Reuleaux's Portal

Book excerpt: Some things about the world appear to be different, but that’s only to be expected when one has been away for a hundred years or so. Coppélia’s robotic memory is supposed to be infallible but the additional differences she perceives are so slight that she dismisses them as within reasonable limits of variance. ​Today is the most important day since her return, as she has been asked to receive a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her late friend, Karen Chambers, for her tireless work in integrating sophonts into society. The android takes the stage at the Oslo City Hall. ​In this third and final instalment of the Sophont trilogy, Karen’s granddaughter, Holly Bryson, also notices discrepancies between Coppélia’s anecdotal stories and the visual records that form part of her grandmother’s memoirs, but the inconsistencies she notices are not so easy to dismiss. The burning question at the fore of Holly’s mind is whether or not the android onstage is the same android that was her grandmother’s best friend. ​To find the answer to that question, Holly finds herself on a journey that, as yet, only exists in astrophysicist’s minds and calculations.