Friday, June 19, 2009

The main administrative offices



“Wake up.”

It was Harry´s voice. I forced my eyes open and, to my surprise, realized I wasn´t in the White Room. I had no idea if that was good or bad news. Harry was leaning over me and caressing the side of my face, looking serious but not particularly upset, and most importantly, he was unhurt. I struggled to sit up, and looked around. Now, this was weird.

The room was shaped like a hemisphere, with the dome curving above us. I couldn´t figure out what it was made of: the dome and the floor looked like smooth glass or transparent plastic, yet at the same time they were opaque in a way that made me believe I could see into them. The room was bathed in uniform, muted light, dim enough to allow me to discern a very faint blue glow from the walls or, more disconcertingly, deep within them. I blinked a few times, and then my brain suddenly made sense out of the phenomena. We were under ice, and the glow was Cherenkov radiation. The room had two simple beds with white sheets, and nothing else.

“What´s going on?” I asked.

“No idea. I just woke up myself,” Harry answered. “Do you know what this ice palace is?”

“Never heard of it,” I said, puzzled. “This is weird.”

Harry looked around, frowning. “The glacier must be very large to be stable enough to house a building, and if it´s still July 3, the sun is shining around the clock in Greenland. We´re either very deep, or somewhere in the south. My bets are on Antarctica.”

“We could be in Europa. The moon.”

Harry´s jaw dropped.

“Not very likely, though,” I added.

I looked around, taking my time. I thought I could see vague outlines of other domes in the ice behind the only door, which was white and instead of a handle had a small projected holotank showing an unknown symbol.

“It´s an interesting prison, I give them that,” I said. “I wonder how long we´ve been here.”

“Not very long, or I´d be hungry,” Harry replied. “Though it doesn´t look like they´re very big on bodily functions. No bathroom.”

“Should we try to attract their attention? Shout? Bang at the door?”

“That wouldn´t be very dignified,” Harry said, and then cocked his head. “What if the door isn´t locked?”

“Ha ha.”

He walked up to the projection and was about to touch it when he quickly drew his hand back.

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

“Well... this may sound stupid...” he hesitated. “But, you know, there could be anything out there. Anything.”

I thought about it for a second. “I see your point.”

“I mean, what if they are like giant insects, or maybe man-sized glistening hairy worms wriggling about?” Harry made a face. “Why did I even think about that.”

“Um... yes... there could be ice worms outside the door, just waiting to inject our bodies with their cold eggs that will eat us alive from the inside when they hatch and grow up.”

“Sometimes I hate you so.”

“I guess there´s only one way to find out if the door is open,” I said and stepped next to him. “Go for it.”

Harry touched the projection, and with a muted click the door slid open. A corridor lined with doors on both sides stretched in front of us, leading to a larger open space about fifty yards away. We could tell there was some movement in the large room, but the corridor itself was empty. Not unlike Hansel and Gretel, we hesitantly advanced along the corridor until two beings entered from the room ahead and walked straight towards us. Alarmed, we stopped, and observed the approaching figures.

They were two women of a certain age, one of them overweight but not actively obese while the other one looked more like a stick figure. Both of them were wearing remarkably drab clothing, the hefty one a cheap-looking sweater and a gray skirt and the skinny one a pantsuit of rather horrid pea green polyester. Sensible, squeaky shoes finished off their fashion statements, and as they drew closer we had to admit that their faces matched perfectly the attention-repelling clothes. Neither one paid us any attention whatsoever; they just walked straight by as if we didn´t exist.

“Frankly, this is not what I expected at all,” Harry said, taken aback.

“Yes, the way these women ignored you is shocking,” I quipped.

“It´s not funny,” he replied. “Just try to be serious for a moment.”

Emboldened, we walked to the end of the corridor, and stopped to study the opening. A large number of interconnected domes formed a spacious room, loosely fitted with circular areas that contained a three-dimensional display and a seat. About half of the seats were taken; most of the occupants had their eyes half-closed as if they were drugged, with only a scattered few interacting with their display. The flickering symbols were unrecognizable, but for a moment a thought I saw the image of Capitol Hill in one of the displays. I looked around to see what the people were like, and even though each individual had approached the task from a different angle I couldn´t see anyone who didn´t look like the least personable accountant one could imagine.

“Fucking hell,” Harry said. “It´s an freaking office. What the hell are we doing in an office?”

I shrugged. “Let´s ask.”

