This Place Only

Chapter Nine - Tourist

Chapter Nine

Tourist

Unlike other ARMs (all of whom were tied to strict duties) I moved about freely and under my own control. As I left the apartment, exited the building and moved through the city, I was not scanned or questioned by anyone. At one point, I stopped momentarily before an enormous fountain near a dark, stone building. Leaning slightly over the edge of the retaining wall, I looked down at my reflection in the water. I knew I would not see my true face, but the result still disturbed me. Oval, grey and expressionless. Eyes that worked on completely different principles than my originals. Ears that could process sound with incredible precision. I held up my hands and watched thin, grey digits flow smoothly at my command. The joints where my knuckles had been were a metal-plastic hybrid that required no maintenance or lubrication. My frame mimicked certain perfection and, because of this, nothing about me felt human or real. I found myself going back to my earliest memories, without the flavor of emotion. Was it possible to relive my memories (jumbled and incoherent as they were) with the old emotional sub-channels enabled?

I allowed my mind to dip quickly into the local nexus and discovered that ARMs could indeed process emotions, only lacked the capacity to subjectively experience them real-time. Such failure in programming was, in fact, a practical omission. Emotion clouded reasoning. So believed the programmers and creators of the ARM A.I. technology. Plumbing deeper into the nexus, I finally discovered the illegal hacks that would emulate a type of “playback” of sensations, something that should in theory allow me to fully relive those random bits more accurately. Standing there on the street, wondering if anyone had any idea of what I was doing (hoping I wasn’t being monitored in secret) I patched the appropriate code within me and chose to replay, with emotions on, that final meeting with David. At once I knew that my hunch was correct. My distrust of this man was deep and profound. A very specific anger surged forward. Anger that involved someone else, though data that completed this sequence was missing. I searched my mind again, but the chaos of memories+emotion+data omission was too overwhelming. And then came the memory of the three people in the elevator. This was so much worse with the emotion track on. Those horrible eyes! Just who were they? Had David taken the machine from them? I switched off the emotions for the time being.

I knew then there was much more I didn’t know. Sitting down on a stone bench near the fountain, I reached out again (brushing the data field) and narrowed my search. There was no information about David Grey here at all. It was as if he had never existed. Xeronix was conveniently missing, too. Of course, I had probably been sent forward not only in time but across realities as well. This was probably a reality where David and Xeronix never existed.

Taking a chance, I used my persona William Anderson to log into the Solar Transposition Nexus, requesting a direct link to the mainframe. Logged onto the mainframe, I asked if it was possible to search for information across all known realities.

XX-IV RESTRICTED BY TIMEFRONT

XX-VV YOUR REQUEST HAS BEEN LOGGED

I asked if I could disable the logging of my access.

PLEASE RELEASE WITH TAC

I gave the computer a long data string that comprised my high-level Transposition Access Code.

LOGGING DISABLED

I asked, rewording my request, if there was any information about David Grey cross-referenced with Xeronix. The response was not a complete negative, yet somewhat cryptic: