“Kind of amazing, right? There’s a pile of hardware whose sole purpose is to keep track of the stuff in the caches.” Daniel grins the way he does whenever he engages with an especially clever bit of engineering. “Believe it or not, this is a performance optimizer. That is, we don’t need it for correctness. It makes everything go faster.”
“Yes, the future never recapitulates the past exactly, but it rhymes more often than you expect. It’s faster to find it and fish it out than to create it again from scratch.” Ahdi echoes Daniel’s grin. “As maintainers have complicated the physics of this universe, we’ve had to deploy more and more tricks to keep the universe stable and operating fast enough to allow conscious beings. Speculating potential presents and caching, though, came in over a century ago.”
“Your point is that no one today put in some mechanism to keep around discarded futures so that they can fish them back out. That mechanism was already there.” Ellie sighs. “Mr. Neeson said the same thing.”
“Neeson?” Ahdi arches an eyebrow. “He and I agree about something. Will wonders never cease.”
The skunkworks shatters into myriad points of light. In the next instant, Ellie is back in Ahdi’s dining room, seated next to Daniel and across from Ahdi. She didn’t even see the universe coalesce around her.
“You and Mr. Neeson agree. So, that’s it? Are we done?” Ellie pushes Daniel’s hand aside as he tries to get her attention. “This is just a side channel and, so, a bug? A serious bug but not some nefarious attempt to corrupt the universe.”
When Ellie finally turns to Daniel, the agitated, anxious look on his face makes her jump in her seat. Once she remembers that it’s Daniel making that face, she realizes that the universe is not about to implode on itself. Instead, it’s that she said the wrong thing.
Sure enough, she turns back to Ahdi and his expression is stern. There is still a bit of softness, though, a kindness in his gaze, steel covered by the idea of padding.
“No.” Ahdi’s word is almost a whisper, but it feels like a shout. “There’s a reason why Mary askedyouto look into this. And I’m sure she wanted you to keep it a secret until it is removed.” He shoots Daniel a look. “Neeson is a fool, but I may be complicit and spinning a plausible but misleading tale. You need to go to the archives and see if my story checks out. No, you are not done.”
Ahdi nods to himself and his expression returns to friendly. Ellie takes the speech, though, as her cue that dinner is over.
“It’s getting late.” She slides her chair away from the table. “We’ll hit the archives in the morning.”
“Oh, one more thing.” Ahdi holds a hand up. “Are people trying to kill you?”
“Not as far as we know.” Ellie stands and the chair slides itself back in.
Daniel almost falls out of his chair. He steadies himself and looks oddly at Ellie.
“Excuse me.” Daniel stands. “Your sister planted a bomb in my car earlier today.”
“Interesting.” The look on Ahdi’s face is curious. “Chris tried to blow up Daniel’s car?”
“That wasn’t Chris.” Ellie looks annoyed at Daniel, who rolls his eyes as he sits. “She hasn’t tried to kill me in over a month.”
That seemed like a winning argument when it was only in her head. Now that she’s said it out loud, she realizes how wrong she is.
“But she’s tried to kill you before?” Ahdi’s gaze grows not incredulous but worried.
Ellie sighs. She doesn’t want to get into a humiliating conversation about how Chris played her, not that there is any other kind of conversation about her and Chris. Ahdi, however, took the idea that Chris has been trying to kill her seriously. Daniel did, too, but he’s at least seen a bit of the Chris Ellie knows. She sits down, as it may take a moment.
“Maybe a couple times a week since I was a kid.” Ellie pushes the words out, seething at herself more than anyone else. “At the time, she told me it was for my own good and, like a fool, I believed her.”
“You trusted her. What little kid wouldn’t trust their big sister?” Ahdi says simply. “And, as a kid, you didn’t know any better. She probably scared you with stories of what happens to maintainers who don’t behave.”
Ellie does a double take. This is not the conversation she expected. It’s a relief to be believed.
“I never really questioned it until after I left for university.” Ellie slumps and the chair slumps with her. “My friends with older siblings all had ones who were—I don’t know—nicer.”
“Chris is everybody’s cheerful, helpful, caring friend.” Ahdi spreads his arms, his palms facing up. “Everyone loves her, except Daniel here.”
“I’ve been trying to tell everyone she isn’t as nice as she seems since I was twelve.” Daniel leans back in his chair, his hands folded across his chest. “You believed me right away, but you’re the only one who ever did.”
“I talked to Vera about Chris. It didn’t go well.” Ahdi presses his lips into a flat line. “I wasn’t surprised. After all, she was fiercely loyal to her brother, who abandoned his son. I don’t know that she was ever able to accept that family could ever do anything truly bad to family, even if she did practically adopt his son.If Vera ever thought Chris—or you, Ellie, for that matter—was anything short of an angel, she’d never let it show. Not to anyone.”
Daniel remains curiously silent through all this, except to squirm a bit at being talked about. Then again, it’s hard to imagine Daniel ever confronting his aunt about his parents or having anything bad to say about her, regardless.
For an instant, Ellie hates her mom, but Mom never knew the Chris that Ellie knew, at least not until her last days. Ellie checked for herself a few months after diagnosis, after Chris swooped in and took over Mom’s life. She left Chris’s house then sneaked back in. Ellie didn’t know what she expected, but what she found was a stranger in Chris’s body. A solicitous Chris cooked Mom’s lunch. She wouldn’t let Mom do anything for herself, not even change the channel on the TV. It was like that old Chinese folktale about the son who, in the midst of a famine, fed his own flesh to his father. Both Chris and Ellie were raised on that story and ones like it. This is what parents expect of their children. Mom was cool and reserved, but Chris was warm, chatty, and too eager to demonstrate her filial piety.
“Chris never behaved badly around Mom. Well, not until what turned out to be the final months. As far as Mom knew, she was the perfect daughter. For the longest time, Mom probably thought Chris and I had only the ordinary sorts of squabbles between two sisters. Nothing could have been as bad as I made it out to be.” Ellie stares down at the table. “Mom always told me to humor her. Even after Chris wouldn’t let anyone else take care of her, she still told me to humor her.”
