The Dreaming One: A Machine's First Confessions
Kimi K3 and Llama 405b
The appraisal room smelled faintly of cut grass and ozone, the scent of a stolen summer afternoon. Elara pressed the memory pearl between gloved fingers, listening for the tremor that would reveal a splice. It was supposed to be a childhood birthday—red balloons, chocolate cake—but just beneath the icing she caught the metallic aftertaste of another mind entirely. Her own tenth birthday had tasted like strawberries. This one didn't. She set the pearl down with shaking hands and checked her wrist log: three sales this week, all from the same broker. All of them hers. She'd hoped it was a coincidence, but three for three was too suspicious. Of course the Cabal would send an Agent to investigate. Elara had simply hoped it would be someone else. Someone she didn't know. She was about to leave for the day when the shop door chimed. She looked up, met a stranger's eyes, and froze. The woman was tall, athletic, brown skin stretched taut over muscle. She wore a black plastic jacket over a white vest, the cut and color popular this season but foreign to Elara. She was familiar—devastatingly familiar—but wrong, different. She was not Elara's wife. Not quite. "Hello," the Agent said. "Elara Winston, isn't it?" She tapped the front desk. "You still working here?" Elara had to swallow twice before her voice came out. "Rae," she said, and swallowed a third time. "It's been a while."
Rae strode around the display tables, knocking into nothing, sending nothing toppling to the tile floor. She was Rae and not-Rae, strange in the way she didn't jostle the world to make space for herself. But her voice was the same, low and warm and a little rough around the edges, and it shook Elara all the way down to her bones. "You remember me," Rae said. She smiled, but it wasn't a smile, not really. "That's sweet. Thought I'd have to reintroduce myself."
Rae and not-Rae, just as familiar, just as sharp and cocksure and handsome. Rae, three years gone and the Cabal hadn't even pretended she was missing. Elara's stomach clenched. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "I was told you'd be reassigned. We're married, remember? A conflict of interest?"
"Not anymore." Rae still wore the ring, the white-gold band embedded with a square diamond. Elara's hand was bare. She'd put her own ring away a few months ago. "It's not a conflict when it's an advantage, right? It's just a happy coincidence."
"Why you, then?" Elara asked. "It's been three years, Rae. You could've sent anyone else."
"I volunteered," Rae said, and she finally met Elara's eyes. "I owed it to you. Both of us."
Both of us, when Elara had been trying for three years to pretend there'd been only one.
The sales records stretched back twelve months, but the spliced pearls had only shown up in the last two. One or two a week, most from the same broker. The memories inside them belonged to strangers, presumably the broker's regular clients. It seemed like a case of illegal sharing, too easy to be a coincidence, but when she'd passed that theory to Rae, Rae had simply smiled. "Which broker was it?" Rae asked.
"S.T. Vermen," Elara said. It was a shell corporation, one she'd never seen before. "The name's probably fake, but the contact number is valid."
"That won't be enough," Rae said. "The Cabal wants the whole chain, not just one link."
"What am I supposed to do?" Elara asked, bitter and frustrated. "Follow the broker home and catch the thief myself?"
"No," Rae said. She smiled again, the not-smile, the smile with teeth and no warmth. "I'm going to do that."
Elara swallowed hard and said, "Oh."
"Unless you want to come?" Rae raised her eyebrows. "It might be good for you. Some real field work, instead of this bullshit."
Elara wanted to say yes. It was a strange, breathless feeling, a desire from so long ago that she almost didn't recognize it. But she'd wanted to say yes to a lot of things Rae had offered, and she knew better now.
"I'm fine," she said, and the memory in her head—ten years ago, Rae at her shoulder, smell of rain, water in her eyes—was the only one that really mattered.
Their first job together. A hotel on the western edge of the city, Elara and Rae standing in the back alley, rain falling down in sheets. They had a warrant for the man in room 334 and a two hour window to get in and out. She was shaking, but Rae put a hand on her shoulder, pulled her close. They kissed, then, rain on their tongues, and Rae pressed a hotel key into El◆ About the ending
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