by Scott Meyer
Phillip pounded on the invisible wall and screamed, but no sound was audible.
Martin said, “I see you agree.”
19.
“So, notice this number here,” Jimmy said. He leaned forward and touched the computer monitor with his index finger. He was sitting in the office that Phillip and Brit the Elder had inhabited, at the workstation Phillip had used to sift through the Atlantis magic logs. Brit the Elder and Brit the Much Elder flanked Jimmy in rolling office chairs, watching over his shoulders in rapt attention as he walked them through Brit the Elder’s own file entry.
Phillip stood at the opposite end of the room, peering out through the blinds in the window, trying not to listen to the sound of Jimmy explaining, or the Brits being nice to him.
“When I hit refresh, notice how that number goes up. Every time I hit refresh, it goes up some more.”
“Is it counting refreshes somehow?” Brit the Much Elder asked.
“I wondered that, too, but if I wait a while between refreshes, it doesn’t just go up one or two counts. Over time I figured out that this number progresses at a steady rate, whether I’m looking at it or not.”
Brit the Elder said, “Like a clock.”
“Exactly like a clock.”
Phillip looked out at the parking lot. He could see a nondescript dark blue four door, with the figures of two men in the front seat, barely visible through the foggy windshield. “Seems like the nice thing to do would have been to give Miller and Murphy a few days off while Jimmy’s in your custody.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “Yeah, probably, but Miller’s a real pain in the butt, and Murphy enables him. At least I let them take a flight out here. I could have made them drive out from Reno.”
Brit the Elder cleared her throat. “You were saying, Jimmy?”
“Yes, of course. So, you’ve got this number that acts like a clock. Keep that in mind. Now, we’re going to scroll down to another spot in your file entry.”
Phillip continued peering out the window. He didn’t find the parking lot of a federal building in Sacramento particularly interesting, but he found what was going on in the room interesting to the point of horrified fascination, in much the same way a condemned man finds the topic of capital punishment interesting. He was desperate to think about anything else, and the window was his only refuge.
Jimmy continued, “Now, here you’ll see a callout. The code is sending some piece of information to another part of the program. That’s nothing strange. A person’s file is full of them. The file’s nothing but a data store, after all, a silo that holds all the facts, figures, and describable parameters that make you you, and not someone else. But this callout is different. Do you see how?”
Brit the Elder said, “It’s not calling out to the program. It’s calling out to another part of the file.”
Phillip said, “I just feel bad for them, Miller and Murphy, sitting in that car, watching the building, with nobody but each other for company. From what I’ve heard, they aren’t very good company.”
“Actually, they can be a lot of fun,” Jimmy said. “And don’t feel too bad. They’re happier when they can keep an eye on me. Well, I don’t think happier is the word, really.”
“More comfortable,” Brit the Much Elder offered.
“No, that’s not it either. But they’re definitely less happy and less comfortable when they’re not watching me. It’s like the unhappiness of watching me makes them happier. There isn’t really a word for that.”
“I bet the Germans have one.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, “And specific nightclubs where you can go to feel it.”
Brit the Elder had taken little notice and no joy in the conversation, both quite deliberately. “Can we please get back to business?”
“Of course,” Jimmy said. “If we go to the portion of the file it specifies, you’ll see that it’s in the middle of this weird sea of numbers, commas, and colons. We never really paid that much attention to it because nobody had any idea what it was, or how to find out. But, if you go to the exact point your file entry specified, you’ll see it’s made up of a long chain of three number sets. I figure the middle number in each set is the address of a location in some other file, one we haven’t found, and frankly, I don’t think we should look for it. The first and last numbers though, they match the formatting exactly of the number I just showed you.”
“It’s a time stamp,” Brit the Elder said.
“I believe so. I believe that we’re looking at the filing information for your long-term memories. The first and last numbers show the beginning and end points of the experience you’ll remember, and the middle number is its name, or location, or some such.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “A set of numbers was just added to the list.”
Jimmy said, “Yup. Who knows? That could be you storing away the moment you realized how your long-term memory works. A fairly memorable experience, I’d say.”
Phillip said, “This is just wrong.”
“Hey, I’m with you, Phillip. I didn’t even want to show you all this. I don’t like that I know it myself, but all I’m doing is sharing the knowledge,” Jimmy replied.
“What? No, not that. It’s not right that we’re treating Miller and Murphy this way. They’re just doing their jobs. We should send them a pizza or something.”
“No,” Brit the Much Elder said. “They’d only take it as taunting. It’d just make them angry.”
“Everything makes Miller angry,” Jimmy muttered.
Brit the Much Elder laughed. “True enough. No, Phillip, you’re sweet, but it’s best just to leave them be. They’re professionals, and they volunteered for this duty.”
Jimmy smiled. “Besides, if they’re hungry, they can just eat the banana that’s in their tailpipe.”
Brit the Much Elder looked aghast. “Still?”
