A Dream of Electric Mothers

In an African country facing conflict, the government decides to consult its ancestors, electronically stored in a facility. But one minister would take advantage of the mental connection to contract its ancestors to try to arrange a meeting with her dead mother. The meeting would, perhaps, lead to another answer on how to avoid conflict, if possible.

This novelette centers itself on a far future people who have uploaded the minds of their ancestors into a single "electric mother" consciousness that can be consulted by politicians. The narrator is a newly appointed minister of defense who is seeking both advice from the electric mother about a potential war but also wanting to use this device to reconnect with her own dead mother specifically. This was a fun riff on a typical consciousness uploading story and it packed a lot of worldbuilding, personal story, and plot into a very short word count.