My mom woke me up.
“I know you had an eventful day yesterday,” she said, “but this is ridiculous.”
I squinted blearily at my clock.
“It’s not even noon yet,” I said. “No school today. Teachers’ conferences, remember?”
She arched one perfect eyebrow and zeroed in on the book lying next to my pillow. “I see you found the book you were looking for.”
“I borrowed it from Dottie Tisk. How come you’re not at work?”
“I have been at work since seven o’clock this morning. I just came home to make sure you had emerged from your coma.”
“I have emerged,” I informed her.
“Emerge some more.”
I sat up. “Is Dad home?”
“Your father is at work, trying to untangle the can of worms you and Billy Bates opened yesterday.”
“Hey, I didn’t put the worms in the can,” I said.
“Be that as it may, he has requested your presence. He and Gilly are in the neuroprosthetics department working on Ernest Rausch’s computer.”
• • •
Dad had taken his WheelBot to work, so I had to walk. The ACPOD laboratories were a mile away, so I brought Charlotte along to keep me company. I don’t know why, but I wanted to read the really sad part again. I read as I walked, and it was an unseasonably hot and humid day, and the sad part was really sad, so I arrived at the labs exuding fluids from my pores and my eyes. I know that sounds quite unattractive. It was.
“Are you okay?” asked Ms. Ketter, who was manning—or rather, womanning—the security desk.
“I’m fine,” I said. I showed her the book. “I was just reading something sad.”
“I read that book,” Ms. Ketter said, smiling. “It’s not sad in the end.”
“I was rereading the sad part.”
Ms. Ketter seemed to understand that. “Are you here to see your father?”
I nodded and stepped over to the scanner. Since the events of last summer, ACPOD had upped its security systems. If you don’t have an employee badge you have to go through all sorts of procedures—fingerprints and so forth. Even I, the daughter of Director of Cyber-Security Services Royce Crump, had to submit to a retina scan.
My retinas passed, even with the drying tears to obscure them.
• • •
I had never been in the neuroprosthetics lab before. It was surprisingly small, with a single workbench and only one computer terminal. Gilly, my dad, and Billy were sitting in front of the display. Gertrude was sleeping on a folded towel in the corner.
I watched Billy flip through screen after screen of what looked like gibberish.
“That doesn’t look good,” I observed.
My dad nodded. “It’s not. Rausch erased most of his files and encrypted the rest. Our standard decryption programs aren’t working.”
“I’m running some nonstandard ones now,” Billy said.
“We were hoping you could remember more of what you saw when you looked at his client key,” Gilly said. “See if you can reproduce a line or two, character for character. That will give our pattern-recognition system something to key off of.”
I wasn’t sure I could do that, but I sat down at the keyboard and tried. I typed,
10-1 G.B. |
Partial restoration |
Canis lupus familiaris |
It didn’t look quite right. “I think there was a two-digit number after the Latin.”
“Assuming that it identified a specific animal, that would make sense,” Gilly said. “All the animals had numbers on their tags. Try zero one.”
I did so. It still looked wrong. I tried the only other line I remembered.
9-27 R.C. |
Evangeline |
Felis catus 01 |
“I think that one’s accurate,” I said. I went back to the first line I’d typed. The word “restoration” looked wrong. I changed it to “restore.” That looked better. “Is that enough?”
“You can’t remember any more?” Billy said.
“Unlike some people, I do not have an eidetic memory,” I said peevishly. “I know your initials were there, and probably the Latin name for dog, since we’re pretty sure your memories got transferred to Gertrude.”
Gertrude, hearing her name, emitted a sleepy bark from the corner.
“Okay, we’ll go with what we’ve got,” Billy said, taking my place at the terminal. “If we can crack Rausch’s encryption, we might be able to access all his records and figure out how to get our lost memories back.” His fingers flew across the keyboard. “There.”
“You got it?” I asked.
“Not yet. The pattern-recognition program is running. This might take a while.”
The screen showed nothing but a spinning, multicolored disk, indicating that the computer was thinking.
“How long is a while?”
Billy shrugged. “A couple hours,” he said.
• • •
I am not a girl who can sit staring at a computer for two hours. Besides, the neuroprosthetics lab smelled like three guys had been working there for hours, with the faint, lingering scent of Ernest Rausch’s abominable cologne.
“Do you need me anymore?” I asked.
They ignored me. They were staring at the spinning disk like three hypnotized owls. I’d seen guys do that before, as if staring hard at the display could make the disk spin faster, while completely ignoring the female person in the room.
“What about Mr. Rausch? Have they found him yet?”
“The police are working on it, Ginger,” my father said without looking at me.
“I’ll just be going, then.”
Nobody said anything.
“Maybe I’ll rob the bank, or dance down the street in my underwear.”
One of them grunted—I couldn’t tell who. It might have been Gertrude.