It was Waldstein. Olivera felt his heart pounding in his chest. He hadn’t been expecting the man to return this evening. ‘Mr… Mr Waldstein. I… I thought you were still in Denver on business.’
‘Indeed.’ Waldstein’s cool eyes remained on him.
Olivera looked away. Found something for his fidgeting hands to fiddle with on his desk. ‘All… all s-sorted, then? The business?’
‘Not really, no. I had to come back here early.’
Oliver nodded. ‘Oh?’ The old man looked tired, sad. ‘Everything all right, Mr Waldstein?’
‘No, Joseph. Not all right.’
No explanation. Just that. Olivera felt panic growing inside him. He dared not say anything in case his stutter betrayed him.
‘I know,’ said Waldstein after several interminable seconds.
‘Know? Uh… know… know what?’
Waldstein shook his head slowly, the gesture very much like a father’s disappointment with an errant child. ‘I know you’ve been tampering with things.’
Olivera felt his stomach flop queasily. ‘T-tamper?’
‘You’ve edited the memories of Saleena. You added something to the unit that was sent back.’ Waldstein noticed the faintest involuntary flicker of reaction on Joseph’s face. ‘Yes, Joseph… I’ve had the database tagged to alert me for updates to the source archive.’ He spread his hands in a vaguely apologetic way. ‘After Frasier let me down, I figured it might be prudent to keep a closer eye on you also.’
‘I… I… needed to just… tidy up s-s-some continuity faults.’
‘Please, Joseph…’ he said, stepping into the lab and finding a seat to ease himself down into. ‘Please don’t lie to me. I’m too tired for that now.’ He sighed. ‘You’ve not been fixing memory mismatches. You’ve added new content to her mind.’
Olivera couldn’t help his jaw sagging. Perhaps that was less an admission of guilt than stuttering a denial at him.
‘Why did you add the visual memory of a tumbling teddy bear to her recruitment memory, Joseph? Why?’ Waldstein’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you trying to tell her?’
The bear. Olivera realized Waldstein must have actually viewed the visual insert: the image of the blue bear tumbling end over end, almost defying gravity. So very deliberately conspicuous. The kind of visual image that would stick in a mind.
‘It’s a trigger memory, isn’t it?’
Olivera felt his cheeks burn with shame. His face, his demeanour, his awkward shuffling were screaming his guilt out loud and, of course, Waldstein knew what he’d been up to anyway… if not the precise reason why.
‘Yes,’ Joseph said eventually.
‘Joseph?’ Waldstein said softly. ‘Talk to me. Why the trigger memory?’
Olivera looked up at him.
He’d noticed the bear back in 2001, while he and Frasier had been setting the field office up. That curious antique shop not so far away had provided him with some of the props he’d needed to validate their various recruitment memories; the Titanic steward’s uniform had given him the idea of setting Liam’s recruitment aboard that famous doomed ship. A perfect recruitment fable. There’d been other things in various other shops that had helped him author appropriate life stories for each of them: the dark hoody with splashes of neon-orange Hindi- graffiti, that T-shirt with the Intel logo. Real things that would exist with them as they woke up in the archway. Real, tangible items that would help all three engineered units bond with their carefully scripted memories.
The bear… adding that bear to the replacement Saleena unit’s memory was adding something that couldn’t possibly be. The same bear in both places: Brooklyn 2001, Mumbai 2026. A clear, unambiguous impossibility.
A trigger.
‘Why, Joseph?’
‘Why?’ Olivera felt slightly emboldened. His game was up. No more lying. Somehow so very liberating. ‘Let me ask you that, s-sir. Why?’
Waldstein frowned. ‘Why what?’
‘Why do you want mankind to destroy itself?’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Joseph?’
‘I know… I know about Pandora.’
The word caused Waldstein to shift uneasily.
‘I know it’s s-some kind of codeword you have, isn’t it? A codeword for the end of mankind. The day… the precise date we destroy ourselves. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘This has come from Frasier, hasn’t it? This is his nonsense, isn’t it?’
‘Pandora. The end of the world… that’s what you s-saw, isn’t it?’
‘What I saw?’
There was something comforting about unburdening himself like this. Olivera realized he was already so far over a certain invisible line that there was nothing he could say that was going to make any difference now. Either he was going to be instantly dismissed from the project, escorted out of the compound… or… or perhaps worse.
‘You’re actually asking me what I saw back in 2044?’ Waldstein eyed him cautiously. ‘Is that what you’re asking me? What I saw that very first time?’
Olivera nodded hesitantly. ‘You… you didn’t… go back in time, did you? You didn’t go back to s-see your… wife, your s-son?’
Waldstein shook his head slowly. ‘Oh, Joseph… please don’t ask me what I saw.’
‘You went forward. You went forward in time. You…’
‘What?’ He smiled. ‘I went forward in time to see if mankind makes it through these hard times? To see if mankind is as stupid and self-destructive as it appears to be?’
Olivera nodded.
‘And what? All this?’ He gestured at the small lab. ‘This project of ours, the businesses I’ve built up, the technology companies I’ve been acquiring, buying, the billions of dollars I’ve made… all of this, just to make sure it happens? Just to make certain mankind wipes itself out?’ Waldstein’s voice rose in pitch. A note of incredulity. ‘Are you seriously suggesting all of that is so I can ensure the end of the road for mankind?’
Olivera nodded again.
‘Oh, Joseph…’ That look of disappointment on his face again. He eased himself up off the seat. ‘You have no idea. Not even the slightest idea. God help me! I’m not trying to destroy us… I’m trying to save us.’ He sighed as he stepped back towards the lab’s doorway. ‘Or at least save what I can of us… what there is to save.’
Olivera had a sense that this was where their conversation met its logical conclusion. No bartering. No pretending. No back-out clause. This was the place they were at. ‘Mr Waldstein? What… what happens now?’
Waldstein backed up several steps. Turned and said something softly to someone who must have been standing outside, just out of sight.
‘Who’s… Mr Wald-s-stein. Who’s out there? Who’re you talking to?’
A tall, muscular figure appeared behind the old man, completely bald, with the calm dispassionate face of a recently birthed support unit.
‘I’m so very sorry, Joseph.’ Waldstein looked back at him with sadness in his eyes. ‘I’m truly sorry that it has to be this way…’
In a heartbeat he was certain of Griggs’s fate. Murdered. Not by some gang of starving vagrants but by Waldstein. Directly or indirectly. The old man had made sure Frasier Griggs wasn’t going to remain a dangerous loose end.
And now I’m dead.
He backed up a step, past his own workstation to what used to be Griggs’s workstation.
‘Joseph,’ said Waldstein, ‘please don’t make this harder than it has to be. Come here.’
‘You… you don’t n-need to do this. Please… you don’t — ’
‘But here’s the problem — I can’t trust you any more.’ There was genuine sadness on Waldstein’s face. ‘Do you see? I couldn’t trust Frasier either. And that’s the important thing. This is too important, Joseph. More important than Frasier, than you… than me even.’
