Meet Raif Through William's Eyes #PhoenicianSeries #Raif's Story #snippet
A random scene (approx. 3000 words) that I really enjoyed working on today. William Harrington is the MC / POV character in
When Minds Collide
and the more I work in his voice, the more I like it. Who knew? Back in the 1980s when I wrote the stories, I kept wanting to write more of William's POV, but just didn't know how. Now I do. ^)^
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William found Joshua in his study, a grid of vid display images two rows high and three blocks wide hovering in the air over his desk. Even reversed, William identified each location around Trouville Sector as the images cycled through quickly, as though Joshua were searching through them. All but one lighted square window into the world.
The image at the bottom corner of Joshua’s grid remained constant. It was a feed from Cory Jansen’s office over at the Centre for Natural Sciences & Artificial Lifeforms, a research satellite facility of the Institute of Arts & Sciences where Cory “played around with ideas” as he put it. In fact, Dr. Cory Jansen designed and maintained the human race from his highly secure laboratory in the area of the building behind the security desk now displayed. Seated at the desk was Cory’s personal assistant, rather than the usual Security Proctor detail. Last William had heard, Cory had some remarkable discovery to show them, though why Cory thought it concerned William, he couldn’t guess. Joshua, on the other hand, was Administrator of the Institute and the Centre. As such, the poor sod had to oversee everything that went on in Cory’s lab.
Just as William put the mug of tea he’d brought in for Joshua down on the desk, Joshua tapped for the image from Cory’s office to expand into the full display area. William stood next to Joshua’s chair, leaning an arm over the back of it, trying to see what Joshua was looking at in Cory’s office so closely. As far as William could tell, there was nothing unusual going on.
Joshua picked up the mug of tea, muttered a thank you and tapped at the datapanel again to set the vid pickup to scan slowly around the reception area. The waiting room was mostly empty save for Cory’s assistant and a few patients. There was an older Privilege Class woman with a look of stern disapproval firmly affixed to her face sitting on a straight-backed arm chair next to a table scattered with data panels, no doubt containing outdated science journals, knowing Cory. She was watching something across the room from her and Joshua scanned over there before William could request the point of view.
Directly across from the old woman was a young couple, huddled together on the padded bench that spanned the length of the wall. There was a tall, rail-thin Class One woman with short, dark hair sitting up straight and clutching at a Proctor about twice her mass. The Proctor had his head bent, as though whispering into the Class One woman’s ear. William’s guess was that the woman was being forcibly brought in for psychological treatment and the Proctor was coddling her—or trying to get her into bed. This was his opportunity to negotiate favors if ever there was one. The couple certainly seemed intimate and it was annoying the older woman no end. William found the silent scene playing out over Joshua’s desk purely amusing but otherwise, he wasn’t sure why they were watching this.
He was about to ask when Joshua put his tea down and tapped to change the vid feed to a closer view of the couple. The feed started scanning up from the floor, as though Joshua meant to visually search the couple. Since the Proctor was just a Proctor, William had to assume Josh’s interest was in the Class One woman. She didn’t look very interesting to William, though her clothes were of a quality to suggest she worked in the Council Office Building. Made sense given the Proctor’s attentions.
She’d be easily accessible to him far into his future—for however short his future might be. They’d make a nice couple, so what was Josh about with this search?
Just as William started searching the closeup of the woman’s face, Joshua sucked in a loud, sharp breath, drawing William’s attention. He didn’t need to ask why Joshua had gasped. William nearly choked, himself, once his eyes had shifted off the woman. The Proctor’s strawberry blond hair had been noticeable enough from a distance but William hadn’t thought much of it. There aren’t many redheads but there are enough—and most of the males end up in the Proctor corps.
