I loved this story. Easily my favorite of 2014 so far and even including the latter part of 2013 as well. As Alasdair said, the language and the imagery were absolutely beautiful. The idea of post-human people with digitized immortality "dying" and going to heaven is fascinating. I mean, once you're post-human, and your mind is basically a data cluster on a hard drive, you become essentially immortal. When your physical body dies, your mind is simply transferred to another system until you choose to be downloaded again into a body. So what need would you have for an afterlife?
And that's what's so beautiful about this story. This society of post-humans understands the need for a break. They understand the need for death in order to maintain value in life. So, when your physical body dies, rather then just continuing on in a different location, you are actually removed from your situation, cut off from it, and given a time to rest in a fantasy world of your own creation, where you can recuperate from your previous life before you start anew. Fantastic.
And this is where Kumara's great crime really comes to light. Each of the crewmember's heaven's was a struggle, a malcontentedness that kept them searching, but it was a struggle of their own creation. I mean, this is heaven to them, therefor this is what makes them happy. And Kumara took that away from them. Albeit to save their lives, but was it worth it? Is it worth surviving a terrible accident if you're left on life support for the rest of your life? That's what Kumara did to them; she took away what made them happy. Sure, they were content, but in that they weren't happy, and they would never really know why. When Captain Shiroma came to visit Kumara at the end, and "shook her head, as if to say, why?", at first I thought she was asking Kumara why. Why would Kumara have done this to her, taken this from her? But she wasn't. She was asking herself why. Why had she once found this ship and this life so appealing? And she will never know the answer to that because Kumara stole that from her.
The twist ending I could take or leave with this one. I agree with others that the additional information about the nature of our narrator shed some light on a few questionable motives earlier in the story. But in the end, the reasons for their situation and the results are secondary to me behind the exploration of this digital personal heaven and the results of destroying aspects of what make us human in order to save us. Sure, the crew is still alive, but are they really alive anymore? Are they even themselves anymore?
Great story.