Amelia-10 is a massive resort spanning approximately 130 kilometers of beach, famous throughout the Butterpond system and normally booked six months in advance. Joe Mulligan and Maggie visit it for several days, using Maggie’s diplomatic citizenship to obtain government-funded rooms reserved for foreign dignitaries. The location first appears as a promise of ordinary romance and relaxation, but its beach holiday becomes a concentrated display of the couple’s differences, Maggie’s continuing experiments with humanity, and the unintended public consequences of her appearance.

Setting and Access

Amelia-10 is reached by traveling through Butterpond-4, a life-sustaining planet whose natural environment was not indigenous but assembled through British terraforming. Earth-based plants and animals occupy its overgrown regions, giving Maggie an opportunity to study forms of life connected to humanity’s homeworld. She becomes so interested in the passing wildlife that she briefly considers sabotaging the tube-train to force an emergency stop, then abandons the idea because delaying the journey would interfere with the couple’s plans and she could return later for a more thorough investigation.

The resort’s exceptional popularity makes ordinary accommodation difficult to secure, but Maggie’s diplomatic status changes the terms of access. Rooms set aside for visiting foreign dignitaries are available to her, and the cost is charged to the government. This arrangement turns Amelia-10 into more than a tourist destination: it is also a visible benefit of Maggie’s official status and an example of how her extraordinary identity grants Joe access to privileges unavailable to ordinary travelers.

The Beach Vacation

Joe and Maggie hurry toward the beach as soon as they leave the train, taking a taxi because the station is far from the ocean. They eventually reach an apparently endless stretch of golden sand beside clear, shimmering water. Maggie wears the black-and-red string-tied bikini that Joe helped choose, while Joe wears loose sea-wave-patterned swim trunks and a white T-shirt. The sunlight itself is unfamiliar to him because natural light is exceptionally rare in the middle and lower levels of the megacities of Dave-156.

The beach also intensifies Joe’s insecurity. The women appear conventionally beautiful and elaborately dressed, while the men are tall, tanned, handsome, and physically fit. Against them, Joe feels like a pile of sticks and rags pretending to be a man. He nevertheless rejects the comparison as a threat to his relationship, reasoning that none of the other women can match Maggie and that he already has the best girl in the system, perhaps in the universe. The scene therefore combines public self-consciousness with private confidence: Joe feels physically inadequate among strangers but emotionally secure in Maggie’s affection.

The couple spend the first day dividing their time between seawater and sunlight. Their activities over the following two days include reef diving, splashing in the shallows, riding a rocket banana boat, playing water sports, and eating excessive amounts of seafood. Maggie enters an oceanic trivia contest and is disqualified for being suspiciously knowledgeable, consistent with her refusal to hold back in official competitions. Joe’s attempt to deepen their physical intimacy also fails because the day’s underwater play leaves him so exhausted that he falls asleep as soon as they reach their hotel room. He leaves Amelia-10 disappointed that he did not take the relationship further, but also convinced that the weekend has brought him closer to Maggie.

Maggie’s Body and the Resort’s Disturbances

The beach serves Maggie as both a recreational setting and an informal laboratory. Sunbathing allows her to investigate details relevant to the human body and to refine the vessel she has been building since meeting Joe. Her first attempt was approximately 71 percent human; she has raised it to 93 percent, with a personal target of 95 percent. A completely human body would be easy for her to create, but it would break apart under the pressure of her vast consciousness and psychic power. She therefore uses a modified human form strong enough to contain her while remaining compatible with Joe’s human anchor. The experiments at Amelia-10 are part of her effort to understand the human genome, although the desired increase is also treated as a personal high score rather than a practical necessity.

The resort’s apparent normality cannot contain Maggie’s abilities for long. Her sandcastle has impossible geometry that makes Joe’s mind hurt and unsettles onlookers. Agent Sarah Johanson, wearing a camouflage-patterned one-piece swimsuit despite supposedly remaining at Dave-156, arrives without explanation, stomps the sculpture flat, and leaves. The intervention turns a harmless beach activity into a reminder that Maggie’s presence is being monitored and that even her attempts at ordinary recreation can produce phenomena requiring military attention.

Public Image and Aftermath

The vacation has a larger consequence when strangers photograph and record Maggie in her bikini without her knowledge or consent. Such behavior is common in the society around them, but this particular collection of images is detected by an automated authority algorithm and circulates through interstellar channels for about a week. Maggie subsequently receives a stern cease-and-desist letter from Melinda Sparklestar, the lead actress of Love At First Flight, alleging that Maggie has stolen the actress’s copyrighted appearance.

This aftermath changes the meaning of the beach scenes. Maggie’s carefully constructed body is not perceived merely as a person’s appearance; it becomes searchable data, a public spectacle, and an apparent piece of intellectual property. Amelia-10 therefore exposes the collision between private intimacy and platform-mediated visibility. A few days of leisure produce images that travel beyond the couple’s control, while an algorithm converts those images into a legal dispute over ownership of a face and body. The resort’s function in the narrative is consequently double: it offers a temporary space where Joe and Maggie can imitate an ordinary couple, yet it also demonstrates how quickly that imitation is captured, circulated, and regulated.