Chapter Nineteen
Interrogation
Monday, March 19. 11.10 A.M. 125 S.A.
Vatican. Rome, Italy
Lee was nervous and took a drink from the glass of water in front of him. Although he had eaten his breakfast only a couple of hours ago, the wait was getting on his nerves.
What is this all about? he wondered.
He was inside a waiting room with a mirrored window. There was a water dispenser near the door, two chairs and a table. No matter how he looked at it, it had all the appearance of a movie interrogation room. He had never been in one, but it was what he had seen even in video games, it was something that didn't change much over the years no matter what. There were sensors in the room that picked up his behavior, body language, breathing and pupil movements.
He was in one of the gendarmerie rooms, where he had been taken after being led into the Vatican by those who had come to fetch him. Hadn't the Holy Father sent for him? What was that all about? He was certainly inside the Vatican but the area he was in he was sure was called the Arch of Bells, and was part of the facilities used by the Swiss Guard.
He was about to take another drink of water, when the door opened and Egger entered, followed by a young woman with long pink hair.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Egger said.
"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rubens. My name is Van, I'm from Nevermore, SID."
Hearing that, Lee took a first look at the fey girl to study her. She really was really pretty but fey. Looks weren't supposed to fool him. She sure was the oldest one in that room.
Van had introduced herself quickly and almost as if she was bothered by protocol. Lee didn't know why, but he got the impression that she was the kind of woman who would get right to the point, without beating around the bush.
Van felt her ears burning. I don't know why but I think this guy just thought of something that really pissed me off, she thought.
Lee extended his hand in acceptance of Van's greeting and they got to the heart of the matter.
"Excuse me, I thought you said I was required here," Lee said, turning to Egger.
"Yes," Egger admitted. "The Holy Father asked in person for you to be escorted to a safe place."
Safe place? If there really had been a bomb here that's not what you'd call a good decision, Van thought to herself.
"Safe place? I think I heard something about a threat here?," Lee said. He was trying to understand the situation. The fact that the Pope personally requested his escort to a safe place was puzzling. He had no idea why his presence was so important to the Holy Father. "I would like to know what is the reason behind all this," Lee said cautiously, trying to maintain his composure despite his growing nervousness.
Egger exchanged a quick glance with Van before replying, "Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with all the details yet. But, I can assure you that he is not in danger. The Holy Father has personal reasons for wanting to ensure your protection."
Lee frowned, trying to decipher Egger's words. Personal reasons? Why would the Pope have personal reasons to protect him, a seemingly ordinary individual? However, he decided not to press the matter further at that point and continue to listen to what they had to tell him.
"Is it something so serious that you can't tell me?"
"Yes, though the situation has changed, and we believe yours as well," Van said.
Lee looked at both of them inquisitively. "M-my situation? What do you mean?"
Van took the floor in what appeared to be a friendly tone. "Don't worry. We simply want to ask you a few questions. I understand that you have questions of your own Mr. Rubens, but you will have to answer ours first."
Am I being interrogated now? I'm in a damn interrogation room after all!
Van didn't seem to mind the nervous twitch in Lee's left eye. "You grew up in an orphanage, right?"
"Yes."
"You have no next of kin of any kind?"
"No, I was found without identification. My only family was the orphanage for as long as I can remember."
Van nodded, wrinkling her lips. Almost like a fey, she thought. "There was nothing that jumped out in the analysis regarding any relatives either?"
"No."
"That's strange."
"That's what everybody thought, and what I also think is that, whoever my parents were, they must have been CoTW, since I didn't have any identification."
"I see," Van nodded.
CoTW, short for Citizen of The Wild, was a term used to refer to nomadic groups of people who did not agree to use the Neurowire, and chose to move about in the world without any identification. Although they thought that this gave them a certain freedom, without being tied to the Neurowire connection, the truth was that they were identified by security systems, which allowed governments to know where they were. Many moved between cities, living freely and with their own belief system.
A lifestyle more philosophical than real freedom, but the CoTW alluded that they were like feys of the legends, but without the characteristics of them. Living in freedom and harmony with nature, while still availing themselves of certain benefits of society as they even had their own market system.
" Did you never try to look for them? I mean, possible relatives?" Van asked.
Lee nodded slowly. "I did try a couple of times, I even hired Aeon private detectives. Something like that had already been done since the orphanage, but it all came up fruitless."
Van nodded wordlessly. Then from her coat she took out a small cube which she placed in the middle of the table and pressed it. "Tell me, Mr. Reubens, have you ever seen this person?"
