now, don’t let your mother scare you. Deva isn’t some ominous monster controlling us. It makes recommendations, that’s all. You’re still free to do whatever you choose.”

  My mother snorts. “Right, Mom. If it’s only making a few suggestions, why do you worship it?” She gestures to the mosaic in front of which my grandparents had been supplicating.

  “We’re just showing our appreciation for all it has done for us.” Nani pats my knee. “Leela, your paintings remind me a bit of one of the Artists we have in our own collection. Would you like to see?”

  “Sure.”

  My grandparents eagerly usher us through an elegant archway, offering tidbits about the architectural influences of their mansion as we head down an austere corridor. Their home is as large as my school. The level of wealth and luxury in the Inner Galaxy has not been exaggerated, it seems. And my mother gave it all up.

  We arrive in a room with an immense barrel ceiling, framed canvases hanging tastefully from the walls. My eyes travel over each piece, and though the style is so much more polished than mine, they have dashes of whimsy and humility. Not what I would expect from computer-generated art, not at all. And I can’t deny that it makes me feel a bit small.

  “Here.” Nani leads me to a corner. “Isn’t it a similar idea?”

  I gasp when I see the painting. It’s a rendition of the same journey across space that I was trying to capture earlier today—the rush of stars, the nebula awakening like a fairy child, the exact mixture of adventure and beauty that I wanted to convey.

  “This was made by AI?” I step closer, trying to work out how it could be possible. How that spark that I so clearly see could be derived from an algorithm.

  “Oh yes. One of the best examples of the Chronologist movement, don’t you think?” Nana chortles, his smile wide on his handsome face. “Of course, it is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to your paintings, my dear.”

  Nani’s eyes widen. “No, nothing at all like your work. Tell us more about your process.”

  I do my best to answer their questions, but suddenly the room is suffocating, the air crowded out by too many ones and zeroes, by the brilliance of automata, the life they possess that I can’t begin to understand. Perhaps coming here was a mistake after all. I’ve strived so hard to paint the spirit of the Beltway. But here, that very spirit has already been captured and analyzed and reduced to the bits and pieces that make up our aesthetic judgment. As a seizure overtakes my body, I can’t help but feel that my life doesn’t matter. I’m already utterly irrelevant.

  As we traverse the winding roads of the beautiful capital in a three-wheeled Auto, Mom is curiously silent. Of course we’re nervous about my appointment today, getting the official verdict on my tumor, but Mom usually prattles on when she’s stressed. Perhaps it has something to do with seeing my father after all these years. It’s both convenient and unfortunate that he happens to be one of the premier Medics, working with the best Surgeon there is.

  My heart speeds up. I finally get to meet him.

  Through the windows, wind slaps our faces with the sweet floral scent that pervades the city. Holding my hair to prevent tangles, I clutch the door of the self-directed vehicle and marvel at the moving parts of a world that is fully directed by AI.

  My grandparents never struggled with their roles here. When they were young people, the Grid offered them mundane assignments in public service, assignments in which they flourished. Unlike Mom, they were satisfied with bridging the gap between AI and human society. As their responsibilities grew, so did their positions and wealth. Nani is now a diplomat who regularly travels across the galaxy to help build communities with the same stability and prosperity as Dwaraka. Nana documents the successes and challenges of those at the edge of the Grid, working with the AI Economists and adding a touch of human intuition to create ideal production patterns.

  There are literally billions of people working within the Grid, doing Deva’s bidding just like my grandparents. So what makes my mom different?

  We arrive at the hospital before I have a chance to badger her, which is probably good, because she hates to be badgered. In the sixteen years of my life, she’s been open with me about so many things: life, death, sex, love, and the real reason she’s always trying to grow those funny yellow turnips in her plot on the community farm. (If properly cooked, they have effects on the human libido and are therefore of high monetary value.) Yet she’s always remained utterly silent about the events that led up to her departure for the Beltway.

  At reception, I finally come face-to-face with the man responsible for 50 percent of my DNA: Dr. Krishna Banerji, a lean man with a sharp chin and even sharper eyes.

  “Leela!” His smile is uncertain, softening his face with elegant crow’s-feet. The Grid’s antiaging technology probably kept those tiny lines because they only add to his good looks.

