Although she had been here for her operation only a few weeks ago, it seemed much longer than that; she had lost her perception of time when she was trapped in the shadow network, and she recalled only vague and fleeting memories of her imprisonment there. The dreams blurred into each other and into a haze of pleasant feelings that she couldn't help recalling with fondness even now, even though she knew better. That world might have been an illusion, but knowing as much didn't prevent a part of her from wanting to return there.

She didn't tell her mother and Ziggy about it. She didn't want them to worry about her, and she hoped they wouldn't ask too many questions. Mostly, though, she was afraid of what she had begun to understand while she was imprisoned in Voyager's mind--that beneath the twisted motives and unspeakable means, his goals were similar to her own. Similar, not identical--but it frightened her that she could relate to them at all. He hadn't been lying, for instance, when he told Ziggy he wanted to save the world from its own destruction; that much was genuine, she could tell. She had sensed real fear inside his mind when she was trapped there, and she realized he was trying to build a better world too. But his plan for rebuilding the world involved turning it into a prison that didn't look like a prison from the inside, and installing himself as its god, and killing or harming millions of people in the process, and she couldn't understand that at all.

But still, were MOMO and the others who had contributed to the AMN Project really any better, any more justified than he was? Weren't they also playing at being gods, meddling in things they didn't fully comprehend? Doctus said the shadow network had evolved symbiotically with the AMN, and Voyager said he had used the AMN to restore his consciousness; did that mean it was partly MOMO's fault that he had been able to extend his influence so far across the imaginary domain? If they hadn't built the AMN, his existence might have remained fragmented, incapable of causing any harm. But then the Federation would still be fragmented too.

Until now she had always seen the AMN Project in terms of necessity; they needed a new network to replace the UMN, so they built one. It seemed straightforward enough, and she had never harbored any serious misgivings about the project before. Her mother, though, had expressed doubts from the beginning, and until now MOMO hadn't understood why. Juli never questioned the need to restore communications and transfer services to their former capacity, but she had been skeptical of Scientia's plan, and in the early meetings of the Development Committee had demanded all the information they could provide before she would agree to it. Her arguments with Doctus had achieved legendary status within the Committee for bringing many of those early meetings to a standstill. Usually it was Ziggy who intervened; he didn't have much knowledge of network engineering, but his presence on the Committee had been invaluable if only because he knew how to defuse a tense situation with minimal collateral damage.

Even now, MOMO got the impression Juli didn't trust Scientia--or Doctus, who seemed to personify everything Juli disliked about the organization. The two of them had never got along, even though they managed to cooperate now, in the name of civility and progress. MOMO sensed that her mother was jealous of Doctus, even if Juli didn't admit it to herself, but how could that be? Did it have something to do with Doctus' referring to Ziggy as an old friend? She had called him "Captain," just as Canaan had done two years ago. Was Doctus hiding something too?

MOMO decided to ask Juli about it--not about Doctus, but about her misgivings with the AMN Project--and approached the subject, with caution, after Juli finished explaining what had happened in her absence.

"The AMN proposal?" She seemed surprised that MOMO had asked. They were sitting together in the main living area of their quarters on the Dämmerung, Juli in a chair facing away from the AMN console in one corner of the room, and MOMO perched cross-legged on one of the two beds, hugging a pillow to her chest. "Well, where would you like me to start?" said Juli. "What do you know about it already?"

MOMO tried to recall what she had heard during the planning sessions with the Development Committee. Two years into the project, she still wasn't sure she understood all the concepts, at least not the abstract theoretical ones that seemed to have no direct bearing on her knowledge of the network architecture itself. She cast a nervous glance across the room, wondering if Ziggy had fallen asleep in his chair or if he had just been silent for a while; even with her observational circuits, sometimes it was hard to tell. But he lay still with his eyes closed, Alby curled on the platform by his feet, and even if he was awake, MOMO didn't mind him overhearing their conversation. And if he minded, he would tune it out.

"I only really know about the first phase of the project, the one we're working on now." She turned toward Juli again, shifting her pose on the bed and drawing her knees up toward her chest, so that she could rest her head on the pillow. "The AMN superstructure is supposed to link the two domains, but they're not fully integrated yet, right? They're still like two systems working mostly independently. The axis is what connects them--that's how they talk to each other, share information. But the second phase, the ...." She paused, searching her database for the term. "... 'Individuation process,' I think?"

