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Greg Egan’s latest books are the novel Morphotrophic and the collection Sleep and the Soul. His story “Solidity” (Asimov’s September/October 2022) won the Japanese Seiun Award for Best Translated Short Fiction. His new tale for us explores the pressures faced by a close-knit family as they navigate both the benefits and uncertainties brought on by the use of . . . He supposed he must have been daydreaming, but whatever pleasant distraction had occupied his thoughts a moment before, it was gone now. In fact, he could not recall the state of mind from which his mind had wandered, though