  Am I everything he hoped for in a daughter? Is he everything I hoped for? He certainly doesn’t seem like a soulless robot, not when he pulls me in for a deep hug, not when he brushes my hair back from my face and shakes his head in wonder.

  Then he clasps Mom’s hands. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  Mom’s golden skin can’t hide her reaction; she’s blushing like a teenage girl. I can’t believe it. After all those years of calling him a deadbeat and an automaton, she still has feelings for him.

  “You’ve been holding out on me,” I whisper to her.

  “Who, me?” Mom crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out.

  But I don’t have time to grill her about affairs of the heart from another lifetime. Dr. Banerji becomes taciturn as he and some Nurses run me through a series of medical scanners. When it’s time to go over the results, we gather in a room painted in soothing colors and lined with plants, an enlarged holographic re-creation of my brain spinning in the center.

  “I’m surprised she’s lasted this long.” My father points at the tumor with a laser pen. “A growth this large could easily cut off the flow of oxygen to the brain.”

  “So, what can you do about it?” Mom asks.

  “Our Surgeons can remove it, I’m happy to say.” Dr. Banerji glances at me. “However, she must be connected to the Grid before we can operate.”

  Mom curls a protective arm around me. “That’s never going to happen.”

  “It’s a legal requirement.”

  My mother looks like she’s going to strangle him, and I can guess why it didn’t work out between them. She doesn’t like to be told what to do, even when there’s no other option. Especially when there’s no other option.

  Almost every citizen in the Inner Galaxy is connected at age sixteen. It’s required in order to participate in the economy or to benefit from any social services, but we were hoping exceptions would be made for nonresidents.

  “You only have to commit to the Grid for a year,” my father adds. “Then you can return to your life in the Beltway.”

  Do I possibly detect a hint of sadness in his voice at the thought of our departure? Or is that just what I want to believe?

  Meanwhile, my mother does not seem appeased.

  “It’s really okay, Mom.” I wrap an arm around her waist. “I won’t turn into a zombie girl that fast.”

  She doesn’t answer me, but her fists are clenched so hard they could turn a lump of coal into a diamond.

  “Mom?”

  “Deva will pick her, won’t it?” she asks.

  My father shakes his head. “We don’t know for sure how the algorithm works . . .”

  “She’s so much like me. Scarily like me.”

  Something passes between them, an understanding. A heavy feeling drops into my gut. More secrets. I want to shake her, shake them both. “Pick me for what?”

  They both look at me with pity in their eyes. My stomach churns with confusion as it hits me: Mom ran away from something all those years ago. I thought it had to do with my father or her overbearing parents. But there must have been something more, something that catalyzed her into action. Whatever it was, we’ve come full circle, right into the jaws of the digital beast.

  The day of my Connection, a storm blows in. I try to capture it on canvas: the gathering of great angry red clouds, the dousing of the city with wet and wind, the hammering of hail. The Surgeon is able to localize its work without affecting my motor abilities, so I continue painting even while it performs the surgery. On my canvas, high water spills into digital circuitry, an intelligent biology molts into transistors and chips.

  With the implant procedure underway, everything slowly changes around me. The world has always had a soft focus, and now it’s as if I’m seeing it anew: sharp and bright and saturated. At first I try to mute the colors in my painting, to make everything appear more like what I remember, but then I give in to the jagged strokes and slashes from my new perception of the world. My brushstrokes are heavy, heated, too fast.

  By the time the operation is over, the universe has shifted entirely. The shapes, the symmetry, the patterns, the variations of color. They can all be quantified, sorted, and filed away in data structures that didn’t previously exist in my brain.

  “Leela, sweetie, how’re you feeling?” Mom takes my hand.

  I blink, and all the anger and confusion of the last few days melts away. A history of the Grid has been downloaded into my brain, and I can easily retrieve the sections with the keywords I care about: the mysterious case of Kavya Patel.

  “You were supposed to be a Princess!” I whisper.

  “I didn’t want you to know about that.” Mom sits down on the hospital bed and sighs.

  “Too late. Tell me your version.”

  She runs a hand through her hair. “Everything was set. My marriage had been arranged by an algorithm that’s thousands of years old, the same one that brought my parents together. Even though I hadn’t expected to marry so young—I was only sixteen at the time—I was excited to find happiness. I was sure I knew who it was going to pick for me.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes! We were perfect for each other. In love. But instead Deva chose me for itself, to be its Bride and Princess. It wanted me to merge with it in digital immortality.”

