“I am a legally authorized message from the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project, a project that needs your help.”

“Genie! Spam!” she shouted as the image disappeared. “Oh! Oooooo! Genie, contact Edmund, use an avatar, tell him his image has been hacked. And tell my sister, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the personal program replied. “I asked if it was an avatar of Edmund Talbot and it said it was.”

“But it had to tell me the truth,” she said. “I’ve asked Sheida when they are going to fix that, but she keeps telling me there aren’t enough votes in the Council.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the genie replied. “Both will be informed.”

“Okay,” Daneh sighed. “Never mind; I can’t think anymore today anyway. Home, genie.”

* * *

Edmund Talbot looked up from the inlay he was applying with painstaking care as his butler projection made the sound of a throat clearing.

“Master Edmund, there is an avatar at the door to see you.”

The projection was dressed in thirteenth-century court dress of the Frankish kingdoms, its surcoat of wool and silk marked with a blazon of red and silver, argent upon gules, a human head, erased. With its fully human appearance and placed beside the antique tools, armor and weaponry arraying the room, the projection did not look outlandish in the least. It looked like a standard medieval flunky, not a cloud of nannites dressed in silk, wool and linen.

There was, in fact, no sign of advanced technology anywhere in the cluttered workshop. The grinding wheel was foot powered, the forge at the end was pumped with hand bellows, the barrels that held sword blanks and bar steel were of local oak and the materials were all natural with the appearance of having been handmade. The sun was setting, leaving the shop in a chiaroscuro of shadows and golden light, but the sole lighting source was a glass-shaded tallow dip.