2021/041: The Outside -- Ada Hoffmann

2021/041: The Outside -- Ada Hoffmann

She remembered dimly what it was like to be Ev. Constantly seeing and feeling the Truth. Constantly punished for saying so. Shocked, slapped, drugged, trained like a dog until she denied her own reality at every opportunity. Because what she naturally saw and felt, what she couldn’t have escaped from if she tried, was a heresy. [p. 323]

Yasira Shien is a scientific prodigy, working on a new type of reactor that will free the Pride of Jai space station from reliance on technology provided by the AI Gods. Yasira has a horrible feeling that something's going to go wrong, but she can't articulate it. She's anxious that, after all, she didn't understand everything her mentor, the vanished Dr Talirr, tried to teach her. ( minor spoilers for first part )