With the man’s face filling the other half of the vid pickup, that hair seemed to scream out at him, like a red flag literally waving in front of them, golden highlights glinting on copper red curls. The rich color was set off by his honey-colored skin but it was the glowing green eyes—Andrew Caine’s emerald green eyes—looking out at William that nearly knocked the wind out of him. He exhaled, an echo to Joshua’s inhalation, as though a virtual fist had punched through them both, into Joshua, out of William, leaving a silence stretching between them as they both examined the man in the image. It couldn’t be Drew. It had to be a mistake, a coincidence, something...not Andrew Caine.
The Proctor in the vid laughed with a quick smile at something the woman said and William’s heart skipped a beat—a familiar reaction to Andrew Caine’s smile—and it mattered not to William’s heart that Andrew Caine had died nearly four hundred years ago. His heart skipped a beat and his gut twitched. The man in the vid had Drew’s smile. Exactly like Drew’s. Was this Proctor their lost the sample, the last genetic material remnant of Andrew Caine, muddled together in a precious compilation only to be stolen five years ago? William had given up hope of ever seeing Drew’s face on another human being again, given they had no more of Andrew Caine’s genetic material from which to make a new version of the man.
Until now.
It was him. It had to be. This had to be their sample.
“Drew.” William heard himself whisper the name of a ghost.
Joshua answered, sounding more than a bit distracted, himself. “No. Not me, Will. That’s just a Proctor in Cory’s office. It can’t be...him
“What the fuck is he doing dressed up like a Proctor unless—wait, is someone playing a joke on us? Was this Cory’s idea? Is that why he called me in to see this? It’s not very funny of him.”
“It’s not a joke, and it’s just a Proctor, it has to be but he...he...” Joshua shook his head and couldn’t tear his gaze from the image, which he’d now frozen in a closeup of the man, leaving the woman’s face sliced half off. “God, he looks just like...”
“That is not just a Proctor!” William shot a hand out to poke an accusing finger through the ionized air particles imaging the mystery man. “Either that’s a joke—and in bad fucking taste, I might add—or that’s...” William swallowed and tried to decide if he wanted it to be true or not. “...that’s you. That’s Andrew Caine, what’s left of him, dressed up like a fucking Proctor. I can’t believe you’re not rolling in your grave.”
“I’m not in my grave, Andrew’s not, and that’s not him—me. Whoevver. That’s just...I don’t know who that is but it is not Andrew Caine.”
“Who the fuck thought this up? What are they—”
“Will, stop! Just take a breath and calm down. You’re not helping me like this. We have to...to calm down and take this apart, one piece at a time.”
“I’m perfectly calm!” William shouted then did, indeed, take a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. It was just a little hard to calm down when his husband—whose face he hadn’t seen in almost four hundred years—was smiling out of a vid display. “I’m just—I can’t take it any more slowly than I have for four hundred years. You have to admit, it’s—that hair, just that hair alone and—”
“There are plenty of redheads around the—”
“Less than a tenth of one percent—and they all come from Drew. How could one have escaped our notice? You know damned well there weren’t any other redheads post-dating the Vault collapse.”
“There were redheads in other geneaologies that came down after generational shifting had—”
“It’s you. I recognize those eyes. Don’t you think I’d know Drew’s eyes when he looks right at me?” William tapped at the data panel to shift the sharp green eyes in question into the center of the display and zoomed in yet more. It was a little overwhelming, even heart-stopping, to see those eyes that close up.
“They’re just green eyes.” Joshua whispered and zoomed back out to a less claustrophobic view.
“Then what about—” William reached over and zoomed the vid view around until the man’s face was shifted in the frame, angled slightly to the right side of his face. “That! Even the Joshua Scherrer in you has to admit those are Drew’s freckles. Some part of you spent more time looking at them than I did. Where did that come from if not from Andrew Caine?” William traced the tip of his index finger over a small cluster of freckles on the man’s right cheek. The ionized air left a tingle on his fingertip and his heart raced again, just the same as it used to do when he’d touch the original. Too many years ago.
