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time. To ask for more … was probably pointless, but no more than natural.
    What intelligent creature possessed of wit and feeling could do otherwise? We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.
    To hope as he was hoping, hoping against likelihood, against statistical probability, in that sense against the universe itself, was only to be expected, but it was also almost certainly forlorn. The animal in him craved something that his higher brain knew was not going to happen. That was the point he was impaled upon,the front on which he suffered; that struggle of the lower brain’s almost chemical simplicities of yearning pitched against the withering realities revealed and comprehended by consciousness. Neither could give up, and neither could give way. The heat of their battle burned in his mind.
    He wondered if, despite what he’d been told, Huyler could hear any hint of it.
    ~ All our tests confirm that the construct has been fully recovered. All error-checks have been completed. The construct is now available for interaction and downloading, the sister technician announced in his head. She seemed to be trying to sound more like a machine than machines ever did.
    He opened his eyes and blinked into the light for a moment. The headset he wore was just visible from the corners of his eyes. The reclined couch he lay on felt firm but comfortable. He was in the medical facility of the Mendicant Sisters’ temple ship
Piety
. Across the racks of gleaming, spotless medical gear, near the side of a stained, battered-looking thing about the size of a domestic chill cabinet, the sister technician talking to him was a youngster with a severe expression, dark brown fur and a head which had been partially shaved.
    ~ I’ll download it now, she continued. ~ Do you wish to interact with it immediately?
    ~ Yes, I do.
    ~ A moment, please.
    ~ Wait, what will it—will he—experience?
    ~ Awareness. Sight, in the form of a human-compensated feed from this camera. She tapped a tinywand protruding from the headset she wore. ~ Hearing, in the form of your voice. Continue?
    ~ Yes.
    There was the very faintest impression of a hiss, and then a sleepy-sounding, deeply male voice saying,
    ~ … seven, eight … nine … Hello? What? Where is this? What is this? Where—? What’s happened?
    It was a voice that went from slurred sleepiness to suddenly fearful confusion and then onto a degree of control within just a few words. The voice sounded younger than he’d been expecting. He supposed there was no need for it to sound old.
    ~ Sholan Hadesh Huyler, he responded calmly. ~ Welcome back.
    ~
Who is that? I can’t move
. There was still a trace of uncertainty and anxiety in the voice. ~
This isn’t … the beyond. Is it?
    ~ My name is Called-to-Arms-from-Given Major Quilan IV of Itirewein. I’m sorry you can’t move but please don’t worry; your personality construct is currently still inside the substrate you were originally stored within, in the Military Technology Institute, Cravinyr, on Aorme. At the moment the substrate you’re inside is aboard the temple ship
Piety
. It’s in orbit around a moon of the planet Reshref Four, in the constellation of the Bow, along with the hulk of the star cruiser
Winter Storm
.
    ~ There you are. Ah. You say you’re a major. I was an admiral-general. I outrank you.
    The voice was perfectly under control now; still deep, but clipped and crisp. The voice of somebody used to giving orders.
    ~ Your rank when you died was greater than mine now, certainly, sir.
    The sister technician adjusted something on the console in front of her.
    ~ Whose are those hands? They look