<blockquote>When the reconstruction is finished, her body has no face, only the smooth mechanized visor embedded in her skull that displays readouts and commands. She is now, and will forever be, the spaceship Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn.
She is contained within three-dimensional space and the hardened matter of her hull and engines, yet she recalls that glorious first flight of mind like a grainy analogue recording. Her former body is human and is now installed in the pilot’s chair.
(She almost remembers the eyes of her mother—gray like comet dust—until her programming gains full processing speed and there is only the ship.)
She is the ship, and the ship is all.</blockquote>