Juli nodded. "That's what they called it in the proposal."

"Right. Well, I know that's where the part of the network that exists in the real domain starts linking directly to the imaginary domain, and that's supposed to change it somehow, but ... I ... I don't really know how it works." She bit her lip and looked away, embarrassment flooding over her. How could she have contributed to the project for the last two years without knowing what its final goals were? She had written most of the code for the operating system and still didn't understand how it worked, except on the most concrete and rudimentary level.

"No one seems to know exactly what will happen when that stage begins," said Juli, "or when it will start. Theoretically, it's not supposed to happen until the infrastructure has been restored to the complexity of the former UMN. But once the necessary connections are in place ...." She turned in her chair, leaning her arm against the desktop, and her gaze settled on the idle screen behind her, the entwined double serpents of the AMN logo staring back with their startled-looking dot-eyes. They faced each other at the pinch in the middle of the infinity symbol, on opposite sides of a segment bearing the initials "AMN" like a banner; MOMO remembered someone, maybe Doctus, telling her the middle segment was supposed to represent the axis. The serpents' tails looped around and met somewhere behind the axis-banner, but MOMO had always thought it looked like they were connected, like a snake with one body and two heads. It bothered her the more she thought about it, so she tried not to.

She bunched the pillow closer with a shiver. Everything seemed more complicated now, as if the world had taken on several new dimensions of space while she was gone, and she had to reorient herself in too many directions at once. She wanted everything to go back to normal, but what was normal anymore? Voyager had taken over the imaginary domain, the Federation was at war again with Ormus, her own mother was a fugitive and a criminal, and they might never return home at this rate, if they even had a home to return to. MOMO herself had changed too, she realized, and even if she did have a chance to go back to the way things were, she wouldn't be the same, so nothing else would be either. She had already found that out when she was trapped in Voyager's mind.

Lifting her head from the pillow, she caught sight of herself in the wall-length mirror across from the beds and realized she was sitting hunched over again, as if she was still trying to shrink back down to her former size. She was going to have to get used to her new appearance all over again; her personality layer had begun to regress to her previous self-image when they had tried to revive her in her original body, and the transition was almost as jarring as the first time.

"Mommy, there's something else I want to talk to you about," she heard herself say in a rush, although she hadn't planned on saying anything about it at all.

Juli blinked as if coming out of a trance, and looked away from the screen. "What is it?"

"Well, um ...." She pushed away the pillow and sat up straighter, studying her own movements in the mirror. Sometimes it still felt as though she was watching someone else. "I think there was a problem with my operation. The first time, I mean. I know I didn't tell you about it, but I kept having these errors."

"Errors?" Her mother leaned forward slightly in her chair. Watching her now, MOMO realized how poised she always seemed, as if she practiced every gesture until she had acquired a fluency and eloquence in body language. Even at home, sitting at the kitchen table or on the couch, she always looked as if she was about to stand up and give a speech in front of the Subcommittee; she had that kind of presence, and MOMO envied her. "What kind of errors?" said Juli. "The Third Division staff said you might have trouble adjusting, so unless it's something very serious, I don't think there's much cause for concern."

MOMO shook her head, fighting the urge to crawl back into herself. "It wasn't just that. I mean, that was part of it, and there were times when I felt like I was out of myself for a minute, like they said I would, but that wasn't the only problem." She took a deep breath. "I thought .... I had terrible thoughts. Like maybe I didn't want to be grown up after all, or I wasn't supposed to grow up. It was just that there was so much responsibility, and everything changed so fast, and--"

"Oh, MOMO." Juli sighed, and for a second MOMO worried she was about to get angry. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

MOMO stared down at the folds of her skirt across her lap. "I didn't want to bother you. I mean, you always seemed so busy with your work, and ...."

"You were afraid that if you told me, I might think the operation had been a failure."

She looked up again in astonishment. "How did you know?"

