The woman curled on the bed looked as fragile as a small bird in the monochrome dawn, her face lit in flickering colours by the kaleidoscope of images from her Ciri as it whispered to her. From their bedroom window, Miguel looked down at the human wreckage lying along the sidewalk of Fentanyl Alley, just beyond their apartment. He had stopped suggesting they move.
As manager of the Cooperativo de la Bahía, Miguel earned enough to afford a better apartment. He had offered her the chance, but some instinct or affinity for chaos made her feel safer here. It was one of the many mysteries he was forbidden to explore.
They had lived together for two years—since she came back from London. London had changed her.
They met for the first time one Saturday morning at the Iron Horse Café. He was enjoying the early morning peace after finishing his shift when she jogged up to a table and sat down. He told her the café was closed. She raised an eyebrow like a judge delivering a verdict, then pointed at his cup of coffee. They sparred. She got her Colombian with a shot of bourbon, a large one. She was a lush back then, but beautiful, and smart, and he believed her when she said she was in control.
It became their thing. Every Saturday morning they would meet, duel with words, and develop an easy grace between them. She said she was an Algebroid. He knew the toll Algebra could take on its staff—had seen it happen. But she was different.
And then came London, and she returned truly changed. She quit her job at Algebra and took work behind the bar at the Iron Horse, serving rather than drinking. Never a drop, as far as he could tell. He moved into her tiny, run-down studio in this defeated neighbourhood. And somehow, it was perfect.
He still missed the old Charli—the sparky, sarcastic, explosive young woman who could slap you down with acid wit and leave you laughing. She could still reach that part of herself, given the right moment. But now she was quieter. More solemn. Even so, it was still perfect.
Miguel moved softly to the kitchen closet and closed the door behind him. He ran his hand along the work surface, found his mug and the bottled water. Hooking a finger over the rim, he poured until the water touched his knuckle. Then he placed the mug in the microwave and tapped the button four times. The machine came alive with its usual hum and glow. In the confined space, it was loud, but he knew from experience it would not wake her.
The microwave beeped. He spooned in his coffee, stirred it slowly, and began to think about the day ahead.
Then he heard her phone. Heard her voice.
Opening the door, he saw her sitting up in bed, hunched over the screen, an earbud in place, speaking in tongues.
“Our individual graphs are isolated from the meta-graph.”
He moved around to her side and closed her free hand around the coffee mug. She glanced up and offered a brief smile, her focus fixed on the chaos coming down the line.
“Pattern Mafia voodoo is not something we understand. It's not something we can understand.”
There was a long pause.
“No, you’re right. That sounds impossible. Causality still applies for every iteration. I’ll burn an ID. Next available shuttle. Get in tonight.”
She cut the call and stared into the distance.
“London?” he asked, knowing the moment he said it that it was the wrong thing to say.
“I told you before,” she said quietly. “If you don’t ask, I don’t have to lie.”
I wait until Miguel has left for work and bring Harper Jane Turner out of cold storage. She will live a brief life, just long enough to get me to London.
According to her passport, Harper Jane is an inch taller than I am, has hazel eyes rather than green, wears corporate khaki chinos and a dark green sweatshirt for comfort, and sports a long, dark wig. I look close enough to the girl in the passport photo that the differences can be explained by diet and exercise. I can’t disguise the height discrepancy, so I use shoe lifts. One has a small conical nub that disrupts my gait to confuse recognition software.
Harper is very corporate. A mid-level executive for a Cincinnati-based global detergent company. She pulls a GoBoy Basics roller case and wears a Port Authority Core Soft Shell jacket she bought at Urban, just off Union Square, on the way to the docks. Harper defines anonymity in a crowd. These days, that’s the only way I travel.
Security is just a body scan. No random internal, which is a relief. The sub-orbital departure lounge is stark with rows of blue seating, a countdown screen for the 2 p.m. embarkment, a muted Fox-CNN feed, and a Café-Grumpy trolley trying its best to lift the mood. I get a double shot espresso. It’s good.
Then the weirdness Skeleton Man warned me about begins to creep in. The hydrofoil stirring on the swell must be leased, because it’s branded PanGlobal—a company I don’t recognize. I don’t think much of it at first. We board the hydrofoil, which takes us out to the launch facility in the bay. That’s also PanGlobal-branded, as are the sub-orbitals.
A PanGlobal woman checks my straps, hands me PanGlobal noise-canceling headphones in a polymer antiviral bag, and gives me a PanGlobal corporate smile. The badge on the seat in front of me says Boeing, not SpaceX, but it’s definitely a SpaceX bird. I’ve flown on them before.
Did Boeing buy SpaceX overnight?
What the hell is going on?
The flight to London is thirty minutes of roller-coaster physics. I watch the sky shift from blue to black and stay that way as we fall east into the European night. It’s not long enough for deep thought, but it’s plenty of time to worry.
Skeleton Man was right. Of course he was. The mad old spider bastard was always right—serious as a heart attack.
So what just happened? How did they do it?
The Brahmin may be sinister, but they don’t have access to the kind of technology the Pattern Mafia can deploy. Have the Pattern Mafia had second thoughts about us? Did they do another rewrite?
If so, why am I isolated from the change, like Skeleton Man, like Charles? And why is Spade blind to it?
If the Pattern Mafia had changed sides, why am I even alive? They could overwrite my graph with ease. They rewrote the entire meta-graph two years ago. Erasing me would be nothing.
So no. I don’t think it’s them.
Which begs the question, who else has that kind of control authority over reality?
Harper Jane Turner stares back at me from the reflection on the screen showing the European night outside. Her eyes, my eyes, look frightened.