Pei thought about her mother, Seri. She’d never met her, but she carried her genes and her name, and knew her story well. Unlike her creche siblings, Pei had no biological relation to any of her fathers at the Tem creche; she’d been raised by them, not made by them. Seri, the story went, had been a soldier on deployment when she’d started to shimmer. Typically, soldiers entering shimmer were shipped out of combat immediately, but Seri was the commander, and the situation was one of those where she just couldn’t. So, she’d engaged in what translated as wild fathering. One of Seri’s comrades, a
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