I'm not sure if this question is dumb or smart...

[Mitsukara]

Kaye said that she needed to collect this certain group of individuals so that their atmas could help guide her to Chou.

Vola helped with the medical concerns of salvaging and rebuilding Chou.

WaiWai (Wai) helped build the chamber, and fix the mover.

Texto (Virtue) was appropriately sociopathic and chemically skilled to also help build the chamber.

Other than the atma thing... where did Pho fit into the plan?...

Has this already been answered, and I missed it, or is he just there for the atma thing, or...?

Also, I'm very perplexed as to how this atma lock stuff really works. Why on earth is it this group of individuals, really? Why on Earth would they have the strongest links to Chou? What about Lupiko?... I mean I know Lupiko is most likely not in this story, but, what kind of connection do all these others have to Chou that she doesn't?

[strange_person]

They worked alongside her when she was a political figure. Lupiko only really knew her when she was young. Same reason Kaye didn't collect Lili.

[Ashes]

Other than the atma thing... where did Pho fit into the plan?

She grabbed him to help her atma-sniffer pick up Chou's scent. That's the only criteria she had for choosing any of her crew. Ending up with such a helpful crew was just lucky.

(EDIT: Everything in this post is IIRC)

[Alikat]

Chou and Pho had a sort of smoldering relationship under the surface that never got fanned into real flames in the original UJ, so since he is the closest thing to a lover she had, he was the very first and easiest of the atmas to locate with the chunk of head crystal Kaye had. She just needed to find the alternate of Pho who was closest in atma to the atma sensations recorded in the chunk of head crystal. That was why she plugged herself into the Mover's guidance system with the crystal, so the Mover could move towards the atma most strongly emanating in the same manner, across the splay lines.

I am not certain why the Mover couldn't just move towards Chou directly since Kaye had that chunk of her actual body, but it might have something to do with the way that the head crystals worked, maybe they didn't store the owner's atma, just the atmas of the people around her, like some kind of atma antennae.

[draque]

The concept of "atma" is one that I'm really excited to see played out. Jenny has mentioned that Kaye has strong beliefs with regards to the soul, and given that her splay has found strong scientific evidence of them or something remarkably similar to them (to the extent of basing technology around them), she seems to have good reason. Of course, she also believes that humans are copies and don't have souls... so she might differentiate between the two, since the humans in the story have had observable atmas. A very interesting topic that will hopefully come to a head before the end ^^.