Memory's Exile
Page 20
Fucking Alpha, too? He struggled up and examined the console, which fizzed and bipped ineffectually when he poked at it. He could crack the upper escape hatch and climb out, but why bother when he could delegate? He tapped at his ear and realized with dismay that his commbud wasn’t there. Worse, he couldn’t remember where he’d left it. The infirmary? He pulled out the wall panel, fiddled until the console flickered into emergency contact mode, and raised the Science lab’s general frequency. “Kai, are you there?”
A slight crackle. “You’re up.” Kai sounded disappointed.
“Right. Lindy and I are stuck in Alpha Lift just under level one. Can you spring us with the emergency call?”
“For Lindy, anything. Give me five minutes. I’ll have to override.”
With Kai, five minutes meant ten on a good day, and so far this day wasn’t breaking any records. But that was all right. Jake could fill the time.
He took the gems and his tablet out of his pockets. Settling himself down in the lift corner, he balanced Con’s blue gem on his knee and slotted Carmichael’s into the memory well. The gem Mick had given him was a simple Selas one, so deep red and dark with memory that it looked like a small bloodstained egg.
The access screen flashed up. Jake pressed his thumb into the plate at the base. The tablet’s screen shimmered to blue, and a multilayered collection materialized: the top layer first, another copy of Carmichael’s verified, time-stamped report on Chen, Mei and the mess hall incident. It included a detailed profile on Mei from birth to present. Jake scanned some of it. Nothing exceptional, nothing he didn’t know about her. Gods. What if Lindy couldn’t bring her out of it? It was an impossible thought. “Layer two,” he commanded.
Layer one sank. Layer two opened. It was dual: the first piece a document consisting of two short columns of numbers; the second, pages from Carmichael’s own Defense record. Most of the record was encrypted with blacked-out text and Defense-Only fields. Jake pressed one, and was denied access.
“Layer three.”
The second layer melted into the third, but then the text blurred back into eye straining encrypted gibberish. A yellow warning flashed over the screen:
CONFIDENTIAL.
FOR FIRST TIER EYES ONLY.
DUAL THUMB AND VOICE SCAN REQUIRED.
“For fuck’s sake.” Jake pressed his thumb again.
VERIFIED: HEAD OF SCIENCE. THANK YOU.
The screen glimmered blue again, and the third layer clarified. It was a United Worlds Defense profile, clearly a scan by the quality of the text and the heavy black CLOSED stamp at the head of the first piece.
Name: Griffin, Connor Reyes
Birthdate: 12 Oct 2207
Deathdate: N.A.
Rank: Shuttle Commander
UWD Serial Number: 99-240042
Security Clearance: 10
Status: Inactive (Retired)
Con’s dossier. The lift monitor pinged again, but it sounded far away, unimportant.
Carmichael had certainly marked it up. On the first piece, he’d highlighted Con’s security level and annotated it. Jake tapped the note, and it sprang up into a full-screen view.
High for shuttle cmdr, esp. retired. Why?
Jake grinned and leaned back against the wall. Analytical to the last detail, Carmichael. He shuffled through the document’s pages, noticing bright bits of highlighting and annotations as he went, until he reached the last piece of the dossier. It was the end of the layer. “Layer four?” The screen flashed helpfully:
End of collection
Layer 3 of 3
Do you need help?
Sighing, Jake stroked the tablet screen to return to the dossier.
Con had United Worlds Science liaison credits, a whole pile. They were undated. But Jake should know that, he remembered that…he had that brief, nibbling memory of Con sitting outside an underground lab. “Liaison credits” meant “guinea pig fees.” Lots of Defense personnel volunteered for pig duty; it was a quick, safe way to get credits or barter if they were tough enough to withstand most of the physical requirements. Until Restore, there hadn’t been a human testing death for over fifty years.
If Con had liaison credits, what had he tested? Jake recalled meeting him for the first time at that Historical Society conference. Could Con have showed up afterward at Icebreaker for tests and Jake didn’t remember? How could he not remember?