“He’s you. That stupid good luck clover I...God, I’ve missed seeing that.” William heard his voice starting to shake and withdrew his hands, hoping to withdraw himself a bit. He stood behind Joshua’s shoulder and tried but couldn’t take his eyes off the image of the man’s face. The freckles were less distinct on the golden-toned complexion than they’d been on Drew’s pale pink skin, but they were reproductions of Andrew’s markings, like an exact copy of Drew’s skin had been overlain on someone else’s tanned hide.
William looked more closely, carefully and recognized more and more of the patterns. He knew Drew’s freckles by heart, and even after all this time, he realized he could still recognize them, the patterns he’d privately named and written in his heart. He’d been living with Drew, as a married couple, under the same roof, in the same bed, for almost a hundred years before they’d been separated by the car accident that had killed Andrew Caine and Joshua Scherrer. Killed and reinvented them.
Living together inside one mind, inside the reproduction of Joshua Scherrer’s body, had become both a blessing and a living hell for them all. The man seated in front of William now had finally found a balance—after about fifty years of trial and error, not to mention considerable “assistance” from the Phoenicians. Yes, the circle of old men, the old magicians as Joshua Andrew Caine, the merged man, called them.
The man in the image was Drew, William was sure of it. He knew every last mark on Andrew Caine’s body and this was a reproduction of Andrew Caine’s body—or at least part of this man was from Drew. This was their lost sample. He could be brought in, rehabilitated, retrained, recovered and...reunited? Was William hoping for the impossible? He’d let go of Drew so many years ago, had worked through his grief, he’d thought. How could he feel such yearnings now? Why was he still wishing for a miracle to bring Drew back? He’d finally let go, hadn’t he?
Joshua Andrew Caine, the fifth reproduction of the merged man the Phoenician Seven Chiefs had made four hundred years ago, said quietly, “That’s not me, Will. Those marks are just some freckles and he’s just a man. He’s not Andrew Caine. Even if that is our sample, he can’t possibly remember being me—I mean, Drew. He hasn’t got the memory map.” Joshua spun his chair a bit to look up at William, standing, over his shoulder, clutching at himself, eyes glued to the image of not-Drew. Joshua added, “We did that on purpose, Will, remember? It was your idea.”
“You don’t sound convinced. You sound like you’re talking yourself into it as much as me and I’m not convinced at all. I refuse to say either way without talking to him, Josh.” William looked down at the face of another not-Drew who looked so much like Drew sometimes, it broke William’s heart to have to look at him. He added, “Alone. I need to talk to him alone. I might—I don’t know, maybe he remembers something. If he does, if anyone can tell, it’ll be me. You know that.” William hated hearing himself pleading but he needed access to the man before anyone did anything to risk a memory cascade or worse, before he got himself killed—like a Proctor. He could be shot just leaving the building for all anyone knew. “We should tell Cory to hold him there, prevent him from leaving the building—or the lab area, for that matter. Not until I can get over there and accompany him out, personally.”
Joshua was silent for a long time staring up at William, then glanced back at the frozen image of the imitation of Drew’s face. Finally, Joshua rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and tented his hands in front of his face, fingertips just touching. Andrew’s thinking-about-it-and-ready-to-give-in pose. William had schooled himself for centuries on how to refrain from showing that he knew he was about to win the argument but he couldn’t resist now. His face broke into a smile.
“I haven’t said yes.” Joshua warned as he glanced up at him. “It could be dangerous to even approach the man, Will. We have no idea how he ended up wearing a Proctor’s uniform. For all we know, that’s a disguise or some other subterfuge. What if he is me—Drew—and that’s some kind of reconnaissance on us, on the Community. What if—I could what-if this to death but the fact is, we don’t know anything about him. We have to be careful how we approach him, for his sake as much as our own. If you go at it too quickly, and he’s our lost sample, he could suffer a memory cascade that does damage.”
“I know that.” William held his hands out to his sides. “I know how to do this safely. I’ve woken you up five times. Besides, I taught that man everything he knows—whether he’s Drew or a Proctor or just pretending to be one, he doesn’t know anything I don’t. I’ll do an evaluation, nothing more. No contact, no recruiting, just...let me find out who’s inside that head, all right? I’ll keep a safe distance, I promise. He won’t know I’m after anything but a friendly conversation.”
