The good thing about dealing with a mech was that it had the ability to
erase memories from itself. Hogarth was free to tell the candidates for her
associate all she needed about time travelers, her former affliction, and
the Nexus replicas. There was no guarantee that they actually would erase
their memories of the interaction afterwards, but she was pretty confident
that they would. People lied a lot in the past. They lied about having
completed tasks they didn’t want to do, or liking people they hated, or
whatever. Vonearthans of all types didn’t generally feel the need to do that
anymore. Prosocial lying wasn’t completely obsolete, but it wasn’t usually
necessary. People rarely felt embarrassment or awkwardness. If someone asked
them to do something, and they agreed to it, then it would get done, because
if they couldn’t make it happen, then they would just say no. They would be
able to say no, because there was little incentive to not be honest about
one’s intentions. It probably all came down to the fact that each generation
since the mid-twenty-first century bought less and less stock in judgmental
people, until being judgmental was far too out of fashion for it to be
instilled in the young.
Hogarth interviewed dozens of candidates, and only one checked all the
boxes, and passed all the tests. Its name was Crimson Clover, and it
preferred it as its pronoun. It didn’t say a word about its old life as a
human, except that it possessed extensive knowledge of human
biology/anatomy/physiology, and went through the background to back it up.
It also implied prior experience with time travelers, though did not confirm
it. Hogarth just felt comfortable opening up to it about everything that had
happened to her and Hilde.
“So, this is it, huh?” Crimson said as it was standing over Hogarth’s old
body.
“Yeah, you don’t think it looks the same as I do now?”
“I can tell the difference,” it replied.
“So, what do you think?” Hogarth prompted.
“Well.” It started to go over the body’s specifications on the interface
screen. “You call it a time affliction, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you did eventually learn some control?”
“Yeah, kind of like how a person with allergies can hold back a sneeze, or
anxiety can be treated with certain stress-reducing activities. I suppose I
never tried too hard to fix it with science.”
“And you think this is our best avenue for getting the resources we need
from other star systems, or interstellar space?” It asked.
“We could use the replica, but I don’t want to give vonearthans
faster-than-light technology. If anyone is going to do that, it’s going to
be my colleague, Hokusai Gimura.”
It nodded, and confirmed, “that’s Hilde’s mother, yeah?” As a mech, Crimson
had perfect memory, so the question needn’t be asked. It was just exercising
social grace, and keeping Hogarth part of the conversation, instead of
internalizing its thoughts.
“Yeah, and she’s in charge of what the galaxy knows about space travel. I’m
in charge of transdimensional work.”
“Why isn’t she here, then?”
“I don’t know where she is in this time period.”
Crimson nodded again. It opened a small panel on the back of its neck, and
removed a syncing disc. “Well, the best way for me to understand your old
body is to take it for a test drive.”
Hogarth stared at it, but said nothing. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a
shock.
“Do I have your consent to upload my consciousness into your former
substrate?”
Hogarth stayed there, narrowed her eyelids, and stared at it. She stared
into its eyes for eleven minutes. Neither one of them moved a micrometer the
entire time. This was a test; a test of Crimson’s patience and commitment.
She didn’t know why she felt the need to do it, but she barely knew this
person, so she had to do something to give her peace of mind. She was going
to let it upload its consciousness, as it asked, but she couldn’t let it be
as easy as asking the question once, and receiving an immediate affirmative.
Finally, after the time ran out, she responded. “I consent to the temporary
use of my former substrate.”
“Great.” Crimson made all the necessary connections, then performed the
upload. It was a lot quicker, and a lot less involved, than before.
Technology had come a long way, even in the future, where a lot had long
been invented.
Crimson woke up in Hogarth’s body, and took a couple minutes to acclimate.
It was much lighter, and more fragile now, and it had probably not been so
squishy in centuries. It walked around the room to get a feel for how the
muscles worked. “Fascinating,” it said, like some kind of alien who has made
a moderately interesting discovery about another species. “I can feel it.”
“You can feel what?” Hogarth asked.
“The power,” it continued cryptically. “The energy.”
