"Your brain has been worked on a lot." He thumbed through digital displays she couldn't quite make out because they were inverted for her.
She ran her hand over her hair--what was left of the formal pinned up hairstyle she'd had, what, a day ago? How so much could change in a day. "You said that before."
"More scans show more details."
"And what do your details say? That I am missing some files?"
"In a way. Your brain has been altered."
She raised her eyebrow. She didn't like the direction this was going. What did he mean, altered? How so? He piqued her curiosity, and not in a good way. "So I'm not the same person I was?"
"I do not know. Only that your memories have been medically adjusted."
She rubbed her head and sort of giggled. Because she realized what he was looking at now. And it wasn't nearly what he thought. "Well, not hard to believe, since I can't remember much before my mom died. It was too painful for me as a kid, so they wiped many of my memories."
"Is that standard practice for the Terran Empire?"
"Not typically, no. It is considered a last resort if a person has a need. But the process can be done to wipe trauma from patients. Some people do not handle trauma well, so they have it removed."
"Handy trick," Jedriek said.
She shrugged. "I was never a fan of the idea. One of my big charities was against removing memories of the self. Even trauma. Since I have had the same procedure done to me, I can speak about what it does to the mind when those thoughts are removed. It can seem like a great idea at the time. Remove the trauma, the pain, and life goes on. But it doesn't. It becomes a kind of void where there should be emotions, and it can be difficult to refill them."
"Do you still have this hole?"
"In a way, yes. I'll always miss my mother and my memories of her. I have other people's stories of her and what I've seen in holograms and such. When I was a toddler at the Terran Summit, there's this famous footage of me where I just started picking the flowers off my mother's dress and giving them to all the dignitaries. Prancing around like I had not a care in the world. I probably didn't. I was just a child."
"Was your mother angry?"
"No. She thought it was hilarious. Supposedly, Caoimhe told me that my father was furious that I wasn't a perfectly still little girl like I was supposed to be. But my mother didn't care. She used to say that I saved the Summit that year."
"Do you remember that?"
"No. Just what others tell me."
"Does that make you sad?"
"I stopped crying over my lost memories a long time ago. Now I just fight to have the procedure removed from medical facilities in the Terran Empire. I hope to have it removed from all Galactic Alliance worlds someday. May take my whole life to get there, though."
"It is a noble goal. You would shine for that."
She smiled. "Shine?"
"It is like an honor. To have your shine means you are doing well. You follow protocol and appreciate Master System."
"Can you lose your shine?"
"Yes. One can be Tarnished. We have a Tarnished member of our squad."
"How did he become Tarnished?"
"In short, he did not follow protocol, and we wound up losing several Rhimodians that day because of his choices."
"Oh no," she said. She didn't want to imagine what that kind of guilt felt like and then to lose his shine as well. If it was like having honor, she could only imagine what it would do to society. "Does everyone have shine?"
"We all have it. It is understood that we have shine until one loses it."
"And it was in war that your teammate lost his shine?"