“What, do you want to take him out and get him drunk? Get him talking?”
William laughed. “It never worked with you. Why would it work with him? Is it all right with you, then?”
“Just talk? You swear?”
“I give you my word. Nothing mo—well, maybe we should plant a tracker in him, speaking of drinks. I can take him somewhere safe, somewhere we can secure the situation and slip something in so...” William saw the look on Joshua’s face. He was losing the argument now. “Josh, we can’t lose track of him again. Don’t you see that? We just need to let him move freely. I’m not going to do anything more than first contact without discussing it with you—with everyone. We obviously need to convene the Membership on this once I have a feel for who he is.”
“I know, I'm just thinking about this. All right, a biotracker in his drink, but make it a short-term bug. Use the one-year model. If we don’t find out enough about him in a year to recruit him, the bug dies a natural death and we let him go, agreed? No retrieval or followup.”
“Wait. Something else. No matter what you find out, add in a subroutine on that tracker. We might need access once it’s in his bloodstream if it comes to that. Use one of the guidance-level bots, understood?”
William didn’t like where this was headed. “You want to Adjust him after you review his statements. You’re going to want to erase all knowledge of meeting me, aren’t you?”
“We don’t know who he is. We don’t know what he knows or thinks or—anything about him. We need to take precautions.”
“What’s going on, Josh?”
“We’ve been down this path before—twice, remember? I spent ten hours with the man, if this is the same man, only to have Dramond wipe him clean. I went through it again the next day but even if this is the same man and even if he doesn’t remember me or anything I ever told him, what if Dramond remembers? What if placing him in the Centre is a ploy by Dramond to—”
“Are you really more fucking paranoid than me? Me?” William shook his head.
“Will, I want the option to do remote work. We might not have to do an Adjustment but if we do, and the tracker’s not there, then what? We’d have to physically secure him again. How safe is that if Dramond’s behind this?”
“All right, fine, I’m all for paranoid precautions but…give me twenty, maybe thirty minutes to write something onto the bug. I don’t have anything like that on hand below decks. Tell Cory I’m on my way over and have him stall them a while.”
“Thank you, and he’s already stalling them. They think he’s trying to make an opening on a fully-booked schedule to see her today. She’s some kind of off-the-books favor from a MedTech friend of the Proctor, and that old woman’s his only real appointment today. You’ll need to get rid of her or remove the Proctor before you say anything. She looks rudely intrusive.”
William panned out to look at the grouchy old woman again and muttered, “I can have her removed, no problem. So is Cory doing favors for Medtechs or for Proctors now?”
“The MedTech did a rotation in Cory’s lab a few years ago. Apparently he’s a fairly gifted MedTech and if I recall correctly, he’s rather fetching. He’s the same one who was involved when I first found the sample. The MedTech’s sloppy coverup was how we found him again, remember?” Joshua smiled and William frowned at Joshua’s attempt to fix him up.
“I remember and I’m not interested in a short-lived MedTech so just drop it.” William panned the view back over to the Proctor and his female companion, tapping into the live feed again. They were still chatting quietly amongst themselves though now the Proctor glanced over at the grouchy older woman occasionally.
Joshua said, “I had to try. Promise me you won’t get your hopes up about finding Drew inside that Proctor?”
Too late for that, William decided but all he said was, “I’ll be professional.” He smiled and left quickly before Joshua changed his mind—or worse. If this Proctor turned out to be their lost sample, William had no idea what he’d do. What could he do? He was still hopelessly in love with Andrew Caine. Not even death and four hundred years had parted him from that deep, abiding love.
Maybe he’d be lucky and it would turn out this was just a lookalike. That kind of random chance could have happened. Evolution did strange things sometimes. Maybe he’d program the bug to send out a genetic map of the man so he could check it himself to be sure. Evolution made miracles sometimes, too.
