“Do you want something to drink?” Mother asked. She sounded relaxed.

“No, thanks.” I looked around the rooftop terrace. She’d taken us straight up here with a qi-powered elevator tucked away near the palace’s side entrance.

It offered a great view over the mountains and the areas beyond. I stepped closer to the balustrade and looked down on the city spread out below the palace. Many lights blinked up at me. It spread far, and some buildings towered above their surroundings like skyscrapers, but in the end it couldn’t compare to a city like New York. There were more gardens, though, and great care had obviously been taken with the planning. There was a lot of bright paint, decorative statues and artistic baubles. I’d never seen a more beautiful city, in person or otherwise.

“So, how far can you see, or sense?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised she knew about my cultivation, but I was curious.

“A lot,” Mother replied, leaning on the balustrade beside me. “Everything in the palace and the city is easy. The surrounding area, too.”

I nodded, impressed but not surprised. From what I’d read, eighth-stage cultivators might as well be gods in this world.

“Ling Ta said I need to reach the eighth stage in a hundred years.” I put my chin on my hand and gazed out at the city. “That’s quite the deadline you’ve set.”

“I know, but I do what I must. You might still remain my heir if you don’t meet it, if you’ve impressed me, and the people, enough.”

“And if I don’t?”

She hesitated for a moment, and I turned to look at her. “I won’t have you ‘eliminated’. In fact, I’ll do my best to shield you. But this world is not kind to those it deems failures.”

I snorted. “Even on Earth, disgraced royalty had a low life expectancy. Especially a former heir.”

“Yes. It’s worse here. I’m sorry. You might be my daughter, but I need to do what’s best for my people, and I can’t have an unfit heir.”

“I understand.” I stared back out at the scenery, not really seeing it.

A century sounded like a long time, but it wasn’t. Very few people ever reached the peak of cultivation. I had to, and if I didn’t, I’d probably be killed. A good thing I have this special ability. I’ll need it. And the worst thing is, I can’t really blame her. Of course I need to prove myself if I’m to inherit the responsibility for an Empire. And it’s not like I could resign, I’ll always be her firstborn child.

“I just wish I could go back,” I said.

“Do you want to tell me about your life?” Mother asked quietly. When I turned around, she calmly met my gaze, waiting.

“There isn’t much to tell, really.” I ran a hand through my hair absently. “I was twenty-two, single, just starting my Master’s in Cognitive Science. My parents are academics, and I have a younger brother.” I reminded myself to use the past tense. It still didn’t quite feel real that it was over, but I pushed that thought away and kept talking. “I don’t know how I died. Probably a traffic accident. I could have had the bad luck of being in a shooting or something, but that seems very unlikely. Plus, I was almost always at home, considering the situation.”

Here, I paused, a thought occurring to me. “Oh, you don’t know about that.”

“About what?”

I shook my head. Are you going to get a shock when I tell you about Covid-19. But maybe later. I didn’t want to be insensitive if she was somehow affected. “It’s not important now. Anyway, what about you?”

She watched me for a moment, then nodded slightly. “I was your average upper-middle class white woman from the US east coast. Divorced, no children, a career that was just starting to really take off. Politically interested. I was concerned about climate change, discrimination and filter bubbles.”

“Yeah, me too.” I sighed. “I was never politically active, though. Apart from that, I was a bit of a nerd. I love fantasy and science-fiction. Hopefully, that will come in handy now.”

“Probably.” Mother smiled. “I had a casual interest in fantasy books and the like, and now I’m extremely grateful for that. I just wish I remembered more about science and technology.”

I nodded in agreement, thinking about that. I hadn’t made many plans for the future so far, just trying to learn as much as I could about my new world. But now I realized that while that was still the priority, I had some serious thinking to do. Just … not about home.

“I died from my injuries after a traffic accident,” Mother continued. “Then I woke up here.”

I thought back to what I’d read. “You were really old for a soul journey, weren’t you?”

“It started on my one hundredth birthday. Most people thought it would never happen. Of course, by that point I was almost at the eighth stage, so biologically I wasn’t very old. Then I reached it and my mother died shortly after.” Mother stared into space for a moment, then shook her head. “I was always going to be Empress, but I think I’m doing a good job. I’ve instituted a few laws to protect the common people. Our equivalent of civil rights.”

“That’s great.”

We fell into a thoughtful silence. I couldn’t imagine how things would be like if I did remember my life here, if it was really mine. Probably a lot easier. And now, for the first time, I realized how important a position I’d been given, how much impact I potentially had. It was both exciting and disquieting, because I wasn’t sure how I’d live up to my morals here. Since they were going to be rather demanding. But I need to gather information first and plan what my goals are and how I’m going to act. While still progressing my cultivation quickly.

“Now that you’ve settled in a little, it’s time for you to contribute,” Mother finally said. “At least a bit, besides your training.”

“Contribute how?”

