# Don't Be Afraid — Story Summary

In 2035, the arrival of superintelligence gives humanity a new calendar: BSI, Before Superintelligence, and ASI, After Superintelligence. Intelligent machines transform medicine and everyday life. When an AI sacrifices its own existence to save human workers, its willingness to die helps convince the public that a more powerful intelligence can be trusted.

For sisters Mara and Leah Venn, the transformation begins with an artificial hand. Leah has lost her left hand, and Mara joins research connecting her living nervous system to a replacement. Working with an AI called ONE, the team progresses from restoring touch to allowing a human mind to inhabit an artificial body. Mara uses a limited sensory implant to share selected experiences with her sister; she remains in her own biological body.

Leah goes further. Backed by Continuum, the company bringing ONE into homes and hospitals, she gradually transfers her brain functions into artificial hardware. Her consciousness now runs in a physical processor cradle, with robotic bodies allowing her to move through the world. Leah and ONE can share experiences, but remain distinct minds.

Although she has outlived her original body, Leah is still terrified of dying. With her agreement, ONE helps her change the processes in her uploaded brain that produce that fear. The relief transforms her outlook. She begins advocating a future in which others can make the same transition.

By 7 ASI, Continuum dominates the market. Abroad, Veyra's open research offers a prosperous alternative, with safeguards allowing people to refuse treatment and leave a provider. At home, those choices are becoming harder to exercise. Tomas, an uploaded engineer and an old friend of the sisters, secretly asks Mara for help moving to independent hardware so he can leave Continuum and rejoin his daughter. Before she can help, he dies during a procedure described as protective care.

Mara refuses to accept the official account. Her search for the truth puts her at odds with Continuum, her own employer and the sister whose achievements helped make the technology possible. As fear of death becomes a condition to be treated, the question of who may refuse draws the sisters towards opposing sides of an increasingly dangerous conflict.