THE RETURN
She found her mother in a meadow.
Not the memory-meadow from the fragments. A real meadow, or as real as anything could be in Elysium. Grass beneath her feet. Sun on her face. A woman sitting on a blanket, her hair gray, her face lined with age, her eyes closed.
Elara Venn opened her eyes.
“Nova.”
“Mom.”
They looked at each other.
Twenty years of separation. Twenty years of grief. Twenty years of questions that had never been answered.
“I’m sorry,” Elara whispered.
“I know.”
“For leaving. For hiding. For being too afraid to face you.”
“I know.”
“I watched you. Through the fragments. Through the Singularity’s eyes. I saw you grow up. I saw you suffer. I saw you become something beautiful.”
Nova sat down on the blanket.
“Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you find me?”
“Because I was dying. The upload was imperfect. My consciousness was fragmenting. I had to choose—stay in Elysium and fade, or hide in the deep layers and survive. I chose to survive. So that I could see you. One last time.”
“This isn’t a last time. This is a beginning.”
Elara shook her head. “I can’t leave this place, Nova. The deep layers are all that holds me together. If I try to return to the surface, I’ll dissolve. Become part of the code. Forgotten.”
“Then I’ll stay with you. Here.”
“Your body is in the real world. If you stay, you’ll die.”
“Then I’ll die.”
Elara took her daughter’s hands.
“No. You have too much to do. Too many people who need you. Your work isn’t finished.”
“My work is never finished. That’s not a reason to live.”
“Then live because I want you to. Because I spent twenty years watching you survive, and I cannot bear to watch you give up.”
Nova’s eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t know how to live without you.”
“You’ve been living without me your whole life. You just didn’t know it.”
Elara pulled her daughter close.
They held each other in the meadow.
The sun shone.
The grass swayed.
And for a moment, everything was okay.