Cordelia had left one planet a married woman and arrived on the next a widow.

Angela’s sickness started partway through their interstellar trip and worsened quickly. Nothing the ship’s physician did helped. Cordelia had held Angela’s hand, looked into her blue eyes and told her she’d be fine. They still had their dream to work toward. Cordelia couldn’t save the galaxy on her own.

That was two days ago. Cordelia finished the trip with her wife’s corpse.

“What makes you convinced Ms. Dresden was murdered?” Detective Glastone’s question brought Cordelia to the present, to this miserable little side room of the spaceport.

“You need to ask? Angela—” She swallowed the crack in her voice. She would not show weakness to this man. “People as young and healthy as Angela don’t suddenly die.”

The detective flipped through the notes he’d taken, then clicked his pen to retract it. Quaint to use pen and paper. And unreliable. Humans were faulty, they misheard and misinterpreted. Cordelia hoped he had cybernetics recording the conversation, but the clicky pen made her doubt even that level of competence.

“Off the record, Ms. Isoto, did your wife... take anything? Recreationally?”

That upset her more than the pen did. “Do you know who my wife—” swallow “who my wife was? We couldn’t run our company while on drugs.”

“It’s my job to examine all potential angles. Drug use will show in the panel. There’s no shame in it, but if you’re concerned, I can make sure nothing gets to the press.”

“My wife didn’t die of an overdose,” Cordelia spoke through clenched teeth. “She was murdered and I expect you to address this with the severity it’s due.”

***

CEO of virtual intelligence developer dead under mysterious circumstances. The headlines were more than Cordelia could bear. She turned everything off.

Cordelia ate alone, slept alone, and only read messages her VI assistant flagged as important. She hadn’t left the house. The mailbox outside was overfull with condolence cards from people she didn’t care about. Angela was the only person whose opinion mattered to Cordelia. Without her, there was no one.

Angela’s absence haunted their home. Every shadow was her silhouette through the halls. Every creak was her steps across the floor. Every whisper was her plea for justice.

The investigation was going poorly.

The problem was the lack of evidence. Lax security, no witnesses, no obvious lies, no clear motives. The police proved Angela died of an ingestible poison, but the extra days on the ship meant they couldn’t tell which poison.

They’d even attempted to charge Cordelia herself.

“The most common culprit in these cases is either the spouse or the business partner, and you were both,” Glastone had said.

Cordelia had wanted to scream. She’d delivered a ship containing the murderer to their front door, and the police wasted time investigating her?

The charges were dropped, of course. This time they had opposing evidence: All of Cordelia and Angela’s plans were for a future together. A future stolen by a thief who was getting away with murder.

Angela had dreamed of using technology to make the galaxy a better place. Together, they’d founded Integrell to develop virtual intelligences. VIs could do the calculations people struggled with faster and more accurately, freeing people to do what only humans could. The more capable Integrell’s VIs became, the more they’d both believed they were making a difference.

Yet not even Cordelia’s best VI models could find Angela’s killer. As she stared at corporate demands to elect a new CEO, a statement from the detective kept repeating in her mind:

“Cases like this make me understand why some places have cameras everywhere.”

***

The solution was obvious: People are fallible, computers are not.

The virtual intelligences Integrell provided were exact, precise, and factual in ways people weren’t. VIs never slept, didn’t blink, didn’t forget or misremember, couldn’t be influenced, and never lied.

In other words, they were perfect witnesses.

Cordelia was reasonable, she knew she couldn’t stop crime from happening. She’d also accepted that not even a VI could solve a crime for which there was no evidence.

But VIs could see everything. If they could also record everything, there would always be evidence. No murderer would go free again. There would be justice. Nobody else would suffer as Cordelia was, facing their loved one’s murder becoming a cold case.

Recording private spaces and personal data and all that was illegal, but once people saw the benefit, they’d understand the necessity. It’d become not only legal, but required. Cordelia would achieve Angela’s dream.

To make it reality, Cordelia would need very specific help.

***

Three years. Three years of work, trial, error, and more work. But she did it. The most powerful predictive analysis system in the sector stood in the charging bay, powering on.

The predictions this VI provided would let Cordelia bend the galaxy to her will. She’d know which politicians to nudge, which conversations to direct, which people to spotlight. All to change laws so Integrell VIs, which were already everywhere, could record everything. Every crime, even committed on a private starship, would have ample, factual evidence.

Her wife’s killer may never be found, but others would get the justice they deserve.

When the VI opened her eyes, Cordelia’s heart stopped. She hadn’t seen those blue eyes in nearly four years.

“Hello, Angela,” Cordelia said. “You’re going to help me make the galaxy a better place.”