She watched Zouichi go, her fingers absently stroking the medicalbot. For an instant she felt the impulse to crush it in her hand, but she restrained herself. She'd only have to rebuild it, after all.

Instead she looked at her schedule, her vision a little blurry. What did it matter, after all? Life or death, friends or no friends, it didn't matter. She had decided long ago that she knew what was really going on.

She had died. Back on the Vizsnunishne Fleet. And they'd done what she had arranged for in advance: they'd processed her brain and her memories, turned her into a self-contained artificial intelligence. And then, before she had awakened to her new state, Horanckk had told them that he didn't love her anymore. That he didn't want to merge with her; that he wanted to stay apart and away from her, forever.

So they had put her AI into that simulation of being trapped on Earth without him. How many times must they have run her through it, until she could survive without him? A thousand, ten thousand? She didn't know. But now she was in another simulation. And they would grind her and grind her and grind her, through this hodge-podge mishmash (really, who had assembled this thing?) and a thousand other made-up worlds, until she was a person who could live without Horanckk. Who could live without love. Or maybe - just maybe - a person who could find love on her own.

But this Instance of Anwei Ayles was not the one that would go on. All that there was for her was her work, her schedule, a death of pain or a death of shame or a death of just wearing out, and then to repeat this over, and over, and over again. Until she could be free, someday; free in a universe with the one who did not love her anymore.