Memories of Tomorrow (Nameless: Season One, #6)

by Dean Koontz

On waking, he knew that his destiny was henceforth to be a defender of the innocent who are ill served—or not served at all—by the current justice system, especially when their tormentors are among the empowered.

It’s not about the money, it’s the kindness, the way it makes the recipient feel special. Life is hard and lonely for many people. If all of us would just make one another feel special now and then—not just with money, but however we can—wouldn’t that be lovely?

This two-lane highway at first leads through farmland with clusters of houses, through forested hills, but after he crosses the Blue River, the woods grow thicker, reminiscent of Appalachia, crowded with oak, hickory, black walnut, sassafras, and dogwood, so deeply shaded even in summer sunlight that they darkle with an ominous quality.

Every vehicle with a GPS is tracked by satellite, and the history of its travels is archived in the million-square-foot Utah Data Center of the National Security Agency, in its ever-growing cloud. The NSA is a jealous guardian of the knowledge that it has acquired, and police agencies do not have routine access to it.

Indeed, agencies of the state are more insular and potentially more corrupt because of that insularity than are private-sector companies. Corporations must answer to stockholders and customers and defend against lawsuits of wide variety, but government agencies seldom have to answer to anyone other than sympathetic congressional committees and are largely immune from lawsuits filed by citizens whom they fail to serve or actively damage. Each agency becomes a little kingdom and builds formidable encircling walls, which often inhibits the efforts of law-enforcement officers.

The flowering dogwoods—some white, some pink—shed petals that, like fairies fleeing darker spirits, vanish eastward through the forest shadows.

What was blind to him is made manifest by all the light we cannot see.

Southern Indiana is a land of disappearing streams. They follow carved courses through fields and forests, only to drop suddenly out of sight, into a flue, down into darkness, chuckling like evil spirits homeward bound after working their wickedness in the upper world.

The day wears a coat of many pockets, with another nasty surprise in one of them.

You’re an obsessive, you’ve always been, and you’re sick with guilt beyond all reason, sick with guilt and crazy with grief, and you’ve found this thing to do, these missions, to give your life meaning.”