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The next scene is a Raif's POV meeting and I might just post that one, too! Or not (*muahaha*)
-Friday
@phoenicianbooks
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William found Joshua in his study, a grid of vid display images two rows high and three blocks wide hovering in the air over his desk. Even reversed, William identified each location around Trouville Sector as the images cycled through quickly, as though Joshua were searching through them. All but one lighted square window into the world.
The image at the bottom corner of Joshua’s grid remained constant. It was a feed from Cory Jansen’s office over at the Centre for Natural Sciences & Artificial Lifeforms, a research satellite facility of the Institute of Arts & Sciences where Cory “played around with ideas” as he put it. In fact, Dr. Cory Jansen designed and maintained the human race from his highly secure laboratory in the area of the building behind the security desk now displayed. Seated at the desk was Cory’s personal assistant, rather than the usual Security Proctor detail. Last William had heard, Cory had some remarkable discovery to show them, though why Cory thought it concerned William, he couldn’t guess. Joshua, on the other hand, was Administrator of the Institute and the Centre. As such, the poor sod had to oversee everything that went on in Cory’s lab.
Just as William put the mug of tea he’d brought in for Joshua down on the desk, Joshua tapped for the image from Cory’s office to expand into the full display area. William stood next to Joshua’s chair, leaning an arm over the back of it, trying to see what Joshua was looking at in Cory’s office so closely. As far as William could tell, there was nothing unusual going on.
Joshua picked up the mug of tea, muttered a thank you and tapped at the datapanel again to set the vid pickup to scan slowly around the reception area. The waiting room was mostly empty save for Cory’s assistant and a few patients. There was an older Privilege Class woman with a look of stern disapproval firmly affixed to her face sitting on a straight-backed arm chair next to a table scattered with data panels, no doubt containing outdated science journals, knowing Cory. She was watching something across the room from her and Joshua scanned over there before William could request the point of view.
Directly across from the old woman was a young couple, huddled together on the padded bench that spanned the length of the wall. There was a tall, rail-thin Class One woman with short, dark hair sitting up straight and clutching at a Proctor about twice her mass. The Proctor had his head bent, as though whispering into the Class One woman’s ear. William’s guess was that the woman was being forcibly brought in for psychological treatment and the Proctor was coddling her—or trying to get her into bed. This was his opportunity to negotiate favors if ever there was one. The couple certainly seemed intimate and it was annoying the older woman no end. William found the silent scene playing out over Joshua’s desk purely amusing but otherwise, he wasn’t sure why they were watching this.
He was about to ask when Joshua put his tea down and tapped to change the vid feed to a closer view of the couple. The feed started scanning up from the floor, as though Joshua meant to visually search the couple. Since the Proctor was just a Proctor, William had to assume Josh’s interest was in the Class One woman. She didn’t look very interesting to William, though her clothes were of a quality to suggest she worked in the Council Office Building. Made sense given the Proctor’s attentions.
She’d be easily accessible to him far into his future—for however short his future might be. They’d make a nice couple, so what was Josh about with this search?
Just as William started searching the closeup of the woman’s face, Joshua sucked in a loud, sharp breath, drawing William’s attention. He didn’t need to ask why Joshua had gasped. William nearly choked, himself, once his eyes had shifted off the woman. The Proctor’s strawberry blond hair had been noticeable enough from a distance but William hadn’t thought much of it. There aren’t many redheads but there are enough—and most of the males end up in the Proctor corps.
With the man’s face filling the other half of the vid pickup, that hair seemed to scream out at him, like a red flag literally waving in front of them, golden highlights glinting on copper red curls. The rich color was set off by his honey-colored skin but it was the glowing green eyes—Andrew Caine’s emerald green eyes—looking out at William that nearly knocked the wind out of him. He exhaled, an echo to Joshua’s inhalation, as though a virtual fist had punched through them both, into Joshua, out of William, leaving a silence stretching between them as they both examined the man in the image. It couldn’t be Drew. It had to be a mistake, a coincidence, something...not Andrew Caine.
