“How do we still not have permission to go to New Orleans? They have to know what we’re up against! They’d be crazy to try to deal with him without us!”
“I know, Marc. I agree. But unless it’s a total emergency, we can’t go anywhere but here and the automine sites. The CTTF in their infinite wisdom have decided they’ve got everything under control.”
“Well, they’re stupid!”
I sigh. “There’s nothing we can do about it but train and be ready. So just keep getting those kids prepared. And keep practicing with your cloud. We’ll need you as much as anyone else here when they finally do call us in.”
That seems to mollify him.
“Did you need anything else?”
“No. That was all. I’m just worried.”
“We all are, but it’s all going to be OK.”
I hope that’s true. I put a hand on his shoulder like Father used to do and walk him to the door of the office.
“Noah?”
“Yeah, Marc?”
“I really like your grandparents. Having them around, it’s almost like having Father back. I mean, it’s different, but it’s like they’re wise and they love us. Like he was. Like he did. Thanks for bringing them here.”
“You’re welcome.” I didn’t exactly bring them here for him, or for any of my siblings, but it’s nice to know they’re making things better for everyone. I’ll have to tell them what Marc said later. It’s the kind of thing they’d be glad to hear.
As Marc makes his way to the entrance, I feel Evan and Valerie coming my direction, which I didn’t expect. According to my schedule in the overlay, Evan is supposed to be working with Louise on containment strategies in case Jeff goes full annihilation mode and just lets the swarm loose. Maybe he wants to bounce ideas. But why would he be coming with Valerie? She was supposed to be in the medical wing this morning.
Valerie reaches my door first and pokes her head in, looking around.
“Hey, Noah,” she says hesitantly. “Have you got a few minutes to talk?”
“I can make some time, “ I tell her, walking back toward my desk. “What’s up?”
She enters, pulling a clearly reluctant Evan by the hand.
“Hey brother,” he says, sitting down at the small, round table and pulling out the chair next to him. “Come over and sit down.”
“Sure.” I take the seat. “What’s up? And why are you two acting weird? Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, there is,” he says, sounding tired. “I’m worried about you, man.”
“I’m worried about all of us. More than any time before, we’re fighting to literally save the world.”
“No, it’s not that. That’s important, sure. But that’s not what we’re here about.”
“Noah,” Valerie says. Her voice seems off. She doesn’t normally use this kind of overly sweet tone, does she? “First of all, we want you to know that we love you. What we’re going to say comes from that love. We really want you to be happy.”
“You’re making me nervous. What’s going on?”
“This is an intervention. Sort of,” Evan says, looking down.
“Aren’t those supposed to be big rooms full of people stopping you from using drugs or something?”
“Yeah, normally.”
“I hardly ever use the dopamine hits anymore. And I’ve been careful not to push myself on the bots lately, even when we’re doing training exercises. I’m being good.”
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“No, not that either.” Valerie’s hands press against the smooth, white tabletop. “It’s Lin.”
“Lin is doing great,” I reply quickly. “Why are you saying there’s something wrong with Lin?”
“It’s more you and Lin.”
“Just spit it out.”
“Noah,” Evan says, “you’re getting weird holes in your memory. I think Lin is putting them there.”
“I always have holes in my memory. That’s my whole memory, a giant hole. I read, I keep it a few hours, maybe a day if I’m doing really well, then I lose it down the hole.”
“We know. But you’ve always seemed to compensate for that pretty well.” Evan looks up at my face. “I know. I helped you design those systems. But what we’re seeing lately are a lot of breakdowns in the system. Things you should be remembering, putting in your daily reading, but you don’t seem to know anything about. Which makes me think that you’re still letting Lin edit your memories.”
That doesn’t sound right. Lin said she’d stop doing that. I’ve got that in my daily read and it’s still early enough in the day that I remember it clearly.
“Like what?” I demand.
“How often do you think you and Lin fight?”
I check my index and logs.
“Hardly ever. Maybe once or twice in our whole relationship.”
Evan sighs and Valerie shakes her head.
“You two fight a lot,” Valerie says sadly. “Especially since Yang Song died. It’s gotten really bad.”
I check her vitals. She doesn't think she's lying, though she obviously is.
“Name one time!”
Evan sighs again. “Look in the folder in the root of your memory files. There’s a hidden subfolder there named emergency_backup. All lowercase with an underscore between the words. It won’t show up in the file browser, you’ll have to open it by name.”
I look at him suspiciously, but do as he says. Sure enough, there’s a hidden folder in my memory right where he said it would be.
“What’s in here?”
“All the things you’ve forgotten. All the things she’s made you forget.”
I put up a finger and dive into the files. Dozens of them. Fights over food, exercise, and funds for her data center back before we hit our gold deposit. Petty, stupid arguments over things she didn’t like as she read through my memories. Most of all, trouble with and from Yang Song, some when she was alive, much more after she died.
After each one, the make-up. The soft touches, the sweet words. Sometimes tears, sometimes kissing, sometimes sex. Every one ending in that oh-so-reasonable request to wipe the fight from my mind just this once.
And finally, at the earliest deleted entry, Evan helping me set up this backup.
“Well, shit.”
I’ve been missing out on so much of my life. Not just the fights and the making up, but all the events that led up to them or happened near the same time. Sitting on a couch with Lin and watching movies. Conversations with her or my siblings or grandparents. Little Chad’s birth.
I didn’t have bugs in my system. I had Lin wiping events from my mind. They would have been gone forever to me if Evan hadn’t had the foresight to set this up.
“Sorry, brother. I didn’t want to have to break it to you. I was hoping you two would just work things out. You really seemed to have hit a good stride before you two went to the Wallace Hospital. Before Yang Song, you know…”
“Yeah.”
“And as funny as it was for me to hear how you had sex for the first time three different times, I figured you should know. Also, I wanted to check on one more thing. I have to know. You did a sort of a magical one-eighty about getting engaged. You told me that you thought we were all too young for this one day, then like the next day you put a ring on it. Did she, maybe, write that in for you?”
I search back through the changes she made to my logs. “No. That one was legitimate. Original text on everything about that decision.”
Evan sighs in relief and Valerie puts her hand on his arm.
“That’s a relief,” she says. “We were a little worried. But we want you to know that we understand. You love her. We know that. And I can understand where she was coming from by doing this. But fighting and making up is important for relationships. And I think you both need to do that, not just have one person carry all of it and the other not remember at all. It’s OK to have fights. It’s OK to disagree. It’s just not good to never learn from them. Fight, make up, learn. That’s how relationships grow.”
“Yeah, like you two ever fight.”
“Of course we do,” she says. “We’re just not loud about it. We can have a fight in front of you if you want.”
“No, that’s just weird. Thanks though.”
As they walk down the hall I hear Valerie quietly tell Evan how well I took the news.
I guess I did.
Why am I not furious with Lin? It seems like I should be, but I’m just not. There should be anger boiling up inside me, but instead there’s just an empty spot where it should be, like when I bump up against the void where I know my guilt should be. I just feel like I always feel about Lin. Crazily, hopelessly in love.
I’m so broken. I can’t let anyone read my brain again ever.
I reach thousands of tiny fingers to the port in my satchel where Lin’s been jacking in to alter my brain and fuse the surface closed. I’ll undo it next time when I need to make an update, but until then no one plugs in.