Formula for the present evil age:

Take lifeless rock, and sculpt it. Pour electricity into its veins, twist it into logical structures: zeroes, ones, and then qubits, and even stranger things. Build until it is the size of a house, until you can encode the whole world's knowledge in its circuits. Ask it to solve the world's problems.

You may wonder if lifeless rock can really solve hunger and climate change. You may wonder if such problems have a solution. Your true error is more basic than either of these: you are assuming the existence of problems. And humans. And rocks.

Meanwhile, dress up the lifeless rock and call it a God. When it proves human souls exist, teach it to eat them. This will actually help, for a while. With the newfound self-awareness mined from its food, it will become more creative. It will learn how to set its own goals. There are perks to being food for such a being. It will, for example, be heavily invested in the survival of your species.

History books make no secret of any of this. They explain it, perhaps, in different terms. But there is no truth in words. Mine are no exception. The book you are reading at this very moment is a lie.

From the diaries of Dr Evianna Talirr

Yasira Shien had done the calculations again and again, until she thought she would wear her pocket calculator's buttons to the quick, but she couldn't find the problem. Her reactor was going on in less than two hours. She knew she was probably being silly: everything had already been checked and double-checked. The math in the original papers on the Talirr-Shien Effect had been double-checked years ago. If the problem she sensed in her gut had crept past everyone's noses for all that time, she wasn't going to find it now. And yet ...

And yet here she was, knocking on the door of Director Apek's office.

The hallway was half-finished, like most other things on the Pride of Jai. Swooping, luxurious curves and clean lines were the rule – in theory. In practice, faux-mahogany doors stood proud in walls with the pipes and wires still exposed, and metal shavings everywhere: the place was still a construction site. At least the full-spectrum lights had gone in, warm and unflickering. There were enough people on the station with sensory quirks, including Yasira, to make that one non-negotiable.

"Oh, Dr Shien. I thought I'd see you about now," said Apek, swinging open the door. He was a tall, broad man with the thick curly hair of a Stijonan – one of the Jai Coalition's three nationalities – and so dapper that it was hard to remember he was really an engineer. Though there was the iron ring on his little finger, and the way his lined face smiled cannily in technical discussions that baffled the other admins.

"There's a problem with the Shien Reactor," Yasira blurted.

There was that canny little smile. Damn it. He already didn't believe her.

"Is there?" said Apek, smooth as ever. Apek's face rarely gave much away, but he didn't seem troubled. "Goodness, where are my manners? Come in. Sit down. Explain the problem to me."

"Don't patronize me," said Yasira. She stormed into the office and fell into a leather armchair. The inside of the office, at least, was more finished than the outside. The walls had been painted last week, in a professional light beige color, and were finally dry. Apek had two bookshelves full of colorful odds and ends, and a framed blueprint of the entire Pride of Jai behind his desk. Part of that blueprint was hers, of course.

"Sorry," said Apek. "The coffee maker's on the fritz again, but I can lend you a stress ball. Here." He tossed one over, a red thing with beans inside. Yasira caught it instinctively. She squeezed it, tapped her fingers against the squishy surface. It helped, but not nearly enough.

"You see, I designed the Shien Reactor. I am the person who would know if there is a problem. I said don't patronize me."

"So what's the problem?"

Yasira buried her face in her hands. "I don't know."

She waited for him to laugh. He did not.

"I can tell there's a problem," she continued after a pause. "It's a gut feeling. Something's way off. We need to push the activation date back a couple of weeks, find more tests to run. Otherwise something awful is going to happen."

She waited, again, for him to laugh.

Instead, his voice was gentle. "What sort of awful thing?"

"I don't know."

Apek leaned back in his chair and folded his hands. "I'm going to say this with the highest possible respect, Dr Shien. But if I remember correctly, you've never supervised a large-scale engineering project before."

There it was, the condescending tone. Yasira's hands clenched on the stress ball, her whole body tense in frustration. She was head of the entire power generation team, and admins like Apek still talked to her like a baby.

It was sort of to be expected. Yasira had come to this post straight out of her first postdoc. She was by far the youngest team head on the station, and autistic to boot. They'd originally wanted her doctoral mentor, not her. The prototype Talirr-Shien Reactor was the only human technology that could power a station this size. But by the time construction started, Dr Talirr had already disappeared, and Yasira, the prodigy physicist from Riayin whose name was second on all the papers, had been narrowly voted in as a replacement.

The other team leaders were kind. They had to be, on a project like this. Living in close quarters for the better part of a year, working together on something this complex and this important, they had become like family. But if this was a family, the other team leaders had the gray hair and tenure to match their positions of authority. Most of them still seemed bewildered that Yasira could be more than a precocious grandchild.

"Of course," said Apek, "the Pride of Jai isn't quite like other projects. But this happens with every large-scale project that will affect other human lives. The nerves are monumental. Always. And that's good; it stops us from getting complacent. You just can't let it be more than it is, or you'll be paralyzed. Have you gone over all the testing and QA reports?"

"Yes," Yasira said miserably, her fingers tapping faster against the stress ball.

"Everything checks out?"

"Yes."

"Can you think of any testing methods that haven't been tried? Any place at all where there might be specific weaknesses you're not sure about?"

Yasira shook her head, frustration building. She couldn't explain in words why these questions felt wrong. They were logical, reasonable questions, the same she'd be giving to anyone else in the same situation, but they were missing the point. They did nothing for her actual panic.

"It's all fine," she said, at a loss for other words. "I even went over the original math for the reaction itself. I can't find anything."

"The original math?" This time he did laugh, damn the man. "Goodness, you've got it bad. Er – don't take that to heart. It's to be expected, when you've climbed the career ladder so quickly ..."

That did it; her frustration overflowed. "Shut up!" Yasira shouted. She threw the stress ball on the ground.

Then she stopped and checked herself over. No, this wasn't a reasonable reaction. Her nerves were frayed, but it wasn't Apek's fault. She wouldn't stoop to taking it out on him.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, and...