We told you what we told every pilgrim: if your health wasn't bad, you had to stay with us a year before we'd lead you into the depths, before an angel would show you to the sapphire gate. Before we'd let you upload your mind, before we'd incinerate your body.

I'm sure once that "goal" is reached I still won't be happy with the emotion or expression, so it's like a never-ending rabbit hole. It's like never being truly satisfied, and that's what I love about art as a whole.

It might be worth thinking that Ishiguro has not in fact been as undevious as all that.

Does it matter if it lets us fly away?

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Margaret Killjoy's "Beyond Sapphire Glass."