Among the bustle of students within the university campus, William Stocks came to a realization: it really had been quite a long time since he’d been a student here. While his impressions of the place remained as vivid as ever, simple arithmetic revealed he’d been working at Office 87 for nearly triple the length of time he’d spent at university. And yet his university years still seemed to stretch over an epoch of his life, while his working career felt like a blur – one day after another that somehow added up to well over a decade of time. As familiar as the campus was, William found it still took a bit of nudging to shift his perspective from himself as a student to himself as a professional adult. It felt a bit lonely – he no longer belonged here, he was just a visitor. He wondered how his fellow visitor felt – Davis had been a student here much more recently than William had been. For perhaps the first time, William reflected that Davis really was the younger of the two of them. At least Four seemed to be enjoying herself, looking from side to side so frequently William considered asking her if she’d like a 360 scanner attachment. Davis was amusing himself acting as a tour guide, pointing out the various features of the impressive marble-clad buildings.
“That statue there, that’s Elmur Wilhelm, who was headmaster about a hundred years ago. Several important advances were made during his tenure, such as the Weiss-Noir process, although Professor Noir ended up going quite mad from his research and Weiss was forced into an early retirement from the stress. Despite the impressive results, ol’ headmaster Wilhelm’s safety record was pretty abysmal - all told a half-dozen professors and nearly a hundred research assistants either went mad, died in lab accidents, or vanished off the face of the Earth during his tenure. Perhaps not surprisingly, the next administration focused a great deal more on safety – conceptual toxin research really ramped up at that time. It’s become a tradition for students to throw tomatoes at the statue every year at the start of the semester. It was probably meant to symbolize the blood on his hands, but nowadays it’s just a fun bit of sanctioned petty vandalism.”
“Ah? There’s a statue of him in the Office 87 lobby as well.” Four didn’t phrase it as a question – with how much time she spent at Office 87, William doubted there was a corner of the building she didn’t know.
“Smart cookie. Yeah, he was headmaster here at the same time Office 87 was built. I gather he helped set up a lot of partnered research institutes, so the corporation plunked a statue of him in the office lobby out of gratitude.”
William was quietly impressed. He hadn’t pegged Davis as someone with an interest in history. Davis continued his guided tour until they arrived at the Faculty office, and were shown to Professor Niirisu’s waiting room. The waiting room itself was impressive enough, but the fact they were shown there by a human secretary rather than an android spoke to just how esteemed the professors of the university were. Past the waiting room, the door to the professor’s study was left partially open, and from beyond William heard a measured, clear voice. “Art is something I also have a deep affection for, but I do not deny that it tends to suffer during times of great technological change. Consider my desk an example. It was crafted 400 years ago, and the detail and care are nothing short of spectacular. Yet nowadays wood crafting is the domain of hobbyists, not professional masters, and furniture is an industrial product. Technology first industrialized the practical arts, and AI extended its reach to industrialize the realm of non-functional, purely aesthetic art as well. I wish for humanity to survive, and if we must change to do that, then necessity is not to be argued with. Although I shall not argue with necessity, personally I would prefer we don’t follow the path of the Atlanteans, who survive but whose civilization has been stagnant for millennia. I would not have us abandon our curiosity and drive to learn more of the world beyond ourselves. I believe curiosity is the great motivator of the artistic spirit, and if so then as long as we preserve our curiosity art will continue in some form or another.”
Presented with a break in the professor’s conversation, William raised his hand to knock on the ajar door – why were academics so singularly terrible at keeping to meeting times? “I don’t know if it’s fair to dismiss modern artists as unserious hobbyists. And I’m not sure AI and industry are replacing artistry – I don’t think they’re doing the same thing at all. Like, I wouldn’t tell you to replace your desk with something bought from EEEP!”
William had knocked rather louder than he’d intended to when he heard the response from the professor’s conversation partner. Her voice was terribly distinct. He had been the one to recommend her to Professor Niirisu, and he’d never checked the open lecture schedule, so he supposed he had no right to be surprised, but still! Of all the blasted coincidences of timing! “Hello, Olivia. Fancy meeting you here. Professor, I apologize for the interruption, but we do have a meeting scheduled.”
“Ah, my apologies. It was Mr. William Stocks, wasn’t it? Please do come in. Ah, Olivia, feel free to stay. We were having quite an interesting discussion, and this could prove to be interesting as well.”
“I’m afraid we may be discussing items of a confidential nature.” William did his best to be quietly forceful.
“For an enquiry booked for open office hours rather than through corporate channels, I can’t imagine it should pose an issue – especially as the two of you seem to be already acquainted.”
Niirisu was quietly forceful in turn, and was rather better at it. William looked back to Davis for support, but he seemed to be out of ideas as well. It wasn’t like he’d be discussing anything classified, but it still felt dangerous to allow Olivia to remain in the room. When he considered that may have been Niirisu’s intention from the start, to keep an unrelated third party in the room to limit the questions they could ask, he began to understand why Chloe Sharp was so suspicious of the man. “Very well, if you insist. Olivia, don’t feel obligated to stay. This certainly shall not be as engaging as your earlier conversation with Mr. Niirisu.”
