How High We Go in the Dark

The narrator, a world builder, takes her daughter, Nuri, to the seed field where she’s responsible for designing Earth. These seed fields grow advanced civilizations, and the narrator gives Nuri a probability scope to study Earth’s potential. However, Nuri is heartbroken when she realizes that her mother must leave to accompany Earth and monitor its development. She lands on Earth as the ancestor to a starfish, waiting eons for evolution to pass. In the prehistoric oceans, she reflects on having to leave Nuri but knows it was out of her control.

The narrator reincarnates as a Neanderthal and helps early humans learn to survive. However, when their daughter is born, the narrator realizes that her strange genetics caused a mutation that makes her daughter glow. By the time the child is eight, a virus has mutated in her, infecting the whole tribe with an extraterrestrial illness. The narrator leaves when they’ve all died, revealing that the child is Annie from Chapter 1, “30,000 Beneath a Eulogy.” The narrator then lives alone for centuries, punishing herself for having done harm. She eventually reincarnates to help the Sumerians, teaching them advancements such as fishing and irrigation. She misses Nuri and mourns her dead daughter.