1472
NaNo dump part 2!
I was involved even before the case made it into the media. The details were messaged over to me, in fact, the moment she failed to report, with a big red flag; this could be a problem.
You wonder what that entails, some eleven hundred years after you were born. Your generation envisions the future as some kind of utopia, a screenless world where we can communicate across time and space as easily as thinking. In truth, our workspaces are not so different from yours. Our terminals may be slightly faster and sleeker, our decor more minimalistic, but computers you can interact with telepathically are expensive and time-consuming to set up. Outside of the defence and intelligence industries, we settle for good old-fashioned three-dimensional interface, superimposed over the real world with the help of a transparent visor and controlled by voice commands or gestures depending on preference. I believe the first models had just started to come in during your lifetime. We have not improved on them too much. Technology moves in different ways, now.
Anyway, I looked over the details. Mary didn't look that much different from any other Bechdel-we had one or two of them in our office who could very easily have passed for her-and from what I could glean from the scraps Admin had sent me, there was nothing in her past to indicate a dangerous insurgent. Good health, good marks in school, clean psychological profile; a prime example, in fact, of the 37th revision, eidetic memory and all. But then, as I said, those were only scraps. Admin's job was to send what information they had to us. My task, in Archive, was to collate more information.
It was a huge job, an important one. But they trusted me with those, once.
So it's into the maze for me. Back then, I had a whole team to delegate to, but the hardest parts I kept for myself. The easier ones-finding and naming associates, online presence, recent purchases, that sort of crap-even the worst Archivist could do that if they had the right training. The information I was after took not only skill but instinct. I was going to find out the things that Mary did not want us to know, the things she wanted to hide.
When I found those, I was sure, I would find her.
Dear Rebeca,
Do you remember that quote-"Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds"? I used to think it was what the pilot of the Enola Gay had said, as his plane rose away from Hiroshima.
You told me otherwise. It was some scientist. I forget the name. And it was after the first nuclear test, before the bombs were even on their way to Japan, that this dark line of Hindu scripture came into his head. Not as poetic as I first thought. But that was what you did; you found and revealed the truth of things, no matter how prosaic.
I wonder that you never realised the truth about me. Perhaps you did and never said. From the very first time we met, I felt I could hide nothing from you. The sunlit September classroom, we two in our gingham dresses, sitting cross-legged on the scratchy brown carpet. I was jealous of your wispy brown bunches, in little hair-ties the shape of watermelon slices. Then you turned.
Nobody had eyes so blue outside of fairytale princesses. I felt you really had stepped out of a fairytale, that you could tell everything that was in my head just by looking at me. For a long time I thought you were a witch, did you know that? That's why I was friends with you, a rare thing for me. I thought you would one day teach me magic. Later the old beliefs faded away but the friendship remained, and with it that feeling that you knew everything already but would never tell me.
I do not remember when I began to love you, but it feels like a very long time ago now.
I was involved even before the case made it into the media. The details were messaged over to me, in fact, the moment she failed to report, with a big red flag; this could be a problem.
You wonder what that entails, some eleven hundred years after you were born. Your generation envisions the future as some kind of utopia, a screenless world where we can communicate across time and space as easily as thinking. In truth, our workspaces are not so different from yours. Our terminals may be slightly faster and sleeker, our decor more minimalistic, but computers you can interact with telepathically are expensive and time-consuming to set up. Outside of the defence and intelligence industries, we settle for good old-fashioned three-dimensional interface, superimposed over the real world with the help of a transparent visor and controlled by voice commands or gestures depending on preference. I believe the first models had just started to come in during your lifetime. We have not improved on them too much. Technology moves in different ways, now.
Anyway, I looked over the details. Mary didn't look that much different from any other Bechdel-we had one or two of them in our office who could very easily have passed for her-and from what I could glean from the scraps Admin had sent me, there was nothing in her past to indicate a dangerous insurgent. Good health, good marks in school, clean psychological profile; a prime example, in fact, of the 37th revision, eidetic memory and all. But then, as I said, those were only scraps. Admin's job was to send what information they had to us. My task, in Archive, was to collate more information.
It was a huge job, an important one. But they trusted me with those, once.
So it's into the maze for me. Back then, I had a whole team to delegate to, but the hardest parts I kept for myself. The easier ones-finding and naming associates, online presence, recent purchases, that sort of crap-even the worst Archivist could do that if they had the right training. The information I was after took not only skill but instinct. I was going to find out the things that Mary did not want us to know, the things she wanted to hide.
When I found those, I was sure, I would find her.
Dear Rebeca,
Do you remember that quote-"Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds"? I used to think it was what the pilot of the Enola Gay had said, as his plane rose away from Hiroshima.
You told me otherwise. It was some scientist. I forget the name. And it was after the first nuclear test, before the bombs were even on their way to Japan, that this dark line of Hindu scripture came into his head. Not as poetic as I first thought. But that was what you did; you found and revealed the truth of things, no matter how prosaic.
I wonder that you never realised the truth about me. Perhaps you did and never said. From the very first time we met, I felt I could hide nothing from you. The sunlit September classroom, we two in our gingham dresses, sitting cross-legged on the scratchy brown carpet. I was jealous of your wispy brown bunches, in little hair-ties the shape of watermelon slices. Then you turned.
Nobody had eyes so blue outside of fairytale princesses. I felt you really had stepped out of a fairytale, that you could tell everything that was in my head just by looking at me. For a long time I thought you were a witch, did you know that? That's why I was friends with you, a rare thing for me. I thought you would one day teach me magic. Later the old beliefs faded away but the friendship remained, and with it that feeling that you knew everything already but would never tell me.
I do not remember when I began to love you, but it feels like a very long time ago now.