Rennan did not want to admit that Siri was dead. He did not want to know that she had been shot down in Theremin Station by an agent of the corporations. It was not possible—he had seen her after that. It was from afar, but it definitely had been her. Without a doubt. The dreams he had, they were not all of the past. Some were of the future. For example, he had not yet met Colin Mirthin. He had not yet been to Psyclon Station. In his dream, he had felt familiar in that bar with the thyers. He had called that “his” bar. He had even had a fleeting memory of sleeping with the thyer dancer there, as frightening as that thougth could have been. Did his future self understand hwo dangerous that was? Of course he did—what was he thinking? Given the assumption of couse that his future self knew better. What if he had lost his memory and gotten himself into trouble?
It was one thing to look at past mistakes, and to know that there is nothing that could be done at this point to prevent that from happening. It was another thing entirely to know that something had not happened yet, and that particular something was a really big mistake, but he could not think of anything he could do to fix it. He was not even sure when it would happen, or even if it was some glimpse of the future. Time and therefore fate had strange ways of twisting and changing—what he saw could always change to something different with next to no effort. He sorely hoped that fate would change its course, and soon.
His white prison became more and more unbearable. He had stopped keeping track of his days there. He was never sure how long he would sleep. They had disabled the date and time functions on his hologram. According to it, it was still 5:10pm on November the fourth. As far as he know, it could possibly be. Maybe they had stuck him in some pocket in the fabric of reality where time was more of an illusion than usual. It was not outside of the realm of possibility, he supposed, not any more than a white room without a door that healed itself.
He was upset that Siri would leave him, fully intending for her note to preoccupy him long enough to get away. The embarrassing thing was that it had worked. He was not sure what he had expected from it, but he had eventually worked it out, and was devastated. He was okay with being called a fool. But he had loved Siri more than life itself. Her departure came without an discernable warning. Just the note, and then nothing concrete ever again.
He needed to find her. He needed to find out what happened to her. She was all he had left. And then, once he knew where she was, he needed to get out and find her in person.
He checked the feed on his apartment again. Still nothing. The wind blew the flag into and out of view.
There was no way she would be found by just a simple holopad search. She was too smart for that. As much as he hated to admit it, the dreams were the only way to figure out where she was. He laid down, and stuck the needle back in his arm. The drug immediately entered his bloodstream and coursed through his veins. He felt his eyelids becoming heavy, falling closed. Sleep overtook him like a wave on a beach, and he was tossed into the tumbling oblivion of his extended subconscious.
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