William recognized his final appeal was likely futile. Olivia confirmed it. “No, I’m interested.” She was at least dressed more professionally, but her voice was still childish – she really did not belong in this meeting.
Davis dismissed any misgivings he may have had with a sigh, and slid a printed photo across Niirisu’s desk. Auditor Sharp had suggested it – if there was anyone within the corporation they were hoping to escape the notice of, then it was best to avoid unusual log-in times or locations on corporate hardware. Especially if checking those log-ins would point directly to a photo of exactly what they were trying to be discreet about. “Four, please make sure the door is closed. Mr. Niirisu, we were hoping to get your insights on someone with some very long memories.”
“I’m afraid I’m not a memory specialist.”
Davis grinned, “I’m talking about the gentleman in the photo having memories going back nearly a century. Is that a little closer to your specialty, prof?”
Niirisu paused for a moment, as if momentarily taken aback by Davis’s overly casual reply, before he softly chuckled. “I see. You were a student of mine, weren’t you?”
“Three classes. I’m impressed you remember.”
“I do make an effort, especially for the more inquisitive students. I see why you came to me for this, although I’m afraid the answer isn’t terribly mysterious. No doubt you’ve surmised he’s not an Alpha, but… perhaps it’s easier to ask you what you know of the corporation’s immortality project.”
It’s fantastically irresponsible with money and generates a great deal of worthlessly incoherent reports. William suspected that wasn’t a proper answer, so he elected to keep his mouth shut. To his surprise, it was Olivia who was first to volunteer a response. “I know there was an Alpha trial a long time ago and something went wrong with it, so I think they’re still researching but aren’t doing human trials anymore?”
Davis shrugged, “I’m afraid I’m not connected to that part of the business, so I can’t really say more than that.” Davis regularly dealt with the things that ‘went wrong’ with the Alpha projects, but with Olivia in the room he wisely kept his mouth shut on that topic.
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Niirisu nodded. “That’s to be expected. The research is not a secret, but the corporation does keep quiet, and between their information controls and general public apathy, they’ve been quite successful keeping their work as ambiguous as possible outside the project’s dedicated research silos. The Alpha generation was the first, and you are correct in saying there were substantial problems. The subjects did not die, but they did continue to degrade. There were attempts to repair or at least mitigate the decline, but they were either unsuccessful or temporary at best, and when their mental degradation reached the point it began leaking into reality around them, it became untenable to continue with half-measures and partial solutions. The entire generation was locked away in cryogenic stasis. This was a substantial setback, but while it delayed the next generation by a few decades, the demand for even an imperfect immortality was such that another generation was inevitable. They’re now on the eighth generation – the Theta projects. Depending on how precise you are with your ‘century’ figure, this gentleman is most likely a late Delta project or a generation Epsilon project. The Beta and Gamma generations are all in cold storage alongside the Alphas, but the lessons of earlier failures saw them moved to stasis much earlier, before their degradation had progressed to the dangerous levels of the Alpha projects. There are still active Delta and Epsilon generation subjects, but they’re estimated to be running into the limits of their stability and as such are kept under tight watch by the corporation. However, returning to the subject of this gentleman in the photo, it’s not inconceivable for some from that period to have slipped through the cracks.”
At this, Niirisu handed the printed photo back to Davis, allowing his words to sink in among the sudden silence. Eight generations! With labs like Eingopher’s, William was hardly surprised to hear the project was still processing human subjects, and William had already considered it likely the mysterious café owner was an immortal of some kind. None of that was surprising, but the scale, though! The scale was well beyond what he’d imagined. Eight generations! His impression had always been that the corporation kept a decent limit on their immortality research after the Alpha generation, but how many immortals were running free in the city?
It was Olivia that recovered first – perhaps because she was the only one without a firm image of the corporation she needed to re-evaluate. “I don’t know if this is related at all, but what was that devil that appeared in Central Park a month ago? Was that something corporate? Or is that ‘confidential’?”
William felt a twinge of irritation at her voice. He wasn’t quite sure why – it was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. It was actually a rather clever deduction for someone outside the corporation. All that had been mentioned in the news release was that it had been caused by ‘a rogue researcher under audit for irregularities’. (William’s supervisor, Damien Cash, had positively beamed as he read the word ‘audits’ in the report, and no doubt expected it to be a great embarrassment to the Audits department.) Immortality research wasn’t mentioned at all, and while it wasn’t a radical leap to imagine it was involved, it wasn’t an obvious connection, either. So Olivia was asking a reasonable, intelligent question, and yet it still grated on William's nerves. Was it really something as petty as her tone of voice? If that was all it was, William felt he should be somewhat disappointed in himself.
Niirisu answered. “In a manner. The immortality project uses interstellar consciousness fragments as an adhesive to bind a human mind to its body much more tightly than is normally physically possible. This staves off death by stopping the mind from breaking down in the event of degradation or trauma to the body, but as this binding appears to slow down aging as well, some have theorized that the closer the mind is to the body, the more the form of the body loses its independence and becomes subservient to the mind’s self-image. So, the theory goes, if you want to escape the flawed immortality of the current project, you just need to use more adhesive – more of these binding consciousness fragments. Of course, this is a terribly flawed assumption, greatly lacking in scientific rigour, and as you could no doubt surmise from the Central Park incident, it is terribly dangerous as well.”