  The old me wouldn’t have understood what she meant. Maybe that’s why she never told me about the proposal. But now I can intuit how a human might merge with machine, how consciousness can give itself over to digital storage.

  The Grid was engineered by a man who wanted to create a utopian equilibrium in society. As the network grew in power and precision, fear swelled in those he was trying to help. There was widespread unease at the idea of becoming irrelevant, the same worries I felt when I viewed that extraordinary painting in my grandparents’ gallery.

  So the inventor promised there would always be a human element. He uploaded his consciousness, every neural pathway in his brain. In doing so, he became a god, a Deva. An immortal inside the network, a soul to direct the other souls.

  Mom squeezes me. “Deva used the term Princess, but to me the position seemed more like Cadaver. It would be the end of everything that was me. I couldn’t stand that.”

  I rest my head upon her shoulder. “I don’t even know why it picked you. You can’t stand it when a machine carries your luggage or makes chai!”

  She raises an eyebrow. “I make it better than any Chaiwala, thank you.”

  “True. So what happened with Dad?”

  “Krishna thought I should accept, do whatever Deva recommended for the good of society.”

  “Did Dad know about me?” Nearly everything may have changed, but not the hurt that’s been there my whole life because of his absence.

  “He knew,” Mom says. “He promised to raise you if I couldn’t.”

  “So he’s not a total deadbeat?”

  “Just the kind who was too cowardly to leave this place.”

  Oh, my brave, strong mother. I try to imagine the life I would have had in the Grid, maybe never knowing her the way I haven’t known my father. It’s a terrible thought. “I’m glad you decided to become a botanist in the Beltway instead.”

  She laughs. “You know, the variety of vegetables they could grow on Tri-Rock was pretty sad before I arrived—watery-tomatoes-and-iceberg-lettuce sad. They needed me.”

  I make a face. “Iceberg lettuce? You were their freaking savior.”

  Before she can make another joke, I throw my arms around her, utterly grateful for the life she’s given me.

  A week after my Connection, my father declares that my brain has adjusted well and the tumor can be removed successfully. The Surgeon does its job, and suddenly death is no longer looming over me like a specter in the night.

  “I have my life back,” I tell Nikhil over video chat.

  “That’s fantastic!” His smile could light up the darkest ice cave on Tri-Rock. “So you can make winter formal?”

  “Not exactly.” I explain my mandatory one-year commitment to the Grid.

  “Next year, then?”

  He’s looking at me the way he’s always looked at me, with an intensity that burrows into my skin. It reminds me of all that hope and care and commitment it takes to coax a new variety of tomato vine into thriving in Ma’s greenhouse.

  I’m Nikhil’s garden tomato.

  The two of us talk for hours about the least important things, like our favorite comedy feeds and pro asteroid surfers. When we finally say goodbye, it’s late, but I’m too hyped up for sleep. Too alive. I laugh giddily, then cover my mouth to keep from waking the whole household.

  Pulling out a fresh canvas, I think of the possibilities open to me. A lifetime of them. Weaving quickly between colors, I let instinct guide me—though my instincts aren’t the same as they were before. Registers store my thoughts and intentions, cataloguing them before sending signals to my fingers.

  The painting that emerges is of a planet tangled in wires, a symbiotic ecosystem of biology and technology. Through the length of each wire a new baby planet travels, a seed speeding out into the greater galaxy that will soon bloom into a new system. It’s all perfect, I suppose. Too perfect.

  Something is missing—a spark of mystery, perhaps. I’m familiar with my own processes, and a night’s rest has always helped clarify my intentions. I crawl into my luxuriously soft bed, ready to sleep the deep sleep of a girl without a malignant growth wrecking everything she’s worked for.

  But my dreams are no longer my own.

  A powerful intelligence pays me a visit in that most private of spaces. Deva takes form as a digital tide, a wave that blows in with images and data and roaring sound. It juxtaposes a picture of a blooming flower with the numbers of a blooming industry, the tangled roots of a tree with the nodes of interpersonal relationships, the vast expanse of stars in the galaxy with the expanse of the passions of its citizens.

  Numbers become art and music. They become a sweeping landscape and a ribbon of night sky. And I see how everything is connected. How everything can be both chaotic and ordered, how probability and statistics can be tamed into submission.