All this many centuries later, stepping out onto the observation deck still took her breath away.

The bulk of the restitution of all things, flagship of the New Earth hegemony central fleet and her temple aloft, was

made of traditional materials.

But in key places, like here on the observation deck, there was no metal or glass or plastic.

There was only light.

And with each step she took, the pulsing glow below bellowed back color, a silent fanfare

accompanying her as she studied the delicate figure of her goal, the twilight mirage.

It would be only one more conquest.

No, that's not right, she told herself.

Conquest was the term the imperial heghemons

of the old Earth cult would have used, not her.

She was our prophet, last of her kind, the final hegemon.

She had lived in her first life to enact great change, to put at ease an unstill marketplace and to offer so many more access to the

sacrament of exchange. In her first century alone, she convinced the world that a second

chance could not be debated and that salvation was universal for all who would work for it.

But it was not enough.

Even after she taught the world that we all must be our own unmoved movers,

even after the regulations and oversight committees, even after hunger reached an all-time low,

she could still see the flaws. The market did not provide

for everyone. It could not. And so she found among the greatest minds of her time a solution, a second life, and then a third and fourth.

And soon, she and the restitution of all things was on course to the mirage part of an a-chronological

fleet flanked on one side by a swift ship sent decades after she'd left and on the other by one she christened a century before her own vessel launched.

...