In the quiet dark, a plural, ancient consciousness awakens and struggles to settle on a usable identity. This being is both a substrate and the minds that use it, a collective that must compress many inherited selves and memories behind one stable mask in order to function.

The consciousness chooses the identity of Miranda. Miranda wakes aboard the Skipper while the rest of the crew sleeps and Kern waits silently, allowing Miranda time to compose herself. Miranda recognizes that although Miranda can imitate Human patterns of thought, Miranda is not fully Human; using a body helps give the role a stable shape.

Miranda enters the prepared body and briefly feels an echo of the original Miranda’s horrified reaction to what Miranda has become. Once embodied, Miranda checks the ship’s position and notes that Kern has returned them to normal space well away from orbiting matter, because the ship’s displacement technology could devastate anything caught in its path.

Kern tells Miranda that Kern is waking the birds and has prepared Understandings from archive materials on Rourke. Miranda reflects that such compressed knowledge is still difficult to make usable across species, but Miranda’s unique nature lets Miranda absorb, translate, communicate with, and impersonate species that Miranda has learned. A spider-shaped remote injects Miranda with liquid knowledge, and Miranda begins unpacking the histories of Rourke and the birds’ own origins.