Olivia looked pensive, and William jumped in with his next question before she got a chance to completely derail what was technically William’s meeting time. “Thank you for the information today – if the gentleman in question is an Epsilon generation project, then corporate should have more info in their files we can follow up on. We’ll be taking our leave, and I bid you both a good day.”
He began to make his way towards the door, before turning and adding, “I’m terribly sorry, but we’re also looking for some insight on another case. It’s not within your area of specialty, but would you happen to have any recommendations for a researcher with a strong backing in abstract type reds – sprites specifically?”
Niirisu responded easily, “Professor Miranda Viersourie is the most qualified expert I know of in the field. If she can’t answer your question, I doubt anyone can.”
“Much obliged.”
As William, Davis, and Four made their way out of the professor’s office, he heard the professor making excuses about a meeting on the other side of campus. A moment later Olivia emerged from his office as well, and noticing they were still only at the edge of the stairwell, she hurried her pace to meet them. William couldn’t help but notice that despite her respectable black suit, she was still wearing casual running shoes. Four’s elegant pointed ballet flats, William’s stitched dress shoes, and Davis’s hefty and well-tractioned boots all neatly matched the rest of their attire – Olivia was the only one whose clothing was noticeably incongruous, and despite looking more professional than their previous encounters, it still made the suit come across as more costume than uniform. As a group they descended the stairs, returning to the ground floor in mutual silence. William could hardly blame Olivia for tagging along – with all the information they had been presented with, he knew he was glad for the company of Davis and Four. Being alone with such a revelation felt entirely too weighty. As they emerged from the faculty building, Olivia finally broke the silence. “Um, thank you for the advice. Professor Niirisu was able to answer the questions I was hoping he’d be able to answer.”
“Please think nothing of it. Although I might recommend seeking another professor if you need more information in the future.” Perhaps it was merely Auditor Sharp’s suspicions colouring his own view of the man, but he was hesitant to fully trust Niirisu. It wasn’t that William suspected anything he said was a lie, but it was almost certainly only a carefully selected sliver of what he knew.
“… Why do you suppose he kept me there for all that?”
Ah, so Olivia had noticed. Once again, William was forced to accept she was rather sharper than he gave her credit for. Davis spoke up, “It’s certainly odd, but some professors are just like that. When they take a liking to someone they can dump all kinds of unwanted information on them. Just be grateful we weren’t there to talk about research funding – those meetings go long.”
A skillful bit of casual misdirection from Davis, almost immediately undermined when Four offered her opinion, “Ah? I was certain she was kept in the room to limit what we were able to ask?”
William decided to interject. It was hardly considerate to leave Olivia with more to worry about beyond what she’d already heard, especially since she was here on his advice. “Regardless of his intentions, I think we got what we needed out of the meeting.”
They walked in silence through the campus, before abruptly Olivia turned and asked, gesturing to William and Four, “Hey, uh, so are you and her…”
Four looked at William quizzically, her dark hair shining subtly purple in the afternoon sun, “Are you and her… what?”
Feeling Four’s gaze on him, William scrambled for words. “Four is a valued coworker. I very much enjoy working with her, but there’s no cause for insinuations. Blast, why does everyone assume that office workers must all be in secret improper relationships with their android assistants?”
“Don’t read too far into it, it was just a little mystery, is all.” The easy innocence in her voice was aggressively irritating.
William tried to ignore the huge grin on Davis’s face. “I like her,” he said. Of course he did.
After they parted ways near the station, and William was confident there was no one nearby to overhear, he turned to Davis and Four, keeping his voice low. “Auditor Sharp believes there may be a connection between Mr. Niirisu and her attacker. She’d asked me to present a few innocuous questions, but I don’t believe they ended up being necessary. While I’m hardly an expert on esoteric runes, I couldn’t help noticing the inscription on his ceiling looked very similar to the runes on the warding scarf given to Sharp to protect her from the hunting spite.”
Four seemed to consider for a moment – no doubt digging into her memory files to compare the runes on the scarf to those on Niirisu’s ceiling. “They are a very close match,” she confirmed.
“I was distracted by the damn angels,” Davis confessed, “Good catch, Will, that’s definitely suspicious. So that makes two leads to pick up on from this visit. We’ll need to set up a meeting to access the project logs, and also set one up with a rune expert. I’m almost tempted to take the good professor up on his recommendation and ask Professor Viersourie, but I suspect we’d be playing into his hands if we did. James Locke at Office 38 did a pretty good job with the sprite countermeasures, I’ll set up a nice, inconspicuous visit with him.”
The rest of the day saw the kind of flurry of energy that accompanied progress on a case that had been stalled for weeks. Neither William nor Davis mentioned the revelation that there were eight generations of immortals in the city. Neither of them knew quite what to do with the knowledge.
