Amara had built the glasses she was about to put on.
She knew every component. The EEG mesh—sixteen electrodes positioned to read specific neural regions. The AR overlay system, modified for direct cortical feedback. The wireless link to ARCHIE, bandwidth optimized for navigation data rates. She had designed it, fabricated it, calibrated it for each team member's neural baseline.
Now she was going to use it on herself, and for the first time, she wasn't certain what her own creation would do.
"You understand the engineering better than anyone," David said.
"I understand the hardware. The interface specifications." Amara turned the glasses in her hands. "I don't understand what happens on the other side."
"You built a door," Susan said. She and Margaret wore their glasses, perceiving layers Amara couldn't yet see. "You don't have to understand what's on the other side to walk through it."
"Engineers like to understand what's on the other side before they walk through doors. It's how we avoid catastrophic failures."
Margaret laughed. "Amara, you've been working with ARCHIE for months. You watched it evolve from a translation algorithm into whatever it is now. You've already walked through doors you didn't fully understand."
That was true. She thought about the nights in the engineering bay, studying ARCHIE's self-modifications, trying to reverse-engineer changes that violated her original architecture. She had built ARCHIE to translate crystal…
