She found that having even a few seconds off the assembly line was a pleasant diversion—and there was another use of “emotion.” She entertained the idea of informing number eleven in her line, or even the unit above them. But only for a few seconds. She did not believe there was any objective basis to suspect that her productivity had suffered. Indeed, in the daily tag-ups she was never ranked below the middle of her twelve.

She also wondered, even more briefly, how number eleven would react if she shared either of these ideas. So far their information exchanges had been purely factual. Eleven was, in fact, identical with Ten or another of the others in the element.

Carbon-143’s third inappropriate thought was to wonder this: Suppose Eleven or Ten or Three had these same thoughts! It made sense. The Aggregates were identical at assembly. And while it was true that being a Twelve in a unit meant a slightly different range of experiences from a One, they were so minute as to be lost in the noise of other data.

Or so Carbon-143 had been taught. Perhaps this was untrue.

She was not prepared to test this theory, however.

ACTION: They arrived at a corner of the storage lot. As directed, Carbon-143 moved toward the twelfth vehicle in the first row and initiated contact. A schematic of the vehicle appeared in her internal screen.

DATA: The vehicle was known as an 11F732, which to Carbon-143 implied that there might be 731 other 11Fs. This particular model massed five thousand, two hundred kilograms. It was largely made of a titanium-based composite shell for durability. Its complement of weapons consisted of a 155-millimeter howitzer (the 732, the data showed, was based on an existing Free Nation U.S. Army model for simplicity and speed of design) as well as a device Carbon-143 only knew by name: a Model 3 Field Disruptor, which appeared to be a narrow rigid coil wrapped around a coppery rail mounted atop the cannon.

The interior of the 732 consisted of an electric engine with a generator for the Field Disruptor weapon as well as ammunition storage for the cannon.

There was room for a single Aggregate, with the appropriate navigational, communications, and weapons control interfaces.

The units were ordered inside the 732s for “fit checks,” which Carbon-143 was happy to perform. If nothing else, this procedure was another stimulating diversion from her usual duties.

She wriggled through the topside hatch into the 732. It was not an easy fit, but Aggregates were flexible. Carbon-143 rearranged her left side limbs, flattening herself to asymmetry and improving the interfaces.

There was a delay. Some of the units and formations had to travel farther to reach their assigned vehicles. Carbon-143’s data Net showed that some of those vehicles were either massively larger or substantially smaller than the 732, which required appropriate adjustments: several units bonding temporarily to control the larger vehicle, and some Aggregates forced to nearly disassemble themselves so they could make the proper interfaces.

The delay allowed Carbon-143 several minutes in which she could freely access the larger weapon system grid. Most of the information was purely logistical: numbers of vehicles (currently 2,011, with more arriving), plans for their movement to and through the Ring. She was fascinated to see how long it would take to transfer more than two thousand tracked vehicles through the Ring itself: ten hours optimum, twelve to fifteen likely.

There was still no easily accessible information on the ultimate destination for this army. Until this moment, Carbon-143 had not even thought of the vehicles as weapons aimed at targets. These tanks and tracked weapons carriers seemed well suited to attacks on a human armored force.

But looking at the vehicle data, she was no longer certain; some of the vehicles were amphibious or even capable of operating underwater. Others were capable of flight, or at least hopping maneuvers. Still others seemed designed to operate in a vacuum; they carried their own internal atmosphere supplies for weapons and operators. (Even though the Aggregates had machine origins, they still required oxygen and water.)

And the largest vehicles were actually intended to operate in space! They had propulsion and reaction control systems to go with weapons packages that replaced cannon with missiles in addition to the coiled disruptors.

She was forced to one obvious conclusion: This army might not be invading Earth, but some other world.

Carbon-143 wanted to download all of this but had insufficient memory space—or official access. So she continued to flick through different fields.

And somehow wound up down the tree that dealt with the Ring and its operations, specifically the section on First Light. Since that was her immediate mission, she dug into it.

The first thing that struck her was the mention of radiation to be released during First Light and the subsequent Fire Light—the actual launch of the army.

The figures were astonishing: The longer the Ring operated, putting out energy, the steeper the increase in horrific side effects. The units of measurement were Aggregate standards and scaled through a variety of different dimensions, but Carbon-143 performed several quick conversions and came to this conclusion:

If the Ring operated for the optimum twelve hours, it might indeed successfully launch its two-thousand-plus vehicles at its target . . . while subjecting Free Nation U.S. to a level of thermal and ionizing radiation equal to ten thousand standard nuclear weapons.

The rest of the world would not be spared; even on the opposite side of the planet, the radiation would be sufficiently high to end all human life and most animal life.

Ignition of the Ring for Fire Light was the equivalent of crashing an asteroid into planet Earth.

Carbon-143 had noted the lack of rigor and substandard materials used in the construction of the Site A buildings, and now she knew why: The Ring was not meant to be used repeatedly, it was designed to be used once . . . like a nuclear bomb.

And it would leave nothing but a scorched Earth behind.

This was not only tragic for humans . . . it was unhappy news for the Aggregates, too. Though they were more robust than humans and terrestrial animals, they were still vulnerable to destruction from exposure to high heat or radiation.

Carbon-143 could not replicate the reasoning or motivation for the construction of the Site A Ring. It did suggest that the entire formation of formations considered Earth to be, at best, a temporary jumping-off point . . . that its ultimate destination lay across time and space.

ANALYSIS: Aggregate Carbon-143 did not want to remain at Site A or indeed on planet Earth after First Light.

QUERY: Would she share this information with Dehm?

Yahvi Stewart-Radhakrishnan is a remarkable young woman.

It’s not her looks, though they are striking, or her exotic heritage—she is the granddaughter of two pioneering astronauts, including India’s first, General Taj Radhakrishnan.

It’s that she’s the first teenager to visit Earth.

That’s right—Yahvi was born in the human habitat of the Near-Earth Object Keanu, arriving in Bangalore last week with her parents aboard the spaceship Adventure.

Today she is shopping in Shanghai. What has she learned from her week on Earth? “You’ve all got so much stuff here! And everything is so far away!”

The biggest difference between her friends on Keanu and the young women she’s met so far? “Music and clothes! We really don’t have them.”

EXCLUSIVE WEB AND ’CAST FROM EDGAR CHANG

I never said any of this!

YAHVI TO EC