“The macro follows them, not the car they had in Reno. Until I make it stop, every car Miller attempts to drive for the rest of his days will have a foggy windshield and a banana in its tailpipe, and the car will stall, even though the banana trick doesn’t work.”
Brit the Much Elder laughed again and hit Jimmy on the shoulder playfully. “You’re so bad!”
Phillip and Brit the Elder both scowled at them, but for different reasons.
Phillip didn’t know what he liked less, being called sweet, the sight of Brit, any Brit, laughing at Jimmy’s jokes, or the prospect of Brit the Elder tinkering with her own long-term memories.
Brit the Elder was just impatient to get back to work. “So, what happens if you delete one of the entries?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I never tried, or at least if I did, I must have erased the memory of me trying.”
Brit the Much Elder laughed. Phillip did not.
“Seriously,” Jimmy said, “I wouldn’t touch any of these numbers with a ten-foot pole. No way, no how. Too dangerous.”
“I don’t see where we have another option.”
“And I don’t see where this is an option to begin with. Brit, I only agreed to show this to you because I figured you’d see how vague and uncertain it is and you’d decide to try something else.”
Brit the Elder shook her head. “There is nothing else to try. It’s this, or do nothing.”
Brit the Much Elder put a hand on Brit the Elder’s shoulder, but she squirmed out from under it immediately. “Don’t touch me.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “I’m just trying to calm you down.”
“Don’t touch me, because you’re me! I won’t even be in the same room with Brit the Younger for fear of a world-ending glitch. I came to you without thinking, and I’ve kept you involved because it didn’t seem to hurt any
thing, but we shouldn’t press our luck. And in case you all need a reminder, that’s what we’re talking about, trying to prevent the entire known universe from blinking out and being replaced with a bong noise and a little drawing of an old-timey bomb.”
Jimmy squinted and cocked his head to the side.
Phillip said, “She uses an original Mac.”
Jimmy nodded.
“What do you suggest?” Brit the Much Elder asked. “That we just start erasing numbers willy-nilly to see how it affects you and, by extension, me?”
Brit the Elder rolled her eyes. “No, obviously not. We would carefully analyze the situation, handpick certain specific numbers of interest, then copy and delete them, in a sober, cautious manner, and see how it affects us.”
Phillip shut his eyes so hard it almost hurt. “It’s tempting to try it just to make you forget that Jimmy ever told you about this.”
Brit the Elder said, “Listen, the problem started when my and Brit the Younger’s memories diverged, right? Her memories seem to match reality. Mine don’t. I think the most logical course of action, given what we’ve learned from Jimmy, is to find my memories that are different from hers, and swap them out.”
Jimmy pushed back from the keyboard. “I’m sorry, everyone. Brit’s problem’s worse than we thought. In addition to her other memory issues, she seems to have forgotten what logic is. Look, Brit, I understand that you’re under a lot of stress here, but we don’t know nearly enough about any of this to even consider erasing any of these numbers. Even if we’re right, and these are long-term memories, we don’t know how they interact with the rest of your cognitive processes. Any number of vital subroutines could refer back to these memories on a regular basis. Anything you learn probably needs to refer back to this. Language use. Pattern recognition. Emotional responses to given situations or people. It’s all tied into memory. So, no. I’m not going to be a party to changing any of this stuff unless we do a lot of careful testing first.”
“Damn right,” Phillip shouted.
Brit the Elder glared at Phillip. “You realize you’re siding with Jimmy, your worst enemy, over me.”
Jimmy said, “I’d rather you called me his greatest enemy, instead of his worst. Worst implies low quality. You could argue that Gary’s his worst enemy.”
Phillip said, “Gary’s my friend.”
“Which shows how bad at being an enemy he really is.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “Jimmy, now’s not the time. Phillip, there’s no need to yell, and Brit, Phillip’s not siding with Jimmy. Phillip and I are siding with Jimmy. Without careful testing, it’s just way too dangerous to even consider changing any of those numbers.”
“You’re all being silly. Think about it.” Brit the Elder pointed at Brit the Much Elder. “You’re here. You’re fine. And you’re me in the future. The fact that you exist is all the testing we need. You prove that what I plan to do must work, or else you wouldn’t be here.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “No. That runs counter to the reasoning you used to get me involved in this mess to begin with. You’re glitching out. You’re part of the program. Thus, the program is glitching out, which means that me being here proves nothing and all bets are off. You’re only trying to use me as proof because you want to mess with your code and you’re looking for an excuse.”
“Yeah,” Phillip agreed. “Or, she’s not you, just a kind of placeholder copy of you the program created for you to interact with, and your fate isn’t tied to hers, just like I’ve said all along.”
“No,” Brit the Much Elder said, “That’s even more stupid. I guess it could be argued that my existence might prove that at some point, somebody will do something to fix the glitch, and it will work. That doesn’t mean that it’s you, Brit, or that it’s your idea, or involves Jimmy’s idea at all.”
“Hey,” Jimmy said. “None of this was my idea. I want that clear. I had no idea.”
