Nina’s cheeriness fades ever so slightly. “Ran is an innovator.”
“Are there surveillance systems involved?”
“No.”
“Are you purchasing the data from a third party?”
“No.”
“So how—?”
“Ran has his own methods to gather the information needed to make his simulation work smoothly.”
“Enough methods to collectallthe information, though? I understand everything in our galaxy is connected. Every event affects every next event. That’s the concept of Determinism, right? But to predict the future, Doc Min would need to harvest that data, and to dothat, he’d have to install the entire galaxy with observation technology—which, by the way, is illegal under galactic law—and somehow optimize the sequence of events to produce meaningful predictions.”
Nina’s hair is pulled up today, exposing the curves of her face, the slope of her neck. She doesn’t look put off by my questions, exactly, but there’ssomething in her eyes now. A caginess that wasn’t there before. “You’ve been studying.”
“If I’m going to join your movement,” I lie, “I’d like to understand it.”
“Oh, Keller.” She sighs. “Do you think you’re the first to wonder about Ran’s methods? I myself didn’t believe his predictions when I first joined the movement. But speaking too deeply about the simulation can have negative impacts on the technology itself.”
I’ve heard this argument before. It still sounds like bullshit. “But—”
“If you have questions,” Nina interrupts, “let’s save them for Ran, shall we?”
Which is about as far as I should have expected to get with my mother. Still, I rub my neck, feeling a little like I’ve been horse-collared.
“Speaking of,” Nina continues in brighter tones, “I was just talking to Ran about you this morning. I was telling him about that pet ferret you had as a child. What was his name? Fuzzy?”
“Floppy.”
“Floppy.” She gives a bell-tinkle laugh. “He was a cute little bugger. Such an escape artist. I remember the last time you lost him. You were so upset.”
It’s like I’ve looked into a mirror and there’s no reflection. What are we even talking about right now? “Yeah.”
“I went and bought you another ferret. I tried to pretend Floppy never run away, but you knew the difference instantly. Of course you did. You were always so smart.”
I’m struggling with this turn in conversation. Like, I can hear what Nina is saying, but I’m not absorbing it. It’sweird. How she’s talking about my childhood so openly. Reminiscing, like there’s no sore spot here, no elephant in the room. “I never told you I knew he was a different ferret.”
“You gave him a new name. It was obvious. Gosh, you always loved animals. Remember when I took you to the zoo?”
My heart thumps. Is she serious right now? Like, the day sheabandoned me?“What?”
“We had the whole day planned, just the two of us. Remember that?”
There’s a part of me—a jagged, nagging suspicion in the back of my head—that thinks Nina is doing this on purpose. Like she knows I was treading into dangerous territory with my simulation questions and is using this jarring change in conversation to derail me. Which reminds me that despite Nina’s joyful demeanor, she’s the kind of woman who would willingly abandon her son in the name of her cult.
It reminds me I don’t know my mother at all.
I wish I wasn’t doing this alone. It’d be easier if Vera was here, or Jester, or (yes, all right, I’ll say what I mean) Lament. He’d be my anchor, something to ground me. I’ve got nothing to ground me now. Just this vacant room and my mother’s too-happy eyes and her memories that are so insensitive they’re borderline criminal.
“Yeah,” I say, and this time, I let the one-word answer stand.
She looks down. “Oh, but you haven’t touched your coffee. Shall we fetch you something else?”
My fingers are itching like they do when I want to grab my ray gun. I stand abruptly. “Is there a restroom?”
Nina blinks. “Now? Ran should be here any—”