The Proctor in the vid laughed with a quick smile at something the woman said and William’s heart skipped a beat—a familiar reaction to Andrew Caine’s smile—and it mattered not to William’s heart that Andrew Caine had died nearly four hundred years ago. His heart skipped a beat and his gut twitched. The man in the vid had Drew’s smile. Exactly like Drew’s. Was this Proctor their lost the sample, the last genetic material remnant of Andrew Caine, muddled together in a precious compilation only to be stolen five years ago? William had given up hope of ever seeing Drew’s face on another human being again, given they had no more of Andrew Caine’s genetic material from which to make a new version of the man.
Until now.
It was him. It had to be. This had to be their sample.
“Drew.” William heard himself whisper the name of a ghost.
Joshua answered, sounding more than a bit distracted, himself. “No. Not me, Will. That’s just a Proctor in Cory’s office. It can’t be...him
“What the fuck is he doing dressed up like a Proctor unless—wait, is someone playing a joke on us? Was this Cory’s idea? Is that why he called me in to see this? It’s not very funny of him.”
“It’s not a joke, and it’s just a Proctor, it has to be but he...he...” Joshua shook his head and couldn’t tear his gaze from the image, which he’d now frozen in a closeup of the man, leaving the woman’s face sliced half off. “God, he looks just like...”
“That is not just a Proctor!” William shot a hand out to poke an accusing finger through the ionized air particles imaging the mystery man. “Either that’s a joke—and in bad fucking taste, I might add—or that’s...” William swallowed and tried to decide if he wanted it to be true or not. “...that’s you. That’s Andrew Caine, what’s left of him, dressed up like a fucking Proctor. I can’t believe you’re not rolling in your grave.”
“I’m not in my grave, Andrew’s not, and that’s not him—me. Whoevver. That’s just...I don’t know who that is but it is not Andrew Caine.”
“Who the fuck thought this up? What are they—”
“Will, stop! Just take a breath and calm down. You’re not helping me like this. We have to...to calm down and take this apart, one piece at a time.”
“I’m perfectly calm!” William shouted then did, indeed, take a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. It was just a little hard to calm down when his husband—whose face he hadn’t seen in almost four hundred years—was smiling out of a vid display. “I’m just—I can’t take it any more slowly than I have for four hundred years. You have to admit, it’s—that hair, just that hair alone and—”
“There are plenty of redheads around the—”
“Less than a tenth of one percent—and they all come from Drew. How could one have escaped our notice? You know damned well there weren’t any other redheads post-dating the Vault collapse.”
“There were redheads in other geneaologies that came down after generational shifting had—”
“It’s you. I recognize those eyes. Don’t you think I’d know Drew’s eyes when he looks right at me?” William tapped at the data panel to shift the sharp green eyes in question into the center of the display and zoomed in yet more. It was a little overwhelming, even heart-stopping, to see those eyes that close up.
“They’re just green eyes.” Joshua whispered and zoomed back out to a less claustrophobic view.
“Then what about—” William reached over and zoomed the vid view around until the man’s face was shifted in the frame, angled slightly to the right side of his face. “That! Even the Joshua Scherrer in you has to admit those are Drew’s freckles. Some part of you spent more time looking at them than I did. Where did that come from if not from Andrew Caine?” William traced the tip of his index finger over a small cluster of freckles on the man’s right cheek. The ionized air left a tingle on his fingertip and his heart raced again, just the same as it used to do when he’d touch the original. Too many years ago.
“He’s you. That stupid good luck clover I...God, I’ve missed seeing that.” William heard his voice starting to shake and withdrew his hands, hoping to withdraw himself a bit. He stood behind Joshua’s shoulder and tried but couldn’t take his eyes off the image of the man’s face. The freckles were less distinct on the golden-toned complexion than they’d been on Drew’s pale pink skin, but they were reproductions of Andrew’s markings, like an exact copy of Drew’s skin had been overlain on someone else’s tanned hide.
William looked more closely, carefully and recognized more and more of the patterns. He knew Drew’s freckles by heart, and even after all this time, he realized he could still recognize them, the patterns he’d privately named and written in his heart. He’d been living with Drew, as a married couple, under the same roof, in the same bed, for almost a hundred years before they’d been separated by the car accident that had killed Andrew Caine and Joshua Scherrer. Killed and reinvented them.
Living together inside one mind, inside the reproduction of Joshua Scherrer’s body, had become both a blessing and a living hell for them all. The man seated in front of William now had finally found a balance—after about fifty years of trial and error, not to mention considerable “assistance” from the Phoenicians. Yes, the circle of old men, the old magicians as Joshua Andrew Caine, the merged man, called them.
The man in the image was Drew, William was sure of it. He knew every last mark on Andrew Caine’s body and this was a reproduction of Andrew Caine’s body—or at least part of this man was from Drew. This was their lost sample. He could be brought in, rehabilitated, retrained, recovered and...reunited? Was William hoping for the impossible? He’d let go of Drew so many years ago, had worked through his grief, he’d thought. How could he feel such yearnings now? Why was he still wishing for a miracle to bring Drew back? He’d finally let go, hadn’t he?
Joshua Andrew Caine, the fifth reproduction of the merged man the Phoenician Seven Chiefs had made four hundred years ago, said quietly, “That’s not me, Will. Those marks are just some freckles and he’s just a man. He’s not Andrew Caine. Even if that is our sample, he can’t possibly remember being me—I mean, Drew. He hasn’t got the memory map.” Joshua spun his chair a bit to look up at William, standing, over his shoulder, clutching at himself, eyes glued to the image of not-Drew. Joshua added, “We did that on purpose, Will, remember? It was your idea.”
“You don’t sound convinced. You sound like you’re talking yourself into it as much as me and I’m not convinced at all. I refuse to say either way without talking to him, Josh.” William looked down at the face of another not-Drew who looked so much like Drew sometimes, it broke William’s heart to have to look at him. He added, “Alone. I need to talk to him alone. I might—I don’t know, maybe he remembers something. If he does, if anyone can tell, it’ll be me. You know that.” William hated hearing himself pleading but he needed access to the man before anyone did anything to risk a memory cascade or worse, before he got himself killed—like a Proctor. He could be shot just leaving the building for all anyone knew. “We should tell Cory to hold him there, prevent him from leaving the building—or the lab area, for that matter. Not until I can get over there and accompany him out, personally.”
Joshua was silent for a long time staring up at William, then glanced back at the frozen image of the imitation of Drew’s face. Finally, Joshua rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and tented his hands in front of his face, fingertips just touching. Andrew’s thinking-about-it-and-ready-to-give-in pose. William had schooled himself for centuries on how to refrain from showing that he knew he was about to win the argument but he couldn’t resist now. His face broke into a smile.
“I haven’t said yes.” Joshua warned as he glanced up at him. “It could be dangerous to even approach the man, Will. We have no idea how he ended up wearing a Proctor’s uniform. For all we know, that’s a disguise or some other subterfuge. What if he is me—Drew—and that’s some kind of reconnaissance on us, on the Community. What if—I could what-if this to death but the fact is, we don’t know anything about him. We have to be careful how we approach him, for his sake as much as our own. If you go at it too quickly, and he’s our lost sample, he could suffer a memory cascade that does damage.”
“I know that.” William held his hands out to his sides. “I know how to do this safely. I’ve woken you up five times. Besides, I taught that man everything he knows—whether he’s Drew or a Proctor or just pretending to be one, he doesn’t know anything I don’t. I’ll do an evaluation, nothing more. No contact, no recruiting, just...let me find out who’s inside that head, all right? I’ll keep a safe distance, I promise. He won’t know I’m after anything but a friendly conversation.”