I walked to the closest cubicle whose occupant seemed to be aware of his surroundings, and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Could you please tell us why we´re here, and what´s going on?”

The man looked up to me, without bothering to turn off his display, and gave me a somewhat embarrassed smile.

“Oh, it´s you,” he said, clearly wishing I had chosen someone else instead. “Please find a couple of vacant chairs and sit down.”

Rolling his eyes, Harry brought us two chairs, and we sat down right outside the door opening of the circle as there wasn´t enough room for the three of us inside.

“Ah, where to start...” the man contemplated.

“Where are we?” Harry interrupted.

“About one hundred meters under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, halfway between the South Pole and Princess Elizabeth Land. Very remote. Very discreet.”

“How far from the South Pole station?” I asked.

“About 1100 kilometers,” he answered.

“And what are we doing here?” Harry pressed.

An expression of distaste. “A certain faction of our people have taken an active dislike of Jonatan, and personally I can´t blame them after what happened in Sweden. And in Italy. Our official policy, however, doesn´t allow for personal opinions and as soon as we discovered what they were doing we stepped in. You were brought here to forestall a diplomatic incident with the Anthropology Guild.”

“How nice of you,” I said, earning an annoyed glance. “And please tell me what did I do in Italy that was so aggravating?”

For the first time, there was a flicker of interest in his eyes. “You don´t know?”

“No, I don´t. You people made sure that I have no memories from that, incident.”

“No memories? I don´t understand.” His eyes narrowed. “You were re-lifed after Italy?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Yes. You didn´t know that?”

An absent look took over his eyes. When he came back a few seconds later, his normal impassive expression returned as well.

“What happened there?” I asked, with a hard anxious edge to my voice.

“I think you need to ask the Guild that question.”

I knew he wasn´t going to say another word. So something weird had happened in Italy, too, something that had further annoyed the Axiom, and if they didn´t know I´d been re-lifed that could only mean that something or someone had intervened when I´d still been alive. Had it been the Guild? After knowing Mauro for so long, I knew I could trust him, and since he hadn´t told me that meant he didn´t know anything about it himself. Either the Guild had kept him in the dark or, a more unsettling thought, there was something that the Guild itself didn´t know. And the question was, where was Jonatan? Was he dead or alive, after all?

With an effort, I focused on the question in hand. “So, when is the next flight back home?”

He let out a sigh. “There is considerable political controversy regarding your future, as our most solemn principles demand that you be liberated.”

“So?” I had an increasing urge to push the man, or kick the chair from under him.

“For the time being, the situation is deadlocked.”

“What does that mean?” Harry asked, clearly sharing my inclination.

The man – who had never presented himself – shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Some of us are hoping that the situation will take care of itself.”

We both just stared at him until he had to continue.

“You are not being held against your will,” he explained reluctantly. “If Jonatan was to, say, take one of the environmental suits and try to walk to the South Pole Station or the Australian Davis Base on the coast of Princess Elizabeth Land...”

We stared at him but this time he didn´t budge.

“What do you mean with ´try to walk´?” Harry asked, his voice cold.

“The suits are similar to space suits, only much lighter and more comfortable,” the man continued, looking away from us. “They recycle liquids and keep you all nice and cozy. But the food reserves... well...”

“I get the picture,” I said, standing up. “We´ll get back to you on that.”

Before leaving the circle, I turned back and asked him, “What about Harry?”

“He was brought along to keep you company, and to keep him quiet until the Guild has had a chance to talk to him. As soon as you leave the base, he´ll be transported back to his house in the Stockholm Archipelago.”

“You fucker...” Harry took a step towards the man, but I stepped in between them and managed to push him out of the circle before he got his hands on the weaselly bureaucrat.

“Let´s find out where they eat,” I said, to distract him from violence. “I´m hungry.”

With the help of the pretense I managed to drag Harry away, and we set out to explore the base once he had calmed down enough not to attack random people in the corridors. The hybrids all sported the forget-me look, and collectively ignored us unless we went up to them and asked a straight question. However, all our questions were promptly answered, with honesty as far as I could tell, and what the bureaucrat had told was pretty much the whole story. The only thing he hadn´t had time to underline was that me being exonerated from liberation was by no means a done deal. The longer I stayed, the more likely the hive would decide to deliver me to end the worsening diplomatic strife with the Guild. Whichever the outcome, Harry would then be returned to Stockholm. The Axiom weren´t worried that he might talk; the Guild had a lot of ways to buy his silence, and the fact that only they could bring me back – this time surely without the mesh, I was told – was just one.

