The Quantum Thief

—if they want, they can view and change every memory and thought of anyone who has been a Quiet. Of course, that is too much information for any one person to keep track of, so I assume they have some mechanical ways of augmenting it. Given the minor edits they have made to Unruh’s mind, I would imagine that they only have limited resources to do this.

But the bottom line is, the Oubliette is not a place of forgetting. It’s not a privacy heaven. It’s a panopticon.

It has been a long time. So at first, everything is a hot fast blur of flesh and skin and mouths and touches and bites. She is much stronger than me, and not afraid to show it. She plays with Mieli’s enhancements too, teasing me with a hot q-dot at her fingertip, grinning like a cat.

By the third time, we discover that her wings are touch-sensitive, and that’s when things get really interesting.

‘So what can we do with this?’

Well, we can’t do anything about the root access. But – the gogols say – we can put another encryption layer on top of all that. With the pirate engines, we can make fake Oubliette identities. We made a few of those with keys that did not come from the Oubliette key generator interface.

‘And?’

Well, that allowed us to make co-memories that the cryptarchs will never have access to. Anyone we share those with will be inoculated against any manipulation by the cryptarchs, passing through Quiet or otherwise. It’s viral: you can pass it on to as many people as you want. And we made another that makes you forget the edits that have already been made. In fact, the thief suggested publishing them through a newspaper—

‘Wait. The thief suggested what?’

Yes, we had this conversation already. While you were singing. It really did not take that long for the maths gogols to come up with all this.

‘He knows about this already? Does he have the co-memories?’

Yes. The ship pauses. He played me, didn’t he? Bastard. Mieli lets it sink in. ‘Yes. Yes, he did. And I think someone else is about to be played too.’

It is early morning before we stop to rest. At some point, we made it to my bedroom. I lean back on the pillows, eyes half-closed, and look at her, reclining on the other side of the bed, naked apart from her temporary Watch, wings still half-open, catching the light of the dawn.

‘I did teach you well, didn’t I?’ she says.

‘You did. Were we … you know, alone?’

‘Oh, you are worried about hurting poor little Mieli’s feelings? How nice of you to get attached to her. I admit I’m a little sentimental about her as well. It’s like having a favourite pen or a lucky charm.’ She stretches. Even the scar looks different on her face, more mischievous. ‘But don’t worry, she is with the ship. We are all alone. I have you all to myself. I should have done this sooner, but there are only so many of me, you know.’

‘It’s hard to believe that I don’t remember you,’ I say. ‘Except – when I came out from the Prison, there was a flash. Another prison, on Earth. I was reading a book—’

‘That was the first time we met,’ she says. ‘You were a street apache, back then, in the big city, with desert sand between your toes. So rough, so brave. And look at you now. A diamond. Or you will be one again soon. And then—’ she smiles – ‘and then you can thank me properly.’

‘You heard what I told Mieli, right?’ I say. ‘I don’t approve of what you are doing with the cryptarchs.’