Homebound

While traveling in the shuttle, Solo dreams of a “tall, strong, stubborn” (138) figure from her past. The description, which the player inputs into the game, reveals the player to be Tamar Portman—these are the adjectives she used to describe EG earlier. The shuttle arrives at an uncharted planet with two suns, where she finds the other four shuttles from the Diana parked and powered down. A strange, blurry structure stands nearby. Solo disembarks and walks toward it, but is intercepted by a young humanoid girl named Elijah, who calls herself the Guardian of a “Portal.” Elijah explains that the structure is a place where cosmic “disharmony” (145) accumulates, which has trapped the Diana. She does not fully understand how the Portal works or what became of the crew.

The blurry structure resolves, as Solo draws closer, into a stone amphitheater. At the center of its stage is a trapdoor. Elijah explains that to free the Diana, Solo must go through the door and make a series of choices to restore harmony. Knowing the risks, Solo opens the trapdoor and descends a long ladder into a dark, natural cave below. She finds a narrow passage leading deeper into the earth and chooses to enter it.

Yesiko and Root sail the Babylon south to pay off their debt to Chante. Though Yesiko tries to focus on their impending freedom, she worries about the group she left behind. She plans to ask Chante for information about the doctor who implanted Root’s nanites. During the journey, Root’s health deteriorates. One night, Yesiko finds him nearly motionless on watch, which brings back her guilt over the courier job where her decision led to his back being broken. As a rare pod of whales swims alongside the ship, their songs filling the pilothouse, Yesiko realizes Root’s nanites are likely failing. She helps the severely weakened Root to his bunk and begins shortening his watches, newly aware of his age and fragility.

Since Root cannot leave the Babylon, Yesiko travels alone to Chante’s yacht, Pheon, to repay the debt. On her way, she sees Gage, an old family friend, being publicly tortured. To appear non-threatening to her escort, she spits on Gage; in reality, the gesture is a form of mercy—the clearly severely dehydrated Gage licks the moist spittle as it drips down his face. Inside, Yesiko meets with Chante, whose face has been augmented in ways that preclude him displaying any emotion. She pays off the debt Chante accepts the payment and declares her released from his service.

However, during a celebratory drink, Chante hints that for a price, he could share the contact information of the doctor who saved Root with experimental nanites years ago. Yesiko knows Chante is leveraging this information to ensnare her in a new obligation, but is loath to once again be under his thumb. Still, desperate and feeling responsible for the life of her crewmate and surrogate father, Yesiko volunteers that she recently transported an extremely valuable, human-like Aye—intelligence Chante appears unsurprised to hear, suggesting he already knows of the passengers. Chante implies that delivering the Aye would be an act of loyalty worthy of earning the doctor’s name. Yesiko leaves, now bound to betray Chaya to save Root.

Feeling isolated from her friends, Becks decides to open the package from her late uncle Benjamin. Inside are four floppy disks labeled “HOMEBOUND.” She loads the first disk into the Commodore PET and discovers a long letter from him. In the letter, Benjamin expresses his unconditional love for Becks, reveals that the love of his life was a man named Elijah, and explains that the disks contain the start of a text-adventure game he wants her to finish—one he had imagined them writing together, inspired by Willie Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure and their shared memory of playing it. The game, also titled HOMEBOUND, features an astronaut protagonist named California Solo, modeled after Becks and named for a place she wanted to go and Han Solo, the Star Wars character she loved. Deeply moved, Becks feels a renewed connection to her uncle. The letter makes her realize that the Elijah her Bubbe has been talking to must be Benjamin’s partner, on the phone. She asks Bubbe gently about Elijah; Bubbe confirms he talks to her about Benjamin but becomes too distressed to discuss it further. Becks takes her grandmother’s hand as they return to the den together.

This chapter consists of error logs and emails from Dr. Tamar Portman regarding the AmAyes, a series of advanced, humanoid AIs. The logs from 2092 reveal distinct errors across units: One queried about a fictional character it assumed was real, one had a date calibration issue, one incorporated sci-fi movies into a sea-level model, and one conflated its own experiences with those of other AmAyes. To solve these problems, Tamar proposes a “reset-rest” cycle, inspired by natural dormant periods: Every seventh day, the AmAyes will power down to sort and process their memory data. The tests are a success, resolving the reality differentiation issues. However, the researchers become unsettled watching the humanoid AmAyes “dreaming” (172) during their rest cycles. Tamar gains permission to build a separate dormitory for them to rest in. The chapter concludes with a 2097 email in which Tamar invites Solomon to visit her in Alaska, as she has a favor to ask him.

The chapter continues the transcript of Tamar and Chaya’s playthrough of Homebound. 

Lieutenant Solo finds herself in darkness, which her OX suit identifies as a 21st-century Earth environment. Exploring a city street, she encounters an elderly, disoriented woman named Esther at a bus stop. Esther, who assumes Solo in her OX suit is an angel, is anxious about taking a bus to see a past love, Sylvie. As Esther reveals conflicting details about her life and memories, it becomes clear that she is slipping between past and present as a result of dementia. When Esther becomes distressed because she cannot remember Sylvie’s name, Solo gives her a tube of plum-colored lipstick from her inventory. The lipstick jogs Esther’s memory. Just then, Esther’s daughter and granddaughter arrive—the older woman expressing worry, the younger offering to call a cab—and take her home. 

The scene then goes dark, and Solo finds herself back in the cave beneath the Portal stage. She hears someone descending the ladder, and Elijah arrives. Elijah explains that she felt the Portal’s “weight lessened. I felt lighter” (183), confirming that Solo made a choice to restore harmony, but that it was not enough to free the ships. Although her suit battery is low, Solo chooses to enter the Portal again rather than flee to safety. She steps back into the darkness, leaving Elijah to wait for her return.

Chaya continues its narration of its centuries of life. It remembers arriving at a mountain dome-city with a group of refugees led by a man named Yusuf. The refugees are forced to wait outside the gates while the city debates their entry. Chaya, who holds the collective memories of Yusuf’s community, continues to search for clues about the astronaut. A guard whose face bears the faded tattoos of Yusuf’s homeland patrols the midnight-to-dawn shift on the walkway encircling the dome; however, the refugees’ attempts to bond with this guard backfire—he is ashamed of his heritage and unwilling to associate with the marginalized. The city eventually decides to admit only those who can prove their value. At the gate, the guard rejects Yusuf’s skills as an arborist and demands the Aye as payment for entry. Realizing Yusuf would not survive a journey to a different city, Chaya steps forward before Yusuf can turn away, telling him, “We will go with the guard, and you will live.” (188) Yusuf enters the city. The guard seizes Chaya, but his hopes for promotion are not realized as he is ignored by the city’s elite. Chaya marks its new understanding of the cost of shame.