We wandered into a cafeteria, and filled our trays with odd-looking pieces of food to study them in a corner table. Obviously, everything had to be nutrient to a human-hybrid body, so the only problem that remained was the taste. I could have sworn that one of the blobs was a mixture of strawberry cake and tuna, and another contained both peppermint and mozzarella in addition to mud, but when we asked we were assured that everything was healthy no matter how odd the taste. I covertly watched Harry pick on the disgusting food, his face belonging to someone who was plotting murder. If we´d been told the truth, there really was only one thing I could do, but I needed a few more days to build up the courage and to make sure Harry didn´t do anything crazy when he realized I was gone.

Suddenly he lifted his eyes from the food and looked me in the eyes. “Don´t even think about leaving.”

“We have to study this place before we start making any decisions,” I said soothingly.

“That´s already been decided. You´re not leaving alone.”

I knew better than to contradict him. Luckily, I´d have no shortage of allies when the time came.

It only took us couple of hours to finish exploring the base. It was nearly as boring as its occupants, as there was absolutely nothing but offices, dorms and cafeterias, in addition to the common bathrooms which had all the necessities for personal hygiene. No bars, movie theaters, or gyms, or anything. Recreation seemed to be an utterly meaningless concept to them. The only interesting part was the exit.

Only one small room next to the elevators was dedicated to the environmental suits, which meant that wandering up to the dangerously cold polar night wasn´t a favorite pastime. We were told that the urethral and anal catheters inserted themselves automatically and we wouldn´t have to worry about them – easier said than done – and that even though the suits communicated with the hive, a few basic orders could be programmed to be accessible through icons reflected on the faceplate. Fortunately, we didn´t need the suits during our brief visit to the upside. The elevators were interesting: they were made of the same transparent material as the rest of the base, and moved up and down in their shafts with no visible sign of technology. A one-hundred-meter shaft opening right below your feet was a disconcerting sight. The upside, however, was another disappointment. The elevators opened into a rather low-ceilinged space which served to camouflage the entry. The spaceport was nothing but a flat extension of ice, with no sign of hangars, fuel pumps or terminals. The entire complex would be totally invisible for an airplane flying at even very low altitude, and considering that this was probably the most desolate spot on the planet there wasn´t much of a risk of that happening. Any I-skied-alone-across-Antarctica madmen or women could pass the entrance by ten meters and never realize it was there.

I looked around in the dark polar night, and couldn´t help a shudder. There was no moon, and the only light came from stars and green-tinted auroras, strong enough to color the endless plateau of snow and ice with a sick, green hue. The person who had conveniently been waiting at the downside exit to tell us about the suits, but wisely hadn´t taken the elevator up, had told us that the current temperature was -59 degrees Celsius, or -74 Fahrenheit. Sunrise was a month and a half away.

Harry hated the place even more than I did, and after just a couple of minutes he forcefully dragged me back into an elevator.

As soon as the doors closed, he said, “Did you see what it´s like out there? You´re not going into that place. And if you ever try, I´ll stop you.”

There was no one else around, so I could speak without risking him violently attack the first person he saw. “I´d rather be free out on the ice than go through vivisection here.” I laid my hand on his chest. “You have to let me go.”

“If anyone tries to take you away from me I´ll kill them with my bare hands,” Harry said. “And I won´t let you go out there, to die of cold and hunger. If you think I´ll let you do that you´re crazy.”

“You´ll be back in Stockholm just hours after I´m gone. And I´ll be there too, just two years later.”

“Two fucking years! You don´t know what you´re talking about,” he burst out. “Anything could happen in two years.”

“Like what?”

“What if-” at first he couldn´t bring himself to say the words. “What if after a year I meet some girl in a new job? What if something happens with her? I could never betray you for a man, but for a woman?” He slammed his fist into the elevator wall. “I don´t know! And what if I do that after you walk out of here to die in the cold just so that I can go back home and cheat on you?”

“If that happens, then it happens,” I said. “That´s how life goes. And don´t you forget, I won´t die. I´ll be back in two years.”

“You lost your coin in Galveston. Everything that has happened after that will be gone. It won´t be you, the person I´m talking to right now.”

“It´ll be close enough.”

