Identity in the Quantum Haze — Vol. 1 Prologue 1
Part of the series “Adi’ra the Pattern Seeker”
April 3, 2040 — 4:03 p.m.
Another weather disaster was unfolding across the HoloScreen on the eastern wall.
Maps, water-level gauges, and animated current models hovered over translucent images of a flooded coastal city. A reporter stood knee-deep in brown water, explaining why the protective infrastructure had not, strictly speaking, failed this time, but had merely been engineered for a climate that no longer existed.
Nana had turned the volume down far enough that the catastrophe did not entirely dominate the room.
It could not be shut out completely.
Behind the reporter, pieces of furniture drifted through what had once been a street, while along the lower edge of the display the outside temperature in Glinde appeared:
26.1 degrees Celsius.
On the third of April.
Warm air entered the living room through the open terrace door. It smelled of dry wood, waking soil, and a spring behaving as though it had simply decided to skip summer’s formal introduction and become summer itself.
The iCom above the open dining area came alive in Kasandra’s voice.
“Nana?”
Nana raised her head, even though Kasandra did not need to see her through the house system.
“Yes?”
“Have you adjusted the garden irrigation to the current weather yet?”
Nana looked through the terrace door. The lawn was already showing its first pale patches. The shrubs along the property line stood in full bloom unusually early, as though they, too, had decided they were no longer willing to take instructions from the seasons.
“Not yet,” she said.
“Could you ask the HomeAI whether the old April configuration still makes any sense? According to the forecast, it’s going to stay above twenty-five degrees through Tuesday.”
“I’ll ask her.”
“And please don’t just let everything run twice as long. The reservoir is only at sixty-four percent.”
“Yes, Kasandra.”
“I’m only saying that because—”
The terrace door swung farther open.
Adi’ra came inside, walked past the large dining table, dropped onto the leather sofa opposite Nana, and said without preamble:
“We checked the bedding in the van. It needs to be washed today.”
For a moment, the room went quiet.
On the HoloScreen, part of a building facade collapsed into the water behind the reporter.
Nana raised one hand.
“Ah.”
Adi’ra waited.
“As Mom would have said: typical.”
“What’s typical?”
“Bursting in and immediately handing out instructions.” Nana reached for her cup. “Almost like your father.”
“That wasn’t an instruction.”
“Of course not.”
“It was a status report from which a necessary course of action could be inferred.”
“Of course.”
A faint sound came from the iCom, suspiciously close to someone suppressing a laugh.
Adi’ra looked upward.
“Kasandra?”
“I’m updating maps.”
“You’re listening.”
“The iCom was still open.”
“Then close it.”
“In a minute.”
Nana set her cup down on the dark living-room table.
“And yes, I know I’m not the one who’s supposed to do the laundry. But I can help you get it out of the van.”
Adi’ra nodded.
“Good. We still need to—”
Nana raised her hand again.
This time she said nothing.
Adi’ra waited a moment.
“What?”
Nana stared at them, eyes wide.
“Oh.”
“What, oh?”
“Now I hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“The second time.”
Adi’ra frowned.
Nana pointed at them.
“You keep saying we. Not I.”
“We checked the bedding.”
“You were alone in the van.”
“Kasandra updated the onboard computer.”
“Kasandra is upstairs looking for places in Greece where the two of you can get lost again.”
Kasandra’s voice came through the iCom.
“We do not get lost.”
Nana looked toward the ceiling.
“You unintentionally discover alternative routes.”
“Exactly,” Kasandra said.
Adi’ra leaned back.
“She was still involved.”
“With the maps,” Nana said. “Not with the bedding.”
“The bedding is in the camper. The camper is part of the trip preparation. The trip preparation is a shared process.”
“So Kasandra metaphysically inspected the bedding with you.”
“That is not how I would phrase it.”
“But you wouldn’t rule it out entirely.”
Adi’ra glanced toward the terrace door. Beneath the carport, the IVECO stood as though, if necessary, it might be willing to provide independent testimony.
The image on the HoloScreen changed. A map of southern Europe now showed deep-red temperature zones for the coming week.
Almost all of Greece lay beneath them.
Nana picked up her cup again.
“So, one more time. Who is we?”
Adi’ra opened their mouth.
No answer came.
The thumb and little finger of their left hand touched twice in quick succession.
The slim band around Adi’ra’s wrist responded with two barely perceptible pulses.
Recording had begun.
Nana’s eyes immediately followed the movement.
“Is this work now?”
“No.”
“You’re recording.”
“I just want to hear whether I actually said it that way.”
“You did.”
“Human beings reconstruct conversations unreliably.”
“That sentence was about twelve seconds ago.”
“That does not preclude faulty reconstruction.”
Nana smiled.
“We want to hear it, you mean.”
Adi’ra looked at her.
Nothing came from the iCom now. Kasandra had apparently concluded that any further sound would betray her continued presence.
Nana took a sip of coffee and turned her attention back to the HoloScreen. The flooded city had disappeared. Now a climate scientist was explaining why twenty-six degrees in early April should not be described as beautiful weather.
“Mom wouldn’t have noticed the we first, by the way,” Nana said.
Adi’ra looked back at her.
“What would she have noticed?”
“That you came in without saying hello.”
“You already knew I was outside.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“What additional information would hello have conveyed?”
Nana looked at them for a long moment.
“That you had arrived in the room mentally as well.”
Adi’ra was about to object.
Then they noticed that Nana was no longer smiling.
Behind her, the HoloScreen displayed a computer simulation in which the coastline moved farther inland with every passing year.
“Did she really say that?” Adi’ra asked.
“Not in those words.”
“How did she say it?”
Nana ran her thumb along the rim of her cup.
“Sometimes she said: With you, the thought always comes through the door first. You yourself need another moment to follow it in.”
Adi’ra did not move.
The wristband kept recording.
“When did she say that?”
“Often enough.”
“About me as an adult?”
Nana briefly looked toward the place by the window where, for years now, no one had sat regularly.
“Not only then.”
Outside, somewhere in the garden, a single irrigation head sprang to life, turned once, and fell silent again.
Apparently, the HomeAI had begun asking questions.