See service dates Carmichael had noted at the bottom of the page.
Jake flipped ahead to them. The list was long, starting when Con was sixteen, but Carmichael’s yellow highlighting drew his eyes to a section in the middle.
22 Aug 2227-30 Sep 2228 Special Defense Division pilot training
01 Oct 2228-04 Nov 2231 Earth satellite maintenance, shuttle pilot
05 Nov 2231-16 Oct 2233 Furbad Military Outpost (transfer from Science Division/Jupiter satellite array), auxiliary mission pilot
18 Oct 2233-13 Mar 2235 Earth satellite construction team, shuttle pilot
14 Mar 2235-current Defense contract not renewed. Contracted cooperative liaison pilot with United Worlds Governance Board
No real gaps. See Science volunteer service?
Jake scrolled through the rest of the dossier, but apart from the small notation regarding the credits, there was nothing about Science service. Perhaps it was a glitch. Or perhaps, and he went colder at the thought, someone had gotten to the gem while he’d slept in drugged oblivion. Yes, that was possible. More than possible, it was the obvious answer. Foolish of him to imagine the info was secure, just because he’d slept on it.
He read them over again. Jupiter and Furbad Station twanged—of course, Carmichael had been stationed there, and he claimed not to remember Con. He flicked back to Carmichael’s dossier and scanned the visible dates until he found it. It wasn’t difficult: Carmichael had helpfully highlighted and noted his own service.
03 Apr 2225-27 Jul 2235 Furbad Military Outpost, station Defense liaison
Carmichael’s decade at Furbad, the Science station-turned-Defense outpost. Science did a great job of building stations, and Defense did an even better one of commandeering them after the fact. Jake opened the note and was treated to more of Carmichael’s shorthand.
Don’t rmbr him. In ‘31 I would have approved his contract. Rechked my personnel logs—no CG. Never met CG before yesterday.
“Furbad’s a big station,” Jake said aloud, just to stay balanced. His hands were shaking and he thought— Fuck you, Carmichael. Fuck you and your mostly dead meticulous ass up there, just fuck you for leaving me alone with this—until they stopped.
Furbad was a big station, busy with daily traffic. It was possible Carmichael could be mistaken about Con, could have missed him, since their tenures coincided only by one year. It was possible Defense wouldn’t have notified their unassuming shuttle pilot’s lone Science liaison; it was possible that Con wouldn’t remember Carmichael, either. Sure, all of it was possible, but not very probable. Neither Con Griffin nor Toby Carmichael had the requisite oblivious nature. Someone had tampered with Con’s record.
Who did the editing, then? Why was it so important to establish that Con had been on Furbad when he wasn’t? It seemed too easy to disprove; too many people on Furbad would remember who was there and who wasn’t. Or maybe that was the point, for Con to get lost in the crowd. So who had rewritten history, then, Con? His handlers? If they were Defense, why hadn’t they simply brought Carmichael into whatever they were planning? If they were Science, why not Jake?
For the second time, Jake wondered what kind of file Carmichael had on him. What would it say?
2211 Born prodigious
2222 Enrolled in Courses
2224 Invented this
2226 Invented that
2229 Graduated Courses, top honors
Continuous Was loved and envied by everyone
Continuous Hooray
2229-31 Invented serum
2231 Serum human testing
2232 Was fou
nd responsible for deaths of sister and 22 test subjects
2232 Imprisoned in the Bends for illegal negligent testing/deaths
2232 Received successful implantation of Enhanced Recall Penitence ChipTM
2240 Shipped out to Selas Station as Head of Science
Continuous Discovered all the important stuff on Selas
2242 Died a horrible death along with everyone else on Selas Station due to his spiral into insanity and his inability to keep it in his pants
Ha, ha, ha. But Jake’s hands were shaking again. He took a deep breath, flicked back to Con’s dossier, and paged through it more slowly. There were no charge sheets, no adverse material, just evaluation reports and a straightforward Defense discharge sheet rounding out the personnel file. Though health and psych records were included—fantastic. He could invade Con’s personal privacy, too, if he wished.