He shook his head. The elevator came to a halt, and we walked back to our room without a word. As soon as the door closed behind us, he lifted me up in his arms and carried me to the bed.

“I won´t let you go,” he kept murmuring into my ear. “I won´t. Ever.”




Three days later I had everything ready. I´d been sneaking out of our room to talk to people while he was asleep, and so everyone in the base knew what I was planning. Now all I had to do was to wait until he fell asleep, walk across the base to the elevators and don a suit. I´d also learned something reassuring: the suits had tranquillizers and anesthetics, and even though the suit would refuse to give me a lethal overdose all I needed to do was to administer enough to make me fall asleep and then quickly undo the suit before I lost consciousness. Cold would do the trick; and it would be totally painless and quick. I warned people that they had to make sure Harry learned about it, to keep him from physically harming and perhaps even killing some of them once he found out that they´d helped me to leave.

We had already created a kind of a daily routine of ours, despite the 31-hour day and night cycle of the station. We slept, had sex, visited the cafeterias whenever we got hungry, walked around the base to get some exercise, and slept again. Falling asleep whenever we felt like it meant that we never remained fast asleep for long: it was as if we kept merely napping around the clock. The tricky part would be to get out of the room without waking Harry up. He was lying next to me, on his stomach, his breath slow and deep. His left arm was thrown over my chest, and as he instinctively searched for me even in his sleep, slipping away wasn´t going to be easy. I tried not to get sentimental; if I allowed myself to get all weepy and unfocused I wouldn´t be able to go through with this. I told myself I´d see him again in just a few days, but what he´d said about falling for someone else during my absence had been the honest truth and there was the distinct possibility that this was the last time we shared a bed together. It was just that he looked so strong yet vulnerable in his sleep, full lips slightly parted, eyelashes fluttering as he dreamed, and finding out that I was gone would be so hard on him. He let out a sigh and turned to his side, moving his arm, and I wriggled down from the bed. Twice his arm moved across the empty bed, searching for me, and I held my breath. Then his hand hit my pillow and came to rest. He hadn´t woken up.

I looked back at him just once, from the door, and then I had to go. Once I reached the office all I had to do was to nod at the first person I saw, and a few of them would gather at the elevators to make sure Harry wouldn´t follow me once he woke up. I hurried across the base, and when I reached the storage room for the suits three of the guardians were already in place. One of them showed me the suit that had been programmed for me, and I started pulling it on. It was white and quite similar to a ski suit, except that all the insulation and machinery that was packed into it made the material about half a centimeter thick and gave it a rubbery feeling. The helmet was very similar to that of a space suit, except for the connection at the neck which was odd-looking but very clever, designed to allow for comfortable sleep without having to take the helmet off. The catheters were nowhere near as comfortable, at least in the beginning, and I took a sharp intake of breath when one of the tubes slithered into my urethra and reached my bladder. It was a strange feeling, but once it was over I could imagine why there were people who liked sounding. To my surprise, I started getting an involuntary erection because of the peculiar new pressure inside of my dick, and had to focus back on the external world.

We almost pulled it off. I was already getting into an elevator when I heard an angry shout, and turned to see Harry charging down the corridor towards us. His eyes were wild and his hands were balled into fists; the poor sods who would have to stop him would need to see a doctor once everything was finished. The first one went down like a bowling pin; I heard the nose of the second one crunch and break as he tried to grab Harry´s arm. But there were too many of them, he couldn´t get through. His progress ground to a halt, and as much as he struggled he couldn´t take another step.

“Jonatan!” He roared. “Don´t you fucking get into that elevator! Jonatan!”

He managed to down two more before they caught him firmly in their grip again.

Anything I could do or say would only make things worse for him. I stepped into the elevator, looking back at him, and the transparent door slid between us. Then I was moving up, and all I could see was the veined, dark ice, and the faintest blue glow emanating from it.

When I reached upside, a gibbous moon had risen over the horizon, and the desolate extension of ice looked almost beautiful in the cold light. A few blue-turquoise ribbons of aurora turned visible in the horizon when I walked to the transparent wall of the chamber. Once I passed through the door there would be no turning back, but I didn´t feel like lingering. The thought of Harry made me want to get out and get it over with as soon as possible, and when I passed my hand through the holo projection the interior lights dimmed to keep any visible light spilling over to the outside world. The door slid open and I could feel a strong gust of wind buffet the suit even though there was no sensation of dropping temperature. Despite their hatefulness, these guys really knew their industrial design.