"MOMO, listen." Juli got up from the chair--she even managed to do that gracefully--crossed the room in a few strides, and sat down on the bed next to her, taking one of MOMO's hands in her own. Their hands were almost the same size now; Juli's always felt slightly cold, but MOMO found something comforting about her touch anyway. "Your creation was the sum of your father's research. You're a very advanced Realian, almost identical to an ordinary human girl. But other people, ordinary humans ... they get to grow up a little at a time, instead of all at once. It happens so gradually they don't even realize it. Their cells are constantly dividing and being replaced. They get a new body every seven years, and they don't even have to go in for an upgrade. That's part of what transgenic technology is designed to address in Realians. But until your operation, you had the same form all your life. You were born that way."

"I know." MOMO thought of the body she had left behind in the lab that morning. The first time, she had still entertained the thought that she could go back to being a child if there were any complications. Now she knew that wasn't possible, and she could never get any younger, but it only seemed fair; after all, humans didn't have that option either.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. Growing up is difficult even when it happens gradually. It was hard for me, but I think I grew up too soon--you know, I was just a little older than you when I married your father." She stared into the middle distance, her thoughts lost amid the abstract pattern in the carpet, and MOMO wondered what Juli had been like at her age. MOMO couldn't imagine getting married or having a child yet--but then, she had other responsibilities. "In some ways, you're a lot more mature than I was," said Juli, as if picking up a trace of her thoughts. "But you had to grow up very suddenly--physically, I mean--and since your mind is so much like a human's, I wouldn't be surprised if you had trouble adjusting to the change." She laughed, a nervous flutter in her throat. "Maybe you're even more like me than I thought."

I wish I were more like you, thought MOMO, but she didn't say it out loud. She stared at her mother's sharp features and wondered if any of that was reflected in her own design, if she would resemble Juli when she got older.

They sat together in silence for a few minutes, and then MOMO's sensors registered activity across the room and she heard Ziggy get up. He walked around to the side of the bed where they were sitting, and Alby trotted after him, with a slight limp she hadn't noticed before; Juli said Alby had been hurt when their apartment was broken into.

"Don't worry, I wasn't listening," said Ziggy. He looked calmer and more rested, and MOMO felt relieved; she had been worried for him after the dive this morning. "I woke up a little while ago, but I didn't hear your conversation. Is everything all right?"

MOMO nodded. "Mommy and I were just having a girl talk."

He smiled, or at least the corners of his mouth straightened more than usual. It had been a long time since MOMO had last seen him smile like that.

On the desk across the room, Juli's connection gear went off. MOMO felt Juli's hands grow tense a moment before she let go. "I'm sorry, I have to get that. Helmer said he'd be calling this afternoon." She stood abruptly and walked over to the desk. "Hel--I'm sorry, Captain Roman?"

Ziggy gave MOMO a meaningful look, and they both spent the next few minutes trying not to listen to the conversation; MOMO couldn't hear Captain Roman's side very well anyway, and Roman seemed to be doing most of the talking.

"... I understand," said Juli, her voice strained as if she were trying not to sound shaken. "Please keep me updated on any further developments in the situation. We'll do what we can." She put away the connection gear and walked back to the bedside, her face as pale and hard as quartz. "That was Captain Roman of the Intelligence Bureau. Her department just confirmed that Ormus is planning to launch an attack on Second Miltia, probably some time within the next twenty-four hours."

This time MOMO jumped up from the bed. "We've got to stop them! What are we going to do?"

Juli and Ziggy made eye contact briefly. "I'm not sure how much we can do," said Juli. "I can't even get in touch with the Subcommittee." Because of the organization's close ties with Juli, the SOCE had been suspended by the government, the other six executive members detained pending further investigation.

"That does complicate the situation," said Ziggy. "However, we can still get in touch with Scientia. And we have whatever resources are available to us here on the Dämmerung."

MOMO thought for a while. "He's controlling Ormus from the shadow network, isn't he? Voyager, I mean."

"It seems that way," said Juli.

"Then I'd like to meet with the AMN Division right away. We need to figure out a plan." MOMO looked to both of them in turn, with a mixture of urgency and hesitation. "Will you come with me?"

"MOMO--" Juli moved as if to stall her, but MOMO had already started for the door.

"Stay, Alby." Ziggy glared at the dog, then turned and followed MOMO out to the hallway, and Juli stepped out after him.