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And jazz. Don’t get me started. I wanted to play jazz, but nobody listens to jazz from solos anymore. How about that? We invented it. We invented jazz.”

Leap bridles at the term, but manages to suppress it. “Natural life” is a term one uses carefully around joins. Individualists consider a join a manufactured being.

Leap has always known that unmet promises are rarely empty; rather, they’re filled with the unspoken things people don’t want to do or can’t do.

You mean you remember.
No, I mean when my loved ones slip away from this life they continue to live with me. Just as you are the spirit of many, so am I. What you do with technology nature has done through love since the mind began.
—Joseph Rex,
Poe’s Mission, Book I

Things are exactly what they appear to be, just not what you think they appear to be.
—Adofo, from the
Seventh Pan-African Address

“In the beginning,” Rope Three says, “when Join was first introduced, and for a long time after, I assumed we’d all join. That we’d all become one single individual. Can you imagine that? No more other. No more competition. The largest category of risk for our species—the risk of competitive self-destruction—effectively zeroed out.”

of predation. The consumption of a soul by a demon. They can’t imagine the continued existence of every individual in a join. Joining can be a very difficult topic for ferals. Many of them—in the context of their religious dogma—believe true mortality should be preserved.”

Chance is proud. He made something special that the other children remember. He grins and pushes his face into Nana’s parka.
Another Nana is walking down the aisle of the bus making sure everyone is belted in. Another is driving. Another is sitting in the back of the bus playing patty-cake with a girl named Lucita, whom everyone likes. The seven Nanas are all the same person. They care for all the children of the other joins who live on the mining base.

And Join actually did break the government. Things like Social Security numbers and biometric security all assumed a person had only one body. Lots of programs got snarled up—should all of a join’s drives get benefits or only one? It was clear that regulators had let Join come to market too early, but the genie was out of the bottle. The government needed the money Vitalcorp was making in order to address the issues Join caused.

It’s hard to be self-pitying when people consider you privileged.