The red-haired doctor — well, veterinarian, for another year — paced the floor nervously. She was glad she wasn’t in the living room; the family members were nervous enough already. She’d just make it worse.

“Brinn, will you settle down?” The small voice came from her pocket. “It went perfectly. You know it did.”

Brinn stopped, and reached into her lab coat, and plucked out the man who had been sitting in it. He was wearing a coat identical to hers. She gave him a wan smile, and sighed.

“But what if it didn’t?” she said. “Human brains are so touchy. It’s not the cells being so small, it’s that they’re packed so densely, it’s so much gray matter, and the white matter is so tight you can barely see where one neuron stops and another starts….”

Nick shook his head. “Brinn, for heaven’s sake, it’s fine. The occipital mesh is reading well within tolerance, the silica pathways into the lateral geniculate nucleus are online, diagonstics are already demonstrating VEP, and the brain itself is showing the precise activity pattern one would expect in a sedated human. It couldn’t have gone better.”

“It could have,” Brinn said. “I’m still not a doctor — I still have so much to learn…I mean, this shouldn’t be difficult, in theory, I’ve done it in Titans under observation, but….”

“But nothing,” Nick said, stroking the hand of his friend, his partner, his wife.

“There are better doctors out there,” Brinn said.

“I appreciate the compliment,” Nick said with a grin. “But in all seriousness — Brinn, none of us would have trusted anyone else. Including her.”

“That’s true,” a small voice said from a bed on an elevated table in the center of the holosuite. Nick and Brinn turned toward the sound, and both smiled worriedly at their friend, their partner, their wife.”

“Right on schedule,” Nick said. “Brinn?”

“Right,” Brinn said, setting Nick down. “I’ll be right back, Sophia.”

“Gonna come down to my level?” Sophia said with a weary grin.

Brinn kissed her finger and stroked Sophia’s stomach. “Yup,” she said. “Be right there.”

Brinn walked out of the holosuite, as Nick sat down next to Sophia. “So,” he said, “feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Sophia said. “Just like I had a bit of a nap.”

“Titan anasthesia is amazing,” Nick said. “Remind me to bore you with an explanation of it sometime.”

“I will,” Sophia said. “The surgery went well?”

“We think so, but we’ve got some things to check,” Nick said, stroking Sophia’s forehead. There was a slight flicker, and Brinn reappeared at a scale where she could give Sophia a more thorough examination.

“All right,” Brinn said, looking over the vitals. “Nick, hold Sophia’s hand.”

“Do I need to do strength tests?” Sophia asked.

“No, just love you, and I can’t hold your hand while I’m doing this,” Brinn said, walking over to a console. She shook her head in wonder. This was expensive tech in the Titan world, but not unduly so. Reconfiguring it for humans had cost over six million credits. All of them had told Pryvani she didn’t have to fund it, but Pryvani had said it was a debt she owed, and a debt she had to pay.

“All right,” Brinn said. “This will sound strange, but it might seem a bit bright.”

Sophia winced as Brinn hit a switch. But she followed that wince with a smile. “That…did you show me a picute of the sun?”

“No, just bringing the system online. All right, tell me what colors you see.”

“Black,” Sophia said, then gasped. “Red….now blue…green…purple…yellow…orange….and now…it’s a spectrum…red on the left, blue to the right.”

“Very good,” Brinn said, looking at Nick, who grinned back at her. “Now, you should see a sphere….”

“Yes…it’s a bit egg-shaped.”

“Narrow at the top and bottom?” Brinn said.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said, hitting a couple keys. “Let me know when it’s a perfect sphere.”

They went on like this for a good hour, testing and refining the optical matrix. Neither Nick nor Brinn said it, but they both knew the biggest hurdle was already cleared. Still, there was more than a little trepidation when Brinn said, “All right. We’re ready.”

“No, we aren’t,” Sophia said.

“Huh?”

“I know it won’t be perfect, not right away,” Sophia said. “But I want everyone here.”

Brinn smiled at that. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a minute.” She kissed Sophia carefully on the lips; a kiss Sophia reacted to with a grin.

Brinn walked out of holosuite two and into the waiting area, where her other husband, her other wife, and their children waited. Joseph was camped out on the floor, quietly playing with some blocks. Manto was toddling, walking a tightrope along Zara’s clavicle while Taron spotted her. When Brinn arrived, Taron gently scooped up the little girl, and Zara stood and lifted their son into her arms. They both turned to Brinn.

“She’s ready,” Brinn said. “She wants all of us there when we turn it on.”

“Good,” Zara said. “Because we were about to break in, you know.”

“No, you weren’t,” Brinn said with a grin.

“We weren’t, but we were tempted,” Taron said, rising. “Want to go see Mamophia?” he said to Manto.

“Mamophia wake?”

“Yup, Mamophia’s awake!”

Manto grinned and laughed, and tried to run across her father’s palm, causing Taron to sigh and cup it. “We’ve got to get to her first, baby girl!” he said with a laugh; she was so excited. She loved her mommy Sophia so very much.

Well, they all did, really.

Presently, they were all in holosuite one, with Manto champing at the bit to get down to her mom’s bedside. Joseph was too young to really understand what was going on, but he watched from Zara’s arms with his violet colored eyes wide with curiosity. Brinn was clucking nervously at the Titan-sized controls while Nick sat at Sophia’s side. “All right,” Brinn said. “Here goes nothing.”

She hit two keys, and the optical implants lit up in a soft violet. Sophia blinked, and looked around. She smiled as she saw Nick at her left, smiled at Brinn, and Zara with little Joseph, and then Taron. They were not crystal clear, not yet — there would still be fine-tuning, probably for months, but she could see them, and….

Her thoughts stopped as she saw a small figure trying to make her way over the top of her Titan husband’s fingers, a mop of messy dark hair crowning her head.

“Manna?” she gasped. “Taron…is….”

Taron smiled, and set the little girl down on the table. She ran to Sophia’s side and jumped into the bed, then crawled up and hugged her human mother.

Sophia looked down at her daughter, seeing her as she was for the first time, and blinked back the tears. She carefully bent down and kissed the top of Manto’s head, and sighed with contentment.

“Told ya, Brinn,” Nick said with a smile. “Perfect.”

“It is,” Sophia said, looking around at her family. “It really is.”