The face of code emerges again to one side of the video memory, which keeps playing the scene of his first birthday party here. (There's even a talking, bright pink pony; she'd loved parties.)

"That people can appear from different points in time is not limited to a scale of a few years around the early twenty-first century. I won't claim we knew each other well, but she was here in her youth for a time. I thought you should know that is a possibility, though one unlikely to repeat itself."