The family of Pax Oniri wants Maia to resign, and they want Constellation to admit the Story treatments aren't working, aren't enough.

"A biased officer can't be fixed. She's like a rabid pet."

Oh, so they're allowed to insult her, but when she called their son a demon, a predator, nothing but another male lawbreaker, they documented it for the civil suit.

Maia takes her fourth Story pill and watches another man go down, this one a shorter guy. So manipulative. Was the point to say, not all men are big? Some are small? Like a foot in the door to empathy, how about you give this little guy a shot?

The family of Pax Oniri protested outside every day and every morning Maia walks past their signs, head held high. They shout, "Empathy training doesn't work. It isn't enough, stop using deadly weapons on our sons!" To the first, Maia couldn't agree more. Empathy training doesn't work. To the second, they were delusional if they thought she was going to be able to do her job without a weapon. They were insane if they thought she was going to die for a criminal to live.

"Stealing shouldn't have a death sentence!" yelled Pax's girlfriend, Aurora. Ex-girlfriend now.

"Why did he have to die? For stealing? " yelled Pax's sister Dawn.

The morning after her fifth immersive Story, when she walks past, the family's demand has evolved: "You can remove an officer's gnomon's capability to shoot to kill unless responding to a deadly threat," says Pax's mama, Destiny Oniri.

Going inside, Maia walks straight back to the Capo's office to find Capo Amazulu seriously talking about it.

Speaking into a link call, she says, "If empathy training doesn't work, we should consider having certain officers with weapons capability, and certain officers on support duty, unarmed. Gnomons tiered for link teleportation and other capabilities, but no deadly force. Can we set a gnomon to stun?"

When Capo Amazulu hangs up, Maia needs to have her say. "That's not necessary, the empathy training is working," she lies.

On her way home after the next treatment, Maia buys Story from a drug dealer. It's almost like she doesn't know she's doing it until it's done. She was going to book the guy, even off duty. He looked so sketchy, he had drug dealer written all over him, so she went over. And her hands go to her wallet and the next thing she knows she's buying.

What are you doing? she asks herself. It's been such a hard day, though. Most nights her self-medicating involves three hours of non-stop link shows, link movies, streaming episode after episode to block out the day and destress. Escape into someone else's stress.

It's not enough anymore. There's this one shows that almost still does the trick. Almost. She fell in love with the female lead on day one, the first episode, a character named Alma Satiri who's a powerful filmmaker played by Suara River. A fighter, though it may seem like a strange setup for an action show — she came from nothing and everyone tried to shut her out of the industry, just like what happened to the movie star Suara River until she got her big break in Stars and Stopped Clocks. One day the competition try to straight up kidnap her, make her disappear, but Alma fights her way out of it and saves herself (with some impressive martial arts, stunts done by the actor herself). The next time, though, it's not capture but kill, and the only thing that saves her is one of the three hitmen, a guy named Ray Aria, who sees her beautiful dark eyes and falls in love at first sight. He instantly turns his gun on the other two killers, shooting them dead.

At first Maia had felt annoyed when Alma fell for Ray. She felt territorial. Why would Alma love a man? She seemed smarter than that. She almost stopped watching the show but then she missed seeing Alma's gorgeous figure twisting and maneuvering between combat stances, so she tuned in to the next episode. The bad guys come for Ray, and would have executed him if Alma hadn't sprung to action, taking out four goons with her starfire and one with a dagger in her belt, saving his life. And when Alma goes to bed with him, Maia shook her head, but when Ray and Alma flirted she was amazed to find herself smiling.

Every line Ray says she can't help but smile. It's kinda weird. What is this, is she falling for a guy? That had never happened before, but he's charming. Must be good writing by the women behind the script. Still, his smile turns up in a dream.

One morning Maia hung her head walking past the protestors. Though she knew she was in the right, she could never look at Pax's mom as she entered guardia headquarters, that day less than ever. "Stop taking our sons from us," Pax's mom said.

That morning she thought of Ray. He was somebody's son. Yet he wasn't like other men, that's why Maia liked him.

Those episodes would take Maia off to another place where she forgets all about her own worries, but by round three of empathy training, it's not enough. The fake blood on the show gives Maia visions of real blood, and fake blood from the Stories.

The Story simulations pain her more than the memory of the real man she killed, and when those images get triggered, she reels.

So she bought herself a Story. At home, she takes it. The man in this Story sort of reminded her of Ray. His goofy smile stole her heart. At night she dreams of the man in the Story and that was it, she needs another hit of this Story to see what happens next. She'd buy the Story on the corner and find a smile on her face that she couldn't control the whole walk home.

The sixth empathy training she's in a tall body again, dreaming of Ray's tall body the whole time, and when the man is shot down and killed in the street, this time Maia didn't scream, cry out, hyperventilate or cry. Waking up she feels a new and dark emotion. Flat. Disconnected. Like everything's wrong and nothing can fix it, what's the point of anything.

