Something strange had happened to the data held in the storage system. Though the spectacles were designed to record everything viewed by the wearer, there was nothing older than six days. It was as though they had been reset. Years of data had been lost.
Saskia used a sequence of blinks, fixations and saccades to control the interface. She summoned its oldest visual capture.
Suddenly, she saw the telescoping facade of the Great Summer Palace. The time offset suggested that the capture had been taken shortly after Kamo had knocked her unconscious. So she must have woken in the Amber Room, evaded capture, and made it outside the palace.
The viewpoint swung left and right. There were sounds, too. Saskia selected ‘Intra-Cranial Device’ as the sound output and had the strange experience of overhearing a conversation between herself and her Ego computer. Saskia thought of her unremembered self as ‘Saskia Lacuna’.
Lacuna spoke in a manner that was strangely cadenced. She spoke to Ego as though he were a friend rather than field equipment. Perhaps, thought Saskia, this was the effect of her head injury.
In the capture, Kamo and Soso were not to be seen. They must have already made their getaway with the money. Saskia watched as Lacuna looked towards a celestial object and used it to recalibrate the date and time of the spectacles.
Cool idea, she thought. Confirms that spectacles were reset. But why would my fall to the floor do that? Surely it was something more serious. An electromagnetic pulse?
Saskia skipped through the capture, stopping and starting as required.
Over the next minutes of conversation, she learned that Saskia Lacuna claimed to be from a parallel universe.
Saskia blinked to pause the capture. She commanded the spectacles to assume transparency, and watched flashes of Lake Geneva through the dripping, bending trees. Her first instinct was to dismiss the idea of a parallel universe as a fantasy induced by the head injury. However, it explained both the lacunar amnesia and the fastware reset of the spectacles.
Saskia knew from her security lectures that there was ample scientific evidence of the quantum entanglement phenomenon crossing between realities on nearby world-lines. Given that Saskia’s brain chip–and perhaps those of other Saskias in nearby universes–were designed to be receptive to targeted entanglement events, then it was possible for the information state of Saskia’s chip to be overwritten following a malformed quantum code injection. The pulse for this event might also knock out the fastware on the spectacles, force her Ego computer offline, and explain the lacunar amnesia–which, in this scenario, was not amnesia at all but a period in which Saskia’s mind was effectively replaced by another.
What happened to my mind pattern when Saskia Lacuna replaced it? Who or what put my mind back after hers had left?
Saskia commanded the spectacles to resume. She listened to Saskia Lacuna tell the Ego unit that she was somehow lost in time and trying to make it back to the future by using the Amber Room as a portal.
This was enough to convince Saskia that Lacuna was telling the truth. She knew that the Amber Room was used by Meta as one of three anchors within Maxwell Space to triangulate matter injection. The nature of massed amber gave rise to a property that was tractable from a temporally remote perspective. It made sense that, in the reality of Saskia Lacuna, Meta, or a similar organisation, would use it as a portal.
It frustrated Saskia that the data capture was incomplete. Presumably, Lacuna had seldom used the spectacles. Saskia would need to get the rest of the story from her Ego computer.
When Saskia removed the spectacles and rubbed her eyes, she saw that they had already reached Yverdon-les-Bains and were passing the Parc d’Entremonts. The rain was loud on the roof of the taxicab.
Gaus saw her stir. He said, ‘We’re a few blocks away.’
Saskia was about to reply when she caught sight of a Peugeot Bébé parked at the northern end of the street. It was not far from a tall gate. She tapped the shoulder of the driver. They swung towards the kerb and the driver set the engine to a rattling idle.
Saskia reached across Gaus and wiped away the condensation from the window. It was certainly a Bébé. The registration number was indistinct but might have been that of Count Nakhimov, who had delivered her body to the doctor earlier that day, according to Ms Schild.
‘Wait here,’ she said to Gaus.
Gaus shrugged. She felt him watch her as she climbed down to the empty pavement. The rain was falling at a sharp angle. It was a typical Swiss May downpour. She hurried across the road with one hand on her hat.
The Peugeot Bébé had stopped in the dark gap between two street lamps. The automobile had acquired a canvas roof since she had seen it last, and a second bench seat behind the driver, but the label hanging from the steering column gave the registration address as Volketswil, where the Count had a villa.
The label was flecked with blood. It made her think of the label that had been tied around her big toe. She stood for a moment looking into the dark cockpit. The knowledge of her mission was a support and she leaned upon it, resuming the cold regard of the Agent Singular as she contemplated what lay curled around the steering column.
By the time she returned to the taxi, her composure was complete. She ignored the questioning stare of Gaus and said, ‘Be so good,’ to the driver, who found his gear and got them underway.
The Hotel Moderne was situated in the corner of a nearby square. It was adjacent to an impressive hall with a clock whose iron hands had come to prayer. Midnight. The square was not deserted, as Saskia had anticipated given the hour and the rain, but the activity was mostly through traffic, pedestrian and taxicab. When their driver stopped, Saskia passed him double the fare and thanked him.
She and Gaus stood in the rain as the taxicab shuddered through its turning circle and faded away. They both looked at the Moderne for a moment. Gaus turned to her. In answer to the curiosity in his expression, she put her spectacles on.
They highlighted a window on the third floor.
‘There,’ she said, pointing. ‘Fourth from the left. But that is a job for me. Do you remember the automobile I checked in the Parc d’Entremonts?’
‘The Renault.’
‘It’s a Bébé, deliberately parked in the darkest place on that street. You can’t miss it.’ She watched him for a reaction. Seeing none, she said, ‘Drive it back here. It should take you no more than ten minutes.’
‘Very well.’
He turned and walked into the shadowed alley alongside the hotel. His shoes were loud on the cobbles, his hands were in his pockets and his head down. Saskia watched him until he was out of sight.
She turned to look at the face of the hotel. She could ring for service but that might alert whoever had taken her Ego computer. She walked into the side alley. The darkness there was deep. She asked the spectacles to compute a climbable route to the third floor. It suggested a path that Saskia disagreed with, so she dismissed the overlay and decided to rely on its night vision alone. She had been the second-best climber in her Recruitment Clade.
She flexed her hands. There was strength in them, though the subtlety of movement was fading. The truth was that her body was on an unstoppable downward curve. Nothing could save her. The technology of her own time could restore life under some circumstances, for some people, and in an Emergency Suite. Not Saskia. Not here. Her prognosis was CODA; a brief encore. A haunting of herself.
She removed her long gloves and tucked them into her bosom along with the spectacles. She stepped out of her boots and hooked them by the heels into the ribbon of her cape. She pressed her hat firmly onto her head. Then she gripped the drainpipe and tested its connection to the wall. It moved. The metal hoops that attached the lower section had come away years ago. Saskia pondered for a moment. She put her fingertips into the gaps between the large bricks. Her stockinged feet found similar cracks. She looked up. This would have to be done quickly.