“What, do you want to take him out and get him drunk? Get him talking?”
William laughed. “It never worked with you. Why would it work with him? Is it all right with you, then?”
“Just talk? You swear?”
“I give you my word. Nothing mo—well, maybe we should plant a tracker in him, speaking of drinks. I can take him somewhere safe, somewhere we can secure the situation and slip something in so...” William saw the look on Joshua’s face. He was losing the argument now. “Josh, we can’t lose track of him again. Don’t you see that? We just need to let him move freely. I’m not going to do anything more than first contact without discussing it with you—with everyone. We obviously need to convene the Membership on this once I have a feel for who he is.”
“I know, I'm just thinking about this. All right, a biotracker in his drink, but make it a short-term bug. Use the one-year model. If we don’t find out enough about him in a year to recruit him, the bug dies a natural death and we let him go, agreed? No retrieval or followup.”
“Wait. Something else. No matter what you find out, add in a subroutine on that tracker. We might need access once it’s in his bloodstream if it comes to that. Use one of the guidance-level bots, understood?”
William didn’t like where this was headed. “You want to Adjust him after you review his statements. You’re going to want to erase all knowledge of meeting me, aren’t you?”
“We don’t know who he is. We don’t know what he knows or thinks or—anything about him. We need to take precautions.”
“What’s going on, Josh?”
“We’ve been down this path before—twice, remember? I spent ten hours with the man, if this is the same man, only to have Dramond wipe him clean. I went through it again the next day but even if this is the same man and even if he doesn’t remember me or anything I ever told him, what if Dramond remembers? What if placing him in the Centre is a ploy by Dramond to—”
“Are you really more fucking paranoid than me? Me?” William shook his head.
“Will, I want the option to do remote work. We might not have to do an Adjustment but if we do, and the tracker’s not there, then what? We’d have to physically secure him again. How safe is that if Dramond’s behind this?”
“All right, fine, I’m all for paranoid precautions but…give me twenty, maybe thirty minutes to write something onto the bug. I don’t have anything like that on hand below decks. Tell Cory I’m on my way over and have him stall them a while.”
“Thank you, and he’s already stalling them. They think he’s trying to make an opening on a fully-booked schedule to see her today. She’s some kind of off-the-books favor from a MedTech friend of the Proctor, and that old woman’s his only real appointment today. You’ll need to get rid of her or remove the Proctor before you say anything. She looks rudely intrusive.”
William panned out to look at the grouchy old woman again and muttered, “I can have her removed, no problem. So is Cory doing favors for Medtechs or for Proctors now?”
“The MedTech did a rotation in Cory’s lab a few years ago. Apparently he’s a fairly gifted MedTech and if I recall correctly, he’s rather fetching. He’s the same one who was involved when I first found the sample. The MedTech’s sloppy coverup was how we found him again, remember?” Joshua smiled and William frowned at Joshua’s attempt to fix him up.
“I remember and I’m not interested in a short-lived MedTech so just drop it.” William panned the view back over to the Proctor and his female companion, tapping into the live feed again. They were still chatting quietly amongst themselves though now the Proctor glanced over at the grouchy older woman occasionally.
Joshua said, “I had to try. Promise me you won’t get your hopes up about finding Drew inside that Proctor?”
Too late for that, William decided but all he said was, “I’ll be professional.” He smiled and left quickly before Joshua changed his mind—or worse. If this Proctor turned out to be their lost sample, William had no idea what he’d do. What could he do? He was still hopelessly in love with Andrew Caine. Not even death and four hundred years had parted him from that deep, abiding love.
Maybe he’d be lucky and it would turn out this was just a lookalike. That kind of random chance could have happened. Evolution did strange things sometimes. Maybe he’d program the bug to send out a genetic map of the man so he could check it himself to be sure. Evolution made miracles sometimes, too.
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The next scene is a Raif's POV meeting and I might just post that one, too! Or not (*muahaha*)
-Friday
@phoenicianbooks
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