On the very last page of the dossier, Carmichael had included a final note. Jake enlarged it.
Chkd w/ contact at Internal Audit. Selas not up for official IA until 2245.
Chkd w/ UW Com Gov Bd contact.
CG flight commission to Selas separately funded by UW Science.
Grant underwriter: Dr. Alice Silverman.
Brief Santos
ASK JAKE
There was more: information about declassified covert ops like Furbad, some recommendations for quarantining the Harmon’s flight crew and personnel to the ship until they could question Con without possibility of intervention from any confederates he had on board, justifications regarding fuel and emergency rations. After a moment, Jake closed his eyes against the slanted text. It was painstaking and cautious and insane. It was the only script he had, and he couldn’t read anymore.
Numbly he closed the collection, popped the red gem, and stuck it back into his pocket. So: no surprise audit. No word from Defense. And the dead Dr. Silverman had paid Con’s ticket for the Selas mission.
Dr. Alice Silverman. Double Ph.D., clinical pathologist and geneticist, shipped out from Helsinki Dome on 29 June, 2242. Jake wondered if her dossier was available on the network, if it was possible to see what she’d been up to from 2230 to 2238. She’d shipped out to Selas from Helsinki. She had red hair and white sneakers, and her weird probably-Icebreaker address was “IL room 7.” She was renowned in the Science community for developing multiple interesting chemical compounds— particularly, Jake had discovered while reviewing her transfer application to Selas, the Clarify serum the UW Gov Board had ruled he take prior to examination. Not that it had helped. His truthful shit memory was still—surprise!—shit memory.
The Clarify formulation was quite pleasant, even euphoric, if Jake recalled honestly. The activation began with a cool refreshing feeling of wellbeing, without any fogginess or the slurring of speech that had dogged other formulas. He’d have gladly told his life story to the whole courtroom if they’d wished it. And Clarify had such an exact dosage schedule that, in the time it had taken for Jake to step down from the stand and back into the dock, he had come down and back to himself. Brilliant.
She had been an amazing scientist, a much-needed fresh intelligence for their station team, and above all, a possible link to his past. And now she was dead.
Silverman and Con were connected somehow. Perhaps they were in cahoots. Con had spun on the fly the rickety story about the encrypted message, the serum, and the reassigned pathologists (why had Jake not cleared that portion of the tale with Carmichael, anyway?) while Silverman had served as a backup plan, a mole into the Science department, someone to get the goods if Con’s coercion-and-seduction plan failed. But instead Con killed her…for…the money?
Disgusted, Jake let his head thump against the wall. Exquisite logic, for the alternate noir pulp universe where Con was a complete cold-blooded bastard.
But I don’t know any differently, do I?
“Sure I do.” His voice echoed unconvincingly in the lift space. Noirs never quite made sense.
He was missing something essential, and he realized he was still waiting for that something to clarify in his thoughts and clear Con. But it wasn’t going to happen, not without more information. He crawled back to the console. “How’s it coming?”
“I hoped you’d fix my problem, not add to it,” Kai grumbled. “Don’t rush me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Jake clicked off before Kai could respond.
Con’s gem sat in his palm, gleaming darkly sapphire. It was an older model, but still smaller and more expensive. No Earth refurbs for Con’s operation, whatever it was. Jake dropped it into his tablet’s memory well, thumbed the pad, and watched the screen grow bright again.
There were no flash-bangs or layers of documents or even a network link. The gem displayed a single vid layer. With a brush of fingers, Jake surfaced it, and it began to play.
Darkness. Then the camera pulled back, and Jake was looking at his own face. He shrank back against the lift wall and steadied the tablet against his knees.
Jake in the vid smiled brightly at him. “Hey there, me.”