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dg6twxc-3793c338-ad13-4cf3-b3f7-6884c2a07015.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_1172,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_3_chapter19_by_hasegawakein_dg6twxc-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTIyOCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGc2dHd4Yy0zNzkzYzMzOC1hZDEzLTRjZjMtYjNmNy02ODg0YzJhMDcwMTUuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTg2OCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.QfYzDrwxaOmtaMk85aC-UOZkMGQXfA5U-OvA0ybCwCk [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dg6twxc-3793c338-ad13-4cf3-b3f7-6884c2a07015.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_1172,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_3_chapter19_by_hasegawakein_dg6twxc-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTIyOCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGc2dHd4Yy0zNzkzYzMzOC1hZDEzLTRjZjMtYjNmNy02ODg0YzJhMDcwMTUuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTg2OCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.QfYzDrwxaOmtaMk85aC-UOZkMGQXfA5U-OvA0ybCwCk]
A hologram had been projected and showed him in three dimensions the bust of a girl with red hair and glasses. Lee studied the young woman's face for a few moments, and shook his head. Could it be possible that she was a relative of his? After all this time?
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Van nodded in the negative and was about to wave her hand, when Lee interrupted her.
"May I ask, who is she?"
Van studied the gestures. "It doesn't matter if you don't know her... then-"
"Where is she from? Can you tell me that much at least?"
"United Kingdom," Van replied.
"I see." For some reason he didn't seem to respond to that. However, it couldn't be possible, Lee thought.
Van finished making her hand motion and this time two other humanoid holograms appeared, one dressed in priest's robes and the other was a gothic-looking nun. "What about either of them? Or maybe both of them? Have you ever seen them?" Van again studied Lee's every gesture.
Lee looked at them several times. Since he had been used to seeing priests and nuns since he was a child, he wanted to answer for sure but, no matter how hard he tried to remember, he had never seen those faces. Finally he also declined.
Van and Egger gave him a series of further questions, studying him closely.
Because of the wait, Lee was still nervous. Although waiting was a common practice before interrogation, in this case it had not been intentional given what they had discovered in the tunnel moments before, although Lee knew nothing about it.
Lee Reubens did not have Neurowire, so they could not interrogate him and analyze his reactions as they would in a normal interrogation. They had to do it the old school way, aided by devices to read body language, pupil movement and dilation.
"Tell me," Van began, "Mr. Reubens, exactly what motivated you to study the subject of the psychological arrow of time?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It appears on your resume that you study virtual particles, and also predictive simulation along with neurobiological memory time. That's related to studies of the concept of time, right?"
"Yes. They are. Although, that's just a hobby."
"Hobby? "
"Yes. I'm an astrophysicist for the most part, and the predictive simulation in biological organisms is nothing more than a hobby. Sometimes in our spare time we physicists tend to play too much with mathematics. Building mathematical scenarios that have no reflection in reality can be one of those hobbies."
"I see," Van nodded. He was right, after all she knew Oxy, and she was quite given to doing something similar.
Van nodded, seemingly satisfied with Lee's response. However, Lee's glinted with a hint of curiosity and Van decided to extend her explanation.
"I understand that you consider it a hobby, but such studies might have deeper implications than you imagine," she said, scrutinizing Lee's reaction. "Have you ever experienced anything that challenges our conventional understanding of time, anything that seemed to go against established laws?
Lee frowned, trying to remember if he had ever had any unusual time-related experiences. The memory of the dream he'd had that morning glowed for a moment in his memory, even though that wasn't time-related. Although he wasn't sure how to respond, he decided to be honest.
"The truth... is that the concept of neurological time has always appealed to me as well," Lee said with a somewhat sad smile. "If you've read my profile you know that I can't remember anything prior to my twelfth birthday and, on the other hand, the woman who took care of me, Sister Claire, died when she was one hundred and nine, even though she looked no older than fifty."
Van nodded, she thought she knew where that was going.
"She had obtained her Evo-Lift at the age of fifty, to continue caring for children in the orphanage. When she took me in she was already ninety-nine years old and, only a couple of years later, she was diagnosed with memory fragmentation. They tried to get him treatments, but to no avail. It didn't work. When I was coming out of college she died."
Van nodded.
In the old days she had seen the ravages of neurodegenerative diseases, but that today was a thing of the past. Though that didn't mean there weren't certain new maladies that even modern medicine couldn't erase. Memory fragmentation was intrinsically related to human biology and memory storage capacity, which has a limiting point past the age of one hundred and fifty.
Human longevity, also called pseudo-immortality, had been discovered in pre-war years, but did not reach its peak until the second decade of the new era. After much debate, it was decided that it would be a right of choice to access it.
It was not yet one hundred and fifty years since it had been established but, from the beginning, debate had begun regarding the human brain and storage capacity after a certain period. Not to mention the heated voices regarding resources for a society that could not die.
The latter had been a debate that fell apart a few decades later, because while many people opted for longevity, other people continued to die in equal numbers even with that pseudo-immortality. There was no distinction. Many called this the disappointment of pseudo-immortality. Because people who had obtained pseudo-immortality at very advanced ages chose to die after a few years. It was as if the same body and spirit of these people felt that they had already fulfilled their mission in the same way.
