Elena.

Elena Locke builds the things a city forgets it is standing on. A senior structural engineer in Seattle, she spends her days on bridges and seismic retrofits — the slow, unglamorous work of making what already exists last longer. In 2098, on a coast that has learned to take the ground seriously, somebody has to. She has rarely been the loudest person in a room. She has rarely needed to be.

She has been a widow for nine years. Her husband, the deep-space pioneer Daniel Locke, was lost in 2089 — a fact of public record, and the only way she has ever discussed it. She still lives in the same craftsman house in Ballard where Olivia grew up, with Biscuit, the dog her daughter could not take aboard. The wedding ring has never come off.

She watches every one of her daughter's transmissions. She has never once commented.