A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) (14 page)

“Well, it’s a definite possibility, because of the way their memories of what is real are interwoven with your account.”

“What’s the other possibility?” Marak asked.

“There’s been some sort of reality shift.”

Marak snorted. But Kat’s uncle wasn’t laughing. Not, in fact, even smiling. “Wait, are you serious?” Marak asked.

“Dead serious. Dani, you work in the chronography laboratory in our reality. Do you in yours?”

“Yes.” She grasped on to the possibility like a life raft. He made it sound perfectly reasonable, no matter how unbelievable it was.

“So let’s just hypothesize, for a few minutes, that time has diverged somewhere. Two paths, both leading to a slightly different version of this moment. It would seem that our first order of business is to determine where they diverged, would you agree?”

“This all sounds wacko,” said Marak frankly. “But in my line of work, I’ve heard all sorts of crazy stories, and sometimes you have to submit to what we call a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ and see where it takes you.”

Kat had been sitting back silently, thinking. Now she spoke. “Okay, let’s go with this. If it diverged, it would have to be longer than seven years ago. Dani, in your reality, when did Marak and I meet?”

“September 17, 2206.”

Uncle Royce pointed at her. “And that’s what makes me believe this is possible. People who have had dreams, even detailed dreams, can’t answer questions like that.”

“We actually talked about this last night,” Dani explained. “Well, not we exactly, but …”

“Yes, we know what you mean,” said Kat. “Go on.”

“Marak—the other Marak—was wanting to go through a gate.” Abruptly, she looked over at Uncle Royce. “A gate to your estate. Unless Kat has another uncle somewhere.”

“No, he’s the only one,” said Kat.

“Interesting.” Uncle Royce pondered this new information. “But I didn’t know Marak in 2206.”

“No, he didn’t know you either. He wanted to interview you about something.”

“I actually did go to your estate to interview you about something, back in 2206,” Marak interrupted, “but I never found you. I can’t remember the exact date. What happened, Dani? In your, uh, reality, I guess?”

“You tried the gate, but it was locked. You tried to climb the fence, with absolutely no success, and that was when Kat came by and saw you. She laughed, and that’s when you met.” Dani thought about mentioning that she saw Marak rattle the padlock in the lab, but decided that would just further complicate something already too complicated. The goal was to find where the realities diverged. She guessed, anyway. But Uncle Royce seemed to take this whole thing matter-of-factly, and it had gotten them a lot further than her panic had.

Uncle Royce turned to Kat. “Do you remember where you were on September 17 that year?”

She thought for a minute. “I was twenty. I would have been on a break between summer quarter and fall quarter at the University of Washington. I suppose it would have depended on the weather that day.”

Dani flashed back to an image of a garden with a pleasant breeze on a sunny day. She knew what the weather was on September 17, but that was in her reality. It might not have been the same for Kat. For this Kat, anyway.

Marak stood, too intent on finding the answer to sit, Dani guessed, and starting piecing together clues. “I remember the day I was going to interview you, if that was the same day. It was a nice enough day that I decided to park several blocks away and walk. You had quite the garden back then; I remember flowers and even a few birds.”

“My garden’s still there.”

“That’s right. You had us out for a luncheon on the smaller patio last summer.” Marak snapped his fingers suddenly. “Now I remember. I actually went through that gate to your estate. The reason I didn’t interview you is because I happened on a private conversation taking place on that same patio, and I backed off as quickly as I could. Neither of the two people were you. But then I got stuck, because when I went back to the gate, it was locked. It must have had an automatic latch or something, because I couldn’t get back out. I was literally trapped.”

Kat started laughing. “You were actually trespassing?” she teased him.

Marak looked uncomfortable. “It was extremely awkward, to be honest. I couldn’t go past the couple talking on the patio. I couldn’t go out the gate. I finally worked my way around front and rang the bell. A maid answered and took pity on me. She buzzed me out the front gate, and I walked all the way around to get back to my helicar.” He focused on some distant point, trying to remember the details.

“That would have been Randa. She was like a member of the family. She left us to get married in 2210. I still send her gifts on her birthday, and on her kids’ birthdays,” Uncle Royce said. “Curious, though. If you came to interview me, why didn’t you just ask for me at the front door when the maid answered?”

Marak’s gaze snapped back. “I remember now. I did ask for you. She said you were out on your boat. Which would probably be the same one I met Kat on seven years ago today, right?”

And that put the rest of the pieces together for Kat. “That’s right. I remember now.” She turned to Uncle Royce. “You had invited me to go sailing with you. I walked. I would have passed right by your side gate on the way to the marina.”

Dani took a deep breath. “In my reality, after you met Kat, she invited you to come with her to meet her uncle on his boat.”

A thick silence fell as they all processed the facts of the two different realities.

“I think,” said Uncle Royce, “that we have found the time the two realities diverged. In one reality, Marak went through the gate. In the other reality, he didn’t. But there’s something else.”

He paused. They all looked at him intently, waiting.

“The thing is, that gate did have a latch, about 2 meters up. Higher than usual for a lock, Marak, so you might not have seen it. But I always, always kept it locked.”

There was another pause. This time, Dani broke the silence. “And you used a padlock, which you’ve since replaced, I’m guessing.”

“I did! And I have! And I have to ask: How did you know?”

“Because the old padlock,” she answered, “is in the object library at the institute. I scanned it two days ago myself.”

“In
your
reality,” Marak pointed out. “I wonder if it’s there in our reality.”

