The Quantum Thief

Mieli claims that her systems need to recharge and that she has some damage to regenerate, so she goes to bed early. Perhonen is quiet as well, dodging the orbital sentinels, no doubt; or hacking into their systems and manufacturing convincing excuses about why they lost her for a moment. So I am as alone as I have been since the escape from the Prison.

It feels good: I spend some time simply watching the night view of the city, on my balcony and drinking, single malt this time. Whisky has always tasted like introspection to me, a quiet moment after taking a sip, the lingering aftertaste, inviting you to ponder upon the flavours on your tongue.

I lay out the tools in my mind, one by one.

Gevulot is not perfect. There are loops in it, places where a node – representing a memory, an event, a person – has more than one parent. That means that sometimes, sharing gevulot about an innocuous memory, a taste or an intimate moment, can unlock whole swathes of a person’s exomemory. The gogol pirates have software that tries to map out a person’s gevulot tree, tries to scan for the key nodes in conversation.

There is a man-in-the-middle attack software that attempts to intercept the quantum communications between a Watch and the exomemory. That will require a lot more brute force, and quantum computation capability besides: I will have to talk to Perhonen about that. A perfect emulation of the privacy sense organ which I want to start running immediately. And finally, a set of public/private keys and blank exomemories to choose from. I don’t want to think about how those have been obtained, but at least the dirty work has been done for us. Some of them are fragmented from the interruption of the transfer, but what is there will do, for now.

Being about to become someone else is a thrilling feeling, a tickle of possibility in my gut. There must have been times when I flicked from one identity to another, posthuman, zoku, baseline, Sobornost. And that makes me want to be the god of thieves again, more than anything.

I flick the Watch open and look at the picture again. Who should I become for you, Raymonde? Who was I for you before? Her smile has no answers, so I close the lid, finish my drink and look at myself in the bathroom mirror.

The face – heavy-lidded eyes, a tinge of grey in the hair – makes me wonder about Mieli’s employer again. She must have known me, a long time ago. But whoever she is, she belongs to the things that the Prison took away from me. I relish the image for a moment. I’m not narcissistic, but I like mirrors, the way they let your define yourself through something external. And at last, I test how this body responds. Become a little younger, I tell it. A little taller, higher cheekbones, longer hair. The image in the mirror starts flowing like water, and my belly thrill becomes glee.

‘You are enjoying this, aren’t you?’ says a voice. I look away from the mirror and around the room, but there is no one there. And the voice feels awfully familiar.

‘Over here,’ says my mirror image. It is the young me from the picture, dashing and dark-haired, grinning. He tilts his head slightly, studying me across the glass. I stretch my hand and touch it, but the image does not move. The same sense of unreality as with the boy at the agora is there.

‘You are thinking about her,’ he says. ‘Which means you are about to go to talk to her again.’ He sighs a little wistfully. ‘There are a few things you should know.’

‘Yes!’ I shout at him. ‘Where are my memories? Why are we playing games? What are those symbols—’

He ignores me. ‘We really thought she was the one. The redemption. And for a while, she was.’ He touches the glass surface from the other side, a reflection of my earlier gesture. ‘I really envy you, you know. You get to try again. But remember that we treated her very badly last time. We don’t deserve a second chance. So don’t break her heart, or if you do, make sure there is someone to put it back together.’

Then the grin is back. ‘I’m sure you hate me now, a little. This is not meant to be easy. I made finding things difficult, not for you, but for myself. Like an alcoholic who locks the booze in the basement and throws away the key.’

‘But you are here, so it wasn’t enough. There we are. Give her my best.’

He takes out a Watch, the one I’m holding as well, and looks at it. ‘Well, got to go. Have fun. And remember, she likes balloon rides.’

Then he is gone, replaced my own new reflection.

I sit back and start making a new one, for a first date.

9 THE DETECTIVE AND THE LETTER

Later that evening, Isidore lets the co-memory take him to the Tortoise Park. It leads him down a narrow sandy path, through a grove of pine and elm. Beyond the trees, he finds the chateau.