I passed through the door, and watched it close behind me. I backed away, and nothing but a flat wide boulder of ice that had seemingly been squeezed up from the glacier by internal pressure remained in front of me. There was no sign whatsoever that the slab of ice could be anything but one of the million scattered across the continent. The faceplate navigator projection pointed me to the direction of the South Pole Station, and as useless as taking the route was I still chose to follow it. At least it would keep me from walking in circles and stumbling back to the Axiom base, never realizing that I´d returned there. I started walking.

The back of the suit was thicker than the rest as the water and food reserves were held there to form a mattress to sleep on. I touched the respective icons on the faceplate, and one after another the nozzles extended themselves into my mouth. Water was recycled and wouldn´t run out – the suit hadn´t been specifically designed for polar environment with plenty of snow around for melt water – but the reserves held only 8000 calories worth of the awful-tasting food paste. If I really tried, I could probably get more than halfway to the South Pole Station before dying from hunger. Not an attractive thought.

After having walked about a kilometer, I found an ice boulder that seconded as a rudimentary armchair and sat down to observe the direction of the base. I was in no hurry, but it didn´t turn out to be a long wait in any case. If I hadn´t suspected that there was something to see I would have never noticed the sudden visual distortion of a green aurora near the horizon. A stealthed ground-to-orbit flier was landing at the base. Two minutes later the same phenomena repeated itself, to the opposite direction. Harry was on his way home.

I got back on my feet, turned and walked away.




Unable to access the suit´s chronometer, I had no idea how long I´d been on the ice when the moon dipped below the horizon. The stars, and auroras that came and went, kept me from total darkness. I had already decided that if a storm came along that would be it; I´d pull the plug. But the weather continued beautiful, and after having found a nice soft snow drift to sleep in I woke up to the moonlight again. I wiggled into a half sitting position and had breakfast, and then – why not? – resumed walking. The glacier had a strange beauty to it, utterly barren, yet subtle. As I walked, I couldn´t decide whether I considered the Jonatan who would wake up two years from now myself. He wouldn´t be me, just like Harry had said, but neither would he be someone else. And perhaps it was a blessing that he´d wake up without memories from the base and the pain I´d put Harry through. It was a weird idea, to be walking here on endless glittering ice under the big sky, in utter solitude, free of my own future.

The feeling didn´t last, though. After a few more hours of ice and auroras I was getting bored. Lethally so. I was starting to wonder if I´d be bored enough to open the suit before the next sleep cycle when something caught my attention. Right on my path, maybe half a kilometer ahead, was something that didn´t belong in this place. A shape that wasn´t natural. As I walked closer, squinting my eyes in the moonlight, I began to distinguish more details. It was a chaise longue and a wide, round sunshade. Two chaise longues, I realized after another hundred meters. And there was someone lying on one of them, sipping from a large glass. Someone wearing only a pair of speedos.

At first, I felt like laughing. The suit must have been programmed to mix the atmosphere with some kind of a drug, or maybe to give me a wrong mix of gases. I wouldn´t have to worry about administering the cocktail myself. I kept walking, however, and soon I had to admit that I wasn´t hallucinating. In addition, there was a small table set between the chaise longues, with a pitcher of full of some tropical concoction that came complete with colorful pieces of fruit and paper sunshades. I came to a halt, and stared at the man lying in one of the chaise longues. My faceplate display told me that the temperature had suddenly risen to balmy 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

He gave me a bright smile, obviously quite pleased with himself. “I was going to ride a snowmobile, but then I thought, what the heck, why not be a little more original, just like that last time we met.”

I was absolutely certain I had never seen the man before. No one could have forgotten him. He was black, not just dark-skinned, but deep perfect black, and if he wasn´t Engineer´s handiwork there was someone else who knew every trick of the trade as well as he did. The bodybuilder physique was an utter perfection with deeply etched muscles, and the African face could only be described as exquisite despite being thoroughly masculine. However, the most distracting thing about him ended up being the black speedo, so sheer and tight that only the color was keeping the impressive details of his anatomy from being completely visible.

My dick was helplessly reacting to his presence even though I had no intention whatsoever to engage in sex with this man, having just left Harry behind.

“I don´t believe we´ve been formally introduced,” I said, taken aback by my body´s visceral reaction to him. I supposed I was just having a taste of my own medicine.