This “your reality, our reality” distinction was beginning to make Dani uncomfortable. She so wanted to think of these two as the friends she had met and become so close to over the last six months, but they didn’t share her love for Jored, so how could they be the same? She would trust her Kat and Marak with her life. She had no reason to doubt the people that faced her across the room, but they had had almost nine years of different experiences. Different experiences could change you. Look what had happened to her in one day!

“I could check tomorrow,” Dani offered.

“If it’s there, it might be useful to see what it shows,” Kat suggested.

“No,” Uncle Royce said. “It is there. I donated it myself. I remember now. The institute had just determined that metal objects made the best sources, and I thought about all the people that had walked past that gate, along that street. It’s a popular place to walk, on nice days, as scarce as helicar parking is down a little closer to the water.”

Kat looked at him sharply. “You helped the institute?”

“Well, I am on the board of directors, you know. More of a figurehead now, but back then, I was involved to a fair degree. I was eager to further the science, not the privacy invasions.” He patted her knee affectionately. “We didn’t know as much then as we do now.”

“You’re on the board of directors?” This was news to Dani. The names of the board members were never published anywhere, as far as she knew. Wasn’t there something she was supposed to find out about the board of directors? She tried to remember, but her brain was still fuzzy, and she suddenly realized she was really tired. She yawned.

“Yes, I am. I try to influence them in right directions. I’ve been working on the privacy issues from the inside,” he said, “with little success, unfortunately. I still have some irons in the fire, however.”

Dani yawned again. This time Kat noticed. “It’s after eleven! I didn’t realize it was getting so late. Dani, do you think you can get home by yourself, or do you want one of us to go with you?”

“I’ll take her home,” said Uncle Royce. “I have my helicar outside. Where do you live, Dani?”

She told him. She barely remembered getting in the helicar, arriving at her apartment, or stumbling from the elevator to her door. Just as she was dropping off, she remembered why she wanted to know about the board of directors.

“I never told them about the forty-three point six percent,” she mumbled to herself as she fell asleep.

RIACH TUBE STOP, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 0740, Thursday, June 8, 2215.

When she got out of the tube car at the RIACH stop, Dani was surprised to see Anders getting out also, two cars down. She waited for him by the clock tower. She was still trying to wrap her brain around this two-different-realities concept. Had Anders done all that research in this reality, or was that the other reality? Or both?

That question led her to wonder about when she had made the actual switch. Last night, they had pretty well narrowed down the point of the reality stream divergence to that moment in 2206, but they hadn’t talked at all about when her perceptions had changed. She reassured herself by remembering that she had looked over the data again on her way in this morning, and it had to have come from somewhere.

“I thought we weren’t going to meet till lunch.” Anders’s tone was teasing, lighthearted.

Dani was preoccupied with marveling at how easily she had adapted to thinking in two realities, but she tried to match his mood.

“We do both take the blue line,” she countered. “It’s bound to happen sometime or another.”

“We’ve probably passed each other a hundred times and not realized it.”

“That’s probably true. Maybe we should make it a regular thing.” She smiled.

She decided to assume, for the time being, that either the switch came before her after-work meeting with Anders the day before, or the versions of Anders from both realities were similarly motivated. Either way, she felt she could trust him to still want to help.

He nodded happily. “So I’ll be looking for hidden names of investors and contributors today, in my free moments. Anything else?”

As they set off walking for the security gate, she pondered. That sounded like he had the same memories she did of their last meeting. She took her cue from that, and mentally confirmed her assumption that the switch occurred before 5 P.M. It should be safe to share her questions with him. “Now that you mention it, yes. I was wondering last night where the extra money goes. Is it needed for operational expenses and salaries? Or is it being stored up somewhere?”

“Good question. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“Also, do you know who sits on the board of directors for the institute? I don’t remember anything ever being published. Nothing in the New Employee Handbook, anyway.” She realized she felt more comfortable trusting the new Anders than she did trusting the new Kat and Marak. Maybe it was because she realized that at least half her shared experiences with him had come from this new reality. Whereas, with Kat and Marak, there were six months of potential differences. Or even more. In this reality, she might have met them earlier.

“Haven’t run across that, but I’ll look.” He glanced up to gauge the distance to the security gate. “Shall we change the subject, just in case?”

“Yeah. We probably shouldn’t talk about books either, right?” She teased, lowering her voice.

He made a face and muttered, “I’d prefer not, if it’s the same to you.” Then he said, more loudly, “So, what do you think the special of the day will be today, in the cafeteria?”

“I hardly ever eat there, you know. I don’t suppose you’d care to make a recommendation? You could give me a gourmet review of the best of things and the worst of things.”

“Sounds like the beginning of a novel I once read,” he began. She could guess where he had read it. At the same moment, they looked at each other, snickered, and made the tacit decision to avoid that risky topic one more time. There were those gorgeous blue eyes again. Dani had never realized breaking the rules could be so fun. Or that clandestine behavior could be so addicting.

The irisscan confirmed their identities, and they walked together the remaining distance to the main entry in companionable silence, conscious of a blooming friendship. Dani toyed with the idea that it could be something more. The entry doors swung open and although the viewwall automatically split to show them each their daily schedules, neither of them paid it any attention.

RIACH LABS, Alki Beach, Seattle. 0800, Thursday, June 8, 2215.

It wasn’t until she reached the chronolab that Dani realized she hadn’t seen the protesters outside. In the old reality, Kat’s schedule was like clockwork; rain or shine, she was there. One more indication that she didn’t really know this new Kat, no matter how much she seemed the same. She would be cautious until she knew more.