She needs a walk after. Past the protestors, still calling for an end to the use of deadly force, for officer gnomons to be tiered, taking away the ability to kill from patrol cops. A walk around the block returns her to herself. Why should she die for someone else? She has nothing to feel bad about. Maybe some men are good, charming, lovable, upstanding — but as a gender they are too threatening, too strong, too powerful to be allowed. She goes back to work and can't believe it when the Chief of the guardia, Romana Valda, is talking to her Capo, talking seriously about the idea. Saying, "A pilot program, maybe, and that way we can get the officers riding desks back into the field." Romana has her hands on her hips. She's tall. She was a man before transitioning to female was free. "Disconnect the gnomons of certain officers from fatal capabilities, allow these officers to only respond to petty crime, low risk crime."

If only all men would just transition, just become woman. What's stopping them? They should change.

Maia walked right up to her and said, "No way, you don't get to sacrifice us. You can't put officers out there to die."

Romana said, "Look, I don't like it either, with violent crime up. If I get you off the desk, though, I have more officers to deal with violent crime while you nab package thieves."

Nabbing package thieves is exactly how Maia ended up killing a man, because men could not be trusted not to slash an officer's throat quicker than she could pull a trigger on her spell.

She needs another Story that night. She doesn't even think of arresting the dealer who sells it to her, and she buys whole a vial. On one hand she's tense, it's been a stressful day, but on the other hand, the thought of Ray's smile, the one the man in the Story reminded her of, made her smile. It's the best part of her day finding herself smiling in anticipation, and she wouldn't trade it for anything. She gets home, lies out flat on her sofa, and takes the first Story.

The order of the series can be disjointed but the dealer promised this was the same narrative, and after a moment's worry that he won't be there, that the same character won't appear to her, there he is. The Ray-like character she thinks of as Ray. In her head she calls him Ray's last name: Aria.

There's Aria, gazing deep into her eyes. But there's someone after them, so he takes her hand and runs, firing back at the assassins. He's pulling her and she runs with him. They turn the corner and a woman jumps out at them; Maia doesn't know the storyline, doesn't know why anyone's after her, but she's amazed how quickly Aria reacts — he pulls a knife and cuts the woman down, and Maia instantly feels her fears swell up in her, beginning to hyperventilate.

He pulls her into a run again and the grip on her hand is hard and she doesn't like the way he pins her in an alley. If it was Alma pinning her she would probably like it, but he's closing her in and he's a killer who took out a woman like it was nothing.

He fires off shots and takes out two more assassins, and tries to pull her into another run but she pulls her hand back. "No! Let go of me!"

Heartbroken, Aria looks into her eyes. "What? I'm trying to save you!" She backs away from him, back toward the assassins, and his eyes beg her to come with him.

He holds his hand out to her, "What's wrong, amor, come this way. What's going on?" He doesn't even turn to leave her to her fate, he never turns away from her before the shot enters his heart, taking his life, and then bullets riddle Maia's body too, and all goes dark. In this commercial Story she never felt a thing, no sensation of pain, but it's a bad ending, to die, like when you die in a dream.

She rolls off the sofa, downs a bottle of liquor throughout the night, sleeps it off, and goes into work the next morning.

She spits on the protestors. How dare they. She rolls into the office to give Chief Valda and Capo Amazulu a piece of her mind, but she's stopped by Amazulu at the door.

"I'm sorry, Maia, I have to confiscate your gnomon, permanently. The analysis from your empathy training has come back, and the neuromagic readings tell us that you're not improving."

The gnomon slides and flies out of Maia's holster to her Capo's waiting hands.

"I don't think you would want to continue as a guardia anyway, based on your objections to tiered gnomons. We're taking deadly power away from beat cops. Only investigators responding to violent crime, and a few specially trained officers, will retain all gnomon capabilities. Your objections over the past week make it clear you're not fit for the job, particularly not with the direction the unit is heading. You're dismissed from duty, permanently.

"On a personal note, I wish you well in the civil suit against you. And the criminal suit, though  with these neuromagic readings as evidence, I don't think you'll get off. I'm sorry. Not for terminating you, but I'm sorry that you couldn't learn."

Maia feels a daze swell around her and she's lost. She staggers out of the guardia headquarters, walks past the protestors, who must have gotten word of her dismissal, and they cheer.

She wanders home, walking unexpected paths.

She sees the Story dealer. A whole vial waits for her at home, but that's the Story of a romance with a man.

Instead, she takes out her wallet and requests, "You got a Story that's all female? Give me a vial."

"This one's good. All female. Romance, action, adventure. Five star reviews on Stellar. It's going to disappear quick, you only want one?"

"No, codger, I don't only want one. Give me all you have."

She almost passed him her wallet to take all of the vials in exchange. He took all of her cash and she took enough Story to disappear for a while. Her apartment is stocked. Nowhere she needs to be. She streams Story after Story directly into her brain and lies in one place until she doesn't feel quite real anymore.

It feels like I have probably said enough. It's a good time to listen. I want to hear what you guys think, and feel, and how the end of the story impacted you. Does it feel real? Does it feel fair? To Maia, to Pax's family, to justice in a world not so unlike our own? Thanks for your reflections, fam.