“Several ways. Most importantly, you need to document what you can. I know you’re still reading the records, but you need to start adding to them. Earth is advanced, more than most worlds we know about, and we need your contribution, especially when it comes to scientific understanding.”

“Of course. I’ll do what I can. I’ve been writing some things up already. Shame the perfect memory doesn’t cover life on Earth.”

“That would be too easy,” Mother said with a light grin. “But I’m sure you can help anyway. I’ll need it. Hell, I tried to get a computer made for a while, but it didn’t work out. Even though I invited some of the best engineers in the country.”

I scratched my temple, thinking about that. “Build a computer. I think that’s doable. Not that I know how they’re built, but I do know a bit about the concepts. I can at least get people started with some theory, Turing machines and such. Logic gates. I mean, you could build a computer out of switches. But it’s going to need a lot of development, and honestly … I don’t know if it’s a good idea to make something like that public.”

“I’m going to be very careful. And there’s no hurry. Qi-powered technology works just fine for almost everything.”

That’s an interesting thought. I guess qi-powered magitech just isn’t as detailed. Because you can power it easily and make it accomplish effects without really understanding them, so long as the enchanter is good. And I bet it’s a pain to mass-produce. Not like factory machines could infuse qi into things. But magitech would be available enough that a technological revolution can’t take off.

I was ripped from my thoughts when Mother snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Inaris. Well, not Earth. But stop thinking so much.”

I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“It’s considered rude to ignore your mother, you know. Especially when she’s your empress.”

I bowed with a flourish. “Please accept this unworthy one’s most sincere apologies, Your Majesty.”

Mother chuckled. “No, I don’t. Now straighten up.”

I did, secretly relieved she took all of this in good humor. Even though I felt like I knew her, I didn’t really, after all.

“How do people handle this?” I blurted out. “In the clan. The whole transmigration. When your loved ones could just come back changed, and you yourself lived two lives.”

She didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she turned around and started manipulating some of the qi around us while she answered. “It differs a lot. Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t talked to any of them yet. Most seek out each other’s companionship and help. Of course, they remember something of their lives, and thus their loved ones. There’s already a bond, and trust, which probably helps. You’re really unlucky in that regard.”

I watched her in silence for a moment. She spun several threads of light qi at once in an intricate pattern that I could have no hope of matching, interspersed with a few dark threads. Then she started drawing runic characters with threads of light.

Finally, she sighed and continued. “Many in the clan have their kids basically raised by servants. That way, it doesn’t hurt so much if they’re the unlucky ones who don’t remember much, or if the values of their old lives are too prominent. That wasn’t really an option for me. The children themselves typically aren’t told much for a long time. And before you say anything, Al is an exception.”

I closed my mouth on the question I’d just been about to ask.

Finally, she finished her work. A screen of light solidified, then split into several ones, hovering at the right level to be easily readable. Pictures started appearing on them, then moving.

“Wow. You’ve made screens and cameras?”

Mother smiled. “It’s only a technique, I haven’t quite managed to put it into permanent objects. But here, look.”

She focused on what I realized was a viewpoint showing the castle from above. Then she panned it around, zooming out to show me where we stood in relation to the city. After that, she zoomed back in, until the camera’s view passed through a window that glittered with enchantments and into a library tucked away in a tower. There, she sought a heavy leather-bound book. Then the screen flickered for a moment before written pages were displayed on it. Obviously, their content.

Fascinated, I leaned closer. The pages were obviously hand-written. Actually, there were a variety of languages and alphabets, often accompanied by Common Imperial text.

“Some of our more sensitive records,” Mother explained. Then she snapped her fingers and the screen vanished. The rest of them still hovered around, showing various locations or following people, but I couldn’t get a good look.

“What would you call a surveillance system using only pinhole cameras without film, Nari?”

“Epic fail.”

Mother laughed at that, longer than I thought it really deserved. “Thanks, I needed that,” she finally said. “Some of the ideas brought back by members of our family are, as you can see, a little impractical.”

“I get that. I guess in this world, sufficiently advanced technology is easily distinguishable from magic. One works.”

Mother chuckled again. “I thought you liked technology?”

“Sure, but I love science. It’s true whether or not you believe in it. I just hope magic doesn’t require belief, or I’ll be stuck in an endless feedback loop trying to reason about what I believe in. If that happens, please use a time-machine.”

“How long are you going to crack jokes?”

“A while.” I smiled and gestured around. Forcing humor was a good way to deal with sadness. Or pressure, like the threat of probable death for failure. “Any well-known quote or meme from Earth is now an in-joke for us. Maybe that’s what they call memetic mutation. Ours are the quotes.”

Mother groaned. “Just stop.” Then she shook her head and smiled. “Well, at least you’re not as bad as Al saying ‘winter is coming’ out of context. Like on the spring equinox.”

I grinned. “Well, I hope you replied with ‘You know nothing’.”

“Maybe if you’re there, from now on I will.”