The vid’s background was dark and shadowy, but it was clearly a lab. Jake could see the glints of metal and glass, the cabinets over his vid-self’s shoulder stocked with the indistinct outlines of chemical jars and equipment, hear the gentle hum of containment. It was unfamiliar. Though he could feel the cool lab table under his palm as he leaned forward—no. No, he couldn’t. It was unfamiliar. This wasn’t in his memory, he wouldn’t let it be. The lab? Making a vid? Telling Con to give it to him? No.
But he’d missed something. The vid-Jake was talking again.
“…thought I better pause so that future-me could collect myself.” Vid-Jake flashed another brilliant grin. “But if I know me, I’m a quick study. Not easily rattled.”
“You wouldn’t be,” Jake told the screen. “Not yet.” The man on the screen had quick, mobile features, a confident tilt to his head, and no visible scar above the ear.
“So, just to give me some reference, because I’m sure I’ll neglect the metadata encoding and who knows when I’ll get this, today is February 5th, 2231. It’s the night before the big day.” Vid-Jake leaned conspiratorially, his eyes and nose filling the screen. “The big confidential day that either no one will know about, or everyone will remember us for. Exciting!”
Gods. He sounded like…Nat. Jake shuddered.
“The problem is that there’s no problem. Things progressed fantastically well in the simulated trials and in our one successful human subject. You know, the guy who gave you this memory gem.” Vid-Jake winked. “That’s a secret, too. I’ve kept the logs as if I were doing simulation only. Tricky, but worth it. It gave me the jump on Rebecca, and she’s pissed. Pissed but respectful. That’s the way it should be. We’re back to normal.
“So tomorrow we’re doing the first big test. The official one with all the official subjects. I don’t even have any prep work to do, it’s maddening. And it’s all still confidential! I could talk to Rebecca, but she’s no fun, she went home after one toast—probably had to get her egg donation in, know what I’m sayin’? And I don’t want to talk to any of the others, they’re stricter about the sealed mouths than Rebecca, and they’re not even sitting for the testing. Anyway. The point is that tomorrow, you. Me. We’re doing it. We’re freeing the human race.”
Jake froze the vid, catching his former self mid-eyebrow waggle, his mouth agape. Had he really looked, sounded, been so young, and such a jerk? It was too precious, watching himself like this. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and activated the vid again.
“I know, I know, we’ve done some pretty great things already. But this is going to blow them all away. When people find out we beat this. Well.” Vid-Jake shrugged. “They’re probably going to be creeped out. Mistrustful. Typical ignorant reaction, you know. Baa-baa, sick sheep. But in this case, they’re right to be. The way he looks now, the way his immune system looks, it’s amazing. The hard part’s over. But it was hard, and painful.”
“Still, though…I don’t know. After I finish this, I think I’ll go back over the formulations again, see if I can’t inject a little more balance so it’s not such a harsh effect, or consider inducing a coma first. Not everyone has his tolerance for pain, and it was almost too much for him. We don’t want to frighten people more than we have to. And I suppose I should do some long-term studies on his overall health, but…nah. He’s fine. And I was right!” He gave an exultant laugh. “It’s just as I knew it would be. It’s easier than I knew it would be! I feel like I can do anything. Think anything. I can’t wait to be you, knowing what it’s like to feel this way for years. Think what we’ll accomplish—humans, I mean, when we don’t have to worry about constant boosting and disinfecting and all of it. It’s been three days since I administered Restore to him.” He smiled out at Jake. “In another ten hours, I’ll know what it feels like, too.”
The smile slid from Vid-Jake’s face. “And what’s the first thing Mom taught us?”
“Never trust euphoria,” Jake whispered.
“Exactly. Except, no. See, I know what I’m saying, even though I haven’t said it yet. Euphoria, that was the second thing. The first thing? Backup, backup, backup.”
Jake frowned. Dad had always said that.
“Although it could’ve been Dad,” allowed Vid-Jake. “We’ve always been pretty piss-poor at crediting.”