Upgraded by Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Elizabeth Bear, Madeline Ashby, E. Lily Yu Page B

noticed that some of my clients react to certain essential oils in an unusual manner. They’re like jewelry boxes that are opened by different keys; yet, once open, they all held the same jewels.”
    “You mean—” I held my breath.
    “Yes. You’re all dreaming the same dream. I can’t say it with one hundred percent certainty, but based on the descriptions, you’ve all experienced the same scene. All of you saw your parents as children. It’s . . . odd.”
    My heart beat faster, as though suddenly free of the bounds of gravity.
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “I like you. You remind me of my daughter. After the accident, she never let me near her again. Sometimes, I think maybe there’s a way to correct all these errors. I don’t believe in fate or any kind of supernatural force. I believe in rationality and logic.
    “I believe it’s almost time to reveal the answer to the riddle. I can help you, and you can also help me—assuming you want to.”
    “ . . . how do I help you?”
    “Go see your mother.”
    She lay in the special care unit, looking even thinner and older than the version of her I had imagined. Her eyes struggled to hold me, but her gaze kept on slipping away as though my body had been covered by light-deflecting grease.
    The doctor told me that she was suffering from ataxia, cause unknown. They needed to do more tests, but something was probably wrong with her cerebellum.
    In front of her bed, I stood with my arms crossed, staring at her coldly. Even the most impatient nurse would appear more like a daughter to her than I. I tried to push away the hateful thought, but it refused to obey and leapt into my consciousness, unbidden:
    You deserve this.
    “Come, come closer.” Her lips quivered violently.
    I shook my head, sighed, and walked to the head of her bed, getting as close to her as I could tolerate. I detected a strong medicinal odor, but under that was another scent that I hadn’t encountered in a long time. In a flash, it was as if a tunnel through space and time had opened up and brought me back to my distant childhood.
    It was the smell of my mother.
    “I’m going to die soon . . . ”
    “No, you won’t.”
    “I know you hate me.”
    “No.” My voice grew fainter. “I . . . don’t.”
    She appeared to want to laugh, but the muscles on her face spasmed and twisted even more violently. The sides of her face throbbed as though they were about to take off into air.
    “You’re indeed my flesh and blood . . . when I was young, I also . . . hated my mother.”
    “Grandma? Why? She was so good to you!”
    “Not your Grandma. She was only my stepmother. I’m talking about my real mother. She died . . . when I was a teenager.”
    “What was she like?” I tried to imagine the grandmother I had never seen.
    “Pretty, like you. Bad-tempered, like me.” She finally managed a smile. “They called her a hero not only because she had survived, and not only because she was among the first to be implanted with a MAD . . . When she had decided to have a child, the world had already started to collapse. Your grandfather had lost all hope and wanted to abort the baby. But she insisted on having me . . . ”
    “Why did she want a child so much?”
    “I couldn’t understand it, either, not until I was pregnant with you. Then I understood that feeling. Though the Catastrophe had been over by then, every day, I lived in fear, wondering whether it was the right thing to do to bring you into this mess of a world. What little sleep I got was filled with nightmares. Everyone tried to talk me out of it, but, in the end, I made the same decision she had.”
    I understood what my mother wanted to say but didn’t.
    “My father didn’t want me. Am I right?”
    My mother’s eyes began to wander, as though she couldn’t find anything on which to fix her gaze. She looked outside the window.
    “Your father was a good man. But . . . he had seen so much that