Phillip said, “I’ll vouch for that.”
Brit the Elder thought for several seconds. When she finally broke her silence, she spoke slowly and quietly, giving the same sense of a barely contained catastrophe as a profoundly drunk person driving ten miles per hour under the speed limit, in a ruler-straight line. “Okay. You all said we’d need lots of careful testing before you’d feel comfortable proceeding. What, exactly, would this careful testing look like?”
Phillip said, “We could test on animals. I wouldn’t feel great about it, but we get, I dunno, an elephant or something. Something well-known for its memory, and mess with its entry.”
Jimmy pointed at Phillip with both hands. “Top man! I like it! Not only could we experiment with the animal’s memory, but we could try to replicate the glitch to begin with. Not with the elephant, but like a rat or something. If we can replicate the problem, maybe we can come up with a better solution then memory replacement. Normally I’m not a fan of animal experimentation, but this is to save the entire world.”
Phillip said, “Not a fan of animal experimentation? You experimented on the code of hundreds of people.”
“Yeah, and I saw the consequence of my actions, and learned my lesson.”
Brit the Elder stood up. “Wait a minute. How long do you think all of this experimenting will take?” She pointed at her thigh. “Need I remind you that our time is limited? I’d have already spent a few years fixing this myself then come back in time to give myself the antidote without bothering all of you if I didn’t have a ticking time bomb working its way up my legs.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “We could put you in slow time, like you did to Phillip to bring him here. That’d give us years to come up with a fix.”
“While I stand there like a statue, waiting for you three to figure out a way to save me? No thanks.”
Phillip said, “Look, we’re all kinds of worked up. I think we should knock off for the day. We’ll all go sleep on it, come back tomorrow, and hopefully one of us will have thought of something we can all agree to. Okay?”
Jimmy said, “Fine by me.”
Brit the Much Elder nodded. “Brit?”
“Fine,” Brit the Elder said, and disappeared.
Jimmy swiveled his desk chair to face Brit the Much Elder. “I assume that if she comes back tomorrow and still wants to run experiments on her own memory, we’re going to put her in slow time against her will.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “Absolutely.”
Phillip wanted to argue against the idea, but the best reason not to do it he could come up with was, “She won’t like that.”
Brit the Much Elder shrugged. “No, but it’s the right thing, and she’ll see that in time. If the roles were reversed, she’d do the same to Brit the Younger in a heartbeat.”
“Yes,” Phillip agreed, “and Brit the Younger would be furious at her for it.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “Yes, and they’d both be in the right.”
20.
Martin materialized, standing straight and tall with a triumphant smile on his face, which faded quickly when he dropped two feet and landed in several inches of wet concrete. He bent at the knees and hunched over, swinging his free arm wildly to keep his balance while leaning heavily on his staff. He managed to keep from falling down into the gray mush, but his shoes and the hem of his already-tattered robe were covered.
Martin swiveled his head, taking in his surroundings. At first, he thought he had accidentally transported somewhere he’d never been, but soon he realized that this was the main room of Gary’s living space at Skull Gullet Cave. It only looked different because all of the furniture had been removed, the entire kitchen area had been demolished, and the floor was awash in a uniform layer of wet concrete. In the center of the living room, directly under the spot Martin had teleported into, was some sort of broad, shallow pit that had been sectioned off with wo
oden forms, with a separate pool of wet concrete at the bottom of the lower section.
Martin pulled out one foot, looked at his ruined shoe, and shouted, “Gary!”
The door that led to the antechamber opened. Gary leaned through the door frame without stepping into the room. Behind Gary, Martin saw all of Gary’s furniture arranged awkwardly around the stone pedestal. An episode of This Old House was playing soundlessly on the TV, green letters spelling MUTE superimposed over the top left corner.
“Hey, Martin. How’s it going?”
Martin stomped his foot down, deliberately splashing it in the wet concrete. “You cleared the entire room, filled it with concrete, and lowered part of it just to get us to fall in?”
Gary glanced around the empty room. “Us? I only see one of you.”
“The rest are coming.”
“Excellent,” Gary said, and leaned against the door frame, waiting for the show to begin.
Only a few seconds later, Gwen materialized in midair, where the floor level had been before, holding her wand in one hand, and a bundle of silver fabric in the other. She fell two feet, landing with a splash in the concrete. Martin rushed forward to hold her up, but stopped when it became obvious that she didn’t need his help.
Gwen looked down at her feet, then up at Martin with a smile on her face. “He got us this time.”
“Looks like it,” Martin said.
Gwen turned to Gary and said “Well done,” then turned back to Martin and said, “Hi.”
“Hi.”
Gwen smiled and Martin smiled back, uneasily.
When Gwen seemed happy to see him, it made Martin happy. When she seemed unhappy to see him, it made him unhappy. When she went from looking unhappy to see him to looking happy to see him with no explanation for the change, it made him profoundly uncomfortable.
Gwen held the bundle of silver fabric forward. “I made this for you. It’s a new robe.”