“I didn’t feel energy,” she contended. “It was more...pressure. Like I was a
covered pot about to boil over. It never built up, though, so I couldn’t
ever predict it. I suppose when I figured out how to control it a little, I
was just tightening the pressure on purpose.”
Crimson shook Hogarth’s head. “Nah, it’s not pressure; it’s moving, flowing.
I can work with this.” It slowly lifted its new hands from its sides, and
spread its fingers. It closed its eyes, and released some air from its
lungs, through its nose and mouth at the same time. As it gradually turned
its lips into a smile, tiny pieces from its fingertips began to disappear.
Her body was breaking apart at the molecular level.
“Where are you going?” Hogarth asked.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
It appeared to be right. A couple meters away, tiny pieces were popping into
existence, and coming together to form larger pieces. There was something
wrong, though. Present!Crimson started demolecularizing from its hands, but
this new shape was forming from the feet up. Was this an entirely different
being? What was happening? Still, they were traveling at the same pace, so
when a quarter of the first body was gone, a quarter of it had reappeared.
And when half of it was gone, half had returned. Now it was even clearer
that there was something different about the returning figure. It was
wearing different clothes, and standing in a different position. The fact
that it was happening at the same time was a complete coincidence.
Present!Crimson was on its way to somewhere in the past or future, and the
fact that it returned to this very moment revealed nothing about how long it
spent away. That was how time travel worked.
Just as the last of its feet faded, the last of its head appeared. “Did I
get the timing right?”
“That was perfect,” Hogarth replied. “For how long were you gone?”
“Centuries,” Crimson answered.
“How is that possible? This body looks as young as it did, and I wasn’t
immortal.
“You were anything you wanted to be,” it started to explain. “You had no
idea the kind of power you had. You gotta try this thing out. I can teach
you.”
“Maybe later,” Hogarth said. “I’ve agreed to do a job for the Glisnians. I
need to see that through before I think of doing anything else. What did you
learn, besides how much more complicated my condition apparently is?”
“I learned that your ability sprouted from your brain, and rewrote your DNA.
Adapting it to technology in order to create a time siphon may be more
difficult than you thought, or impossible. You were smart to keep it alive,
for we may need it to power the machine.”
“I know someone who might be able to help. Adapting powers to technology is
her thing. If it can be done, she can do it. To put it a better way, if she
can’t, it means no one can.”
“Do you know how to contact this person?”
“I don’t suppose anyone in this system has a phone.”
“Like, with a dial pad?”
“Yeah, it has to have physical buttons.”
“Well, I mean, someone could build one for you, but you wouldn’t be able to
call anyone. We use a completely separate communication network to stay in
touch with each other now. You may as well ask me to sign you up for cable
television. All those shows have been cancelled, so you’ll only get static.”
“It doesn’t have to be on a network. It just has to look like a phone, and
generate electrical signals. The signals don’t have to go anywhere; they
just have to exist.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s easy.” Crimson walked over to the industrial
synthesizer. “Hey, Thistle. One obsolete push-button telephone, please.”
“Thank you,” Hogarth said. She graciously accepted the phone replica, and
prepared to dial. “I’m glad I got these upgrades. Her phone number is really
difficult to remember. She made it so long to keep the riff raff from
reaching her.” She then proceeded to push the buttons. There were fifty-two
digits in total.
Crimson tilted its lizard brain jokingly while she was still in the middle
of it. “I recognize that number. That’s the code Data uses in episode three
of season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Hogarth shrugged while she was waiting for her friend to answer. “Just
because it’s hard to remember doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Her direct line
is a hundred and eight digits long, and completely random.”
“If this isn’t her direct line, what is it?”
“This line lets you put in a request for me to come to you. My direct line
would take you to me, and I only give it to the people I know won’t give it
away to a stranger.” She was here. Holly Blue.
“Thank you for coming,” Hogarth said to her.
“Why are there two of you?” Holly blue asked.
“Oh, that’s just this thing. We were hoping to procure your services. Do you
think you could turn my ability into a gadget? If you do, I’ll get you back
to your son.”
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