He let out an instantly likable belly laughter. “My name is Malik. Let´s get you out of that suit.”

My faceplate display had time to show some kind of general alarm before it blinked out. The seals of the suit started undoing themselves, and within a few seconds the suit crumpled down around my ankles. I lifted the helmet off, enjoying the freedom and the perfectly warm air, but I couldn´t help noticing that I´d passed something like two days in the suit and badly needed a shower.

The man laughed again, shaking his head. “I think you need some of this. See you in twenty seconds.”

Before I had time to ask what he meant, a swirl of white snow crystals rose from the ground and surrounded me like a small tornado. It felt as if I was being tickled by hundreds of soft feathers, covering every inch of my body, and when the feeling invaded my foreskin I couldn´t help a gasp and the crystals entered my mouth as well. Just as he had promised, and a little disappointingly, the crystals scattered away after twenty seconds leaving me with a clean and refreshed feeling.

“Something to drink?” He poured me a drink and gestured me to sit down on the free chaise longue.

After the Axiom food, the tropical juice with pieces of fruit couldn´t have tasted better. He watched me down the drink in one big gulp, happy with the effect the set-up was having on me.

“Was our last meeting in Italy, by any chance?” I asked him while he was pouring me the second glass, and he nodded.

“In the leaning tower of Pisa, at night. The view was magnificent, but at first you had some trouble believing that the tower wasn´t going to topple over at any second.”

“How did we get there?”

“The Axiom driver lost control of the ambulance, hit a road sign, and strangely enough, when they came to all bruised and battered, you were gone.”

“I see.” I took another gulp. “But why?”

“It was a warning. One that the Axiom clearly didn´t heed.”

“Who are you, Malik?”

“I´m The Supervisor. The Big Boss. Man with technology of godlike powers.” He took a sip. “Well, I can´t go back in time. With our present knowledge of physics that would cascade into a new Big Bang, and it doesn´t seem like a smart thing to do. But we´re working on that.”

“And what are you working on down here?”

“I´m sending the Axiom and a bunch of your Guild members right back where they started from.”

That didn´t sound good.

He saw my expression, and added, “Don´t worry, the Guild work will continue. You won´t notice any difference, except that there will be no more hustling and blackmailing.”

“That´s a pity,” I said. “I thought I was cut out for that type of thing. Before I met Harry, obviously.”

“Sorry about that,” he apologized. “But the situation has reached a point where we have to pull back. The Guild and the Axiom have simply overstepped their mandate and their interference has become reckless. Carlo Brambilla, genetically engineered bacteria...”

“What´s so terrible about them? I thought they were fine ideas.”

“They are putting your species in danger. I´m sorry to say, but you are a self-destructive race and unless we move forward very carefully you´ll end up wiped out by your own stupidity.”

I shrugged. “Can´t argue with that.”

Malik smiled. “I see you haven´t changed your mind. I already know what you´re going to ask next.”

“When will we grow up?”

Another belly laugh with gusto. “Bingo,” he said. “OK, there are thousands of indicators, but the most constant over a large variety of species has been global health care. When every individual on the entire planet has free access to the same health care as everyone else, the race is usually ready. Unfortunately, you guys don´t even have the concept of global health care in your minds yet.”

I had rarely felt as deflated. “It´s an alien concept to us all right.”

“Well, there´s some hope for you yet.”

I looked around. “And now what?”

“For you, nothing changes. When you return in two years´ time business will be as usual. The Guild will still be working, perhaps someone else has taken the place of the Axiom, perhaps not.”

I looked at him, trying not to get distracted. “Did you come all the way down here just to tell me that?”

“I thought I owed you,” Malik said. “After all, I´ve used you as a messenger boy and a lightning rod.”

“Well, if you ever need an assistant, I have a pretty banging resume.”

He laughed. “I´ll keep that in mind. Talking of which, I have your memories from Italy and here, and if you get the job I´ll hand them over. For the time being, I´m not sure how much exactly the Guild should know about you and me.”

I was surprised what a big difference it made to know that the memories were still somewhere, intact, and waiting to be reinstalled.

“Sounds good to me,” I said and yawned, looking up to the sky. “I think all this sun is making me sleepy. Make sure I won´t get burned if I fall asleep.”

Malik laughed. “I will. Sweet dreams.”

I yawned again, and closed my eyes. These chaise longues were really comfortable. After all that trudging on ice, a quick nap would be just the thing.

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