But there were other cases, in people who were over a hundred years old and where they began to manifest other symptoms, such as memory fragmentation, which was characterized by storms of memories that were increasing over time, until at one point the person died from brain fatigue. This only occurred in people with the same body, other people, who chose to move their memory to a synthetic body, could overcome this difficulty, going to data banks and neurological treatments to achieve a stable mental state again.
The case of the feys was different. They could store memories almost without problems. Courtesy of the universe, having their biological clocks completely stolen, due to their stay on the Other Side.
Van guessed that the nun Lee was talking about, being a religious person, did not want to move her consciousness to a new body. She had ascertained that he had not resigned his FDC either, which meant that perhaps he would wait until he looked older, or that Lee was also religious in the sense that he did not want to acquire pseudo-immortality.
"I see," Van said. "Just a hobby then."
Lee nodded slightly.
"And tell me. It has never crossed your mind to create a time machine has it?"
Lee smiled. "If I said no, I'd be lying to you. Who hasn't thought about it at some point?"
"But you haven't, have you?"
"No. It's impossible and it's forbidden because of Dark Events."
"You are an academic, though. With the right credentials, and a well-presented project, you could have the blessing to conduct government or Council-subsidized studies."
Lee quirked an eyebrow at that and a smile tugged at his lips as he approached the table. Lee was surprised by Van's statement. He had never considered that his interest in time and related studies might be linked to discovering something new. "Miss, may I call you Van? Miss Van, it doesn't matter how many prohibitions the agencies put in place. It's one thing, disruptions in reality and spacetime caused by Dark Events, and quite another to talk about time study projects."
Van approached the table. "What do you mean?"
"That it doesn't matter about the bans. Humans, feys, I'm not sure about the Aeon but, let's put it out there for now. No matter how you look at it. We are nowhere near playing with time and time machines, until we have reached min Type 2 or Type 3 civilizations, and only in small scales. I have studied the history of warfare and, if I am not mistaken, playing with objects from another dimension caused a huge disaster in Japan and almost another one in Russia. Am I wrong?"
"No, you are not wrong," Van nodded.
Lee sighed and looked into her eyes. "I've been answering questions for a while now? Can you at least tell me what this is about?"
"Just one more," Van added. "Would you be willing to submit to a deep dive?"
"A Deep-Dive, you say?"
Van nodded and Lee looked at Egger who just stared at him in silence. Lee nodded. "I don't know what you're looking for but, I can assure you I have nothing to hide."
"I apologize in advance," Van replied.
The Deep-Dive procedure required either a person with the ability to read the memory or a helmet-type device. Since the helmet type was for people with Neurowire, they would have to resort to a nearby fey at the station, or a metahuman thelepath who could read memories. Van wasn't sure if the Nevermore station there, or the Roman police had one in their ranks at the time.
The truth was that Van didn't think she would get anything out of it. No matter how she looked at him, Lee Reubens was just plain and simple, and there didn't seem to be anything about him that made him look like the mastermind of a plan to build a time machine in a DeLorean.
Dedicated, cooperative, somewhat sentimental perhaps, but plain and ordinary.
"May I now ask? What's this all about?"
Van sent a gesture to the cube and there before him appeared a hologram of the two previous religious men. But they were in a place he knew well. The bar near the Monte Mario Observatory, where the night before he had been drinking with the other members of the university's academic team.
And indeed, just a few meters away, Lee could see himself looking stupid as he tried to pick up someone from the microbiology department. Not only that, more holograms began to emerge and all of them showed the same thing, although the scenery changed. In the observatory, in the hotel dining room, in the outskirts of the city, eating a gelatto. Those two people in religious garb were there. They were all close to him, but he was always surrounded by people and they seemed to keep a safe distance.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Those two people seemed to be following him.
Van made another move and the face of the first girl appeared.
"This young woman's name is Sil Moore. Her body was last seen in a vehicle where she was being transported to the morgue." Van pointed to the two religious people. "These two people usurped the identity of the occupants of the vehicle to steal the body. We do not know to this day what they did with the body. It is possible that the reason they were following you was because they were planning something against you."
"What?!" Lee was really surprised. Him? A kidnapping victim? For what? If the reason was money, he wasn't a millionaire and his salary was normal. Why would he have to be the victim of two criminals? "I don't understand. Who are these people?"
Van folded her arms and leaned back against the chair. "These two people are to blame for what happened today at the Vatican, and the alarm in the city."
"I-I don't understand. Who are they?"
"At the moment we only know that they are linked to three DEs-related crimes." Van said seriously. "And apparently, for some reason they are interested in you."
Van deliberately left the subject of what they had discovered in the tunnels unsaid. But, deep inside her, she didn't know why but, obviously there had to be a connection between the two events.
She looked at Lee's frightened face and simply came to the conclusion that he must have a connection to it all, even though Lee himself couldn't know what it was.