Water is one example of luxuries in the novel. Gaea teaches people that a reasonable amount of water is a luxury to control them. Another luxury is fabrics. When Gaea takes over Yiso’s ship, the Gaeans use Yiso’s “luxury fabrics” to mend uniforms (28). Clothes are purely functional on Gaea and are identical except for the insignia that signify rank. Having different outfits in a variety of colors is excessive, in Gaea’s fascist teachings.

Kyr takes the ideology of excess and waste to an extreme in the first universe. She thinks about “the wastefulness of” music because the resources used to play it are limited (61). She condemns Avi’s agoge simulation with orcs as a “waste of station resources” because orcs aren’t real (66); the simulation isn’t training for any real scenario.

When she gets to Chrysothemis, Kyr sees a wealthier society than she’s ever seen. She notices the “paper, of all the luxuries” (150), in Ursa’s apartment. She has been taught that “[a]ll the riches and beauty of Chrysothemis [a]re a distraction, a seductive and treacherous lie” (157). However, the concept of excess and waste are just distractions used by the fascists to keep their people docile and obedient.

Any flowers that aren’t part of edible plants are treated on Gaea as another wasteful luxury. Kyr mentally complains about the flowers in Avi’s garden simulation for Mags: “nothing useful, nothing edible. Just color” (70). The colors of the flowers are connected to the colors of Yiso’s fabric. They represent beauty and aesthetics. Jole’s version of fascism wants a colorless world and people unconcerned with beauty. However, Kyr eventually feels a sense of calm in the clifftop-garden simulation.

This sense of calm returns later, and the garden becomes purely symbolic. Kyr “still fe[els] the calm of the clifftop garden. It [i]s as if the pocket universe [i]s inside her” (432). She internalizes the peace of the garden when Yiso can no longer sustain the pocket universe. The flowers represent how she is willing to die to save her loved ones, but finally for the right reasons: getting her loved ones out of Gaea Station.