Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma by R. S. A. Garcia (Clarkesworld #172, January 2021)1 is set in the same series as the recently reviewed Sun from Both Sides (Clarkesworld #152, May 2019), features the same two characters, Eva and Dee, and takes place before, during, and after that story.
This one starts with a rather confusing prologue where Brother-Adita, Sister-Marcus and an Admiral track down a “shell” (a robot cum AI, I presume) and—when they unexpectedly find it is still active—the Admiral throws the other two out of the cave and brings the roof down on himself and the shell.
The rest of the story consists of three interwoven narrative threads titled “Now”, “Then”, and “Before”. The “Now” thread opens with Eva and Dee at home talking—or rather signing (again, for some reason, they mostly communicate this way even though they can speak and hear)—about a goat they have bought before it is suddenly turned into gore. Dee realises that one of Sister’s drones has tried to kill Eva (Sister is Eva’s AI twin), and the rest of this passage turns into a combat chase with Eva ending up partially injured and hiding on a riverbank. Dee eventually manages to save her, while Sister—who realises she has been hacked—shuts herself down.
After the couple get back to their house, Eva gets a message from her daughter on Kairi and find outs (after they travel to make a secure call now that Sister is disabled) that there has been a Consortium attack on Eva’s people, the Kairi Protectorate, and seven people have been killed. They also learn that this was accomplished by hacking into Sister and using her “kinnec”, a communication system.
The rest of this thread sees Eva travel home to learn that the Consortium has discovered that she destroyed one of their ship AIs (this event is described in the Sun from Both Sides) and that their attack was retaliation. Eva also ends up in a political fight with the rulers of the Protectorate about what should happen to Sister (Eva opposes their plans to reboot her as it is apparently equivalent to death, and something that has already happened to Sister before).
The second thread, “Then”, begins (confusingly as this opens immediately after Sister’s attack in the previous thread) with Eva in a crashed, partially submerged ship (Sister) with someone cutting her out. We later discover that person is Dee, and that this is how the pair met. The rest of this thread mostly focuses on her recovery and their developing relationship. Eva eventually learns (during a long heart-to-heart) that Dee is an exiled Grand Master of Valencia, while Dee learns she is a Primarch of the Kairi Protectorate.
The third “Before” thread is chronologically the earliest of them all, and recounts a previous battle with the Consortium at the Cuffie Protectorate which ended with Sister damaged and Eva executing a (spoiler) “Nightfall Protocol” that wipes Sister and kills a lot of the Consortium AIs.
These three threads eventually merge together as we see, among other things: Eva getting a dispensation to marry Dee; Eva mind-merging with Sister to sort out the virus problem; Eva vetoing war at the Kairi Parliament and opening negotiations with the Consortium; and the repatriation by the Consortium of the minds of the children they kidnapped. One these minds, Xandar, joins Sister in her ship at the end of the story after the AI has been cleared of the virus. Eva and Dee now have a kid.
I didn’t enjoy this story as much as Sun from Both Sides for several reasons: first, there is far too much plot here (see above), which makes it hard to keep up with what is going on—something compounded by having three stories running in different time periods; second, some of the description is unclear (e.g. the opening passage); third, there is no real climax to the story, but what feels like a series of negotiations instead; fourth, some parts of the story feel padded (the family get-togethers and the Eva getting to know Dee scenes dragged on and, while I’m talking about family matters, I’d suggest you don’t have far-future children call their mothers “Mom”, as that colloquialism catapulted this non-American reader right out of the story—as did a later “asshole”); fifth, the sign language is presented as italic text, which makes for a lot of tiring reading (and can also cause difficulties for those with dyslexia); sixth, and following on from the latter, if you are using masses of italics for speech why wouldn’t you use a bold typeface for the Now/Then/Before chapter headings and perhaps number and/or date them? Readers would then have a better idea of where they are in the chronology of events. I’d also add, with respect to chapter headings, that the “Philia”, “Eros”, “Storge”, “Agápe”, and “Pragma” ones seemed completely irrelevant to the story. I still don’t know how they fit in.
So, in conclusion, too (unnecessarily) complicated, too unclear (in places), and probably too long as well. This wasn’t bad but it was a bit of headscratcher and/or slog at times.
** (Average). 21,000 words. Story link.
1. This is a finalist for the 2022 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.