Whispers of the Diamond: A Romance of Memory and Desire

Chapter 2 - Terra

It's hard sometimes. We were only ever in one place long enough to complete our operations. Being a wanted terrorist is no fun at all. Terrorist is perhaps the wrong word, though. My name is Terra Forsythe and I'm... a rebel. I want the world I live in to wake up. The truth is I have lived a life filled with some of the worst things imaginable. I was murdered and taken from everything I loved. That man, my Alex, he chased down those that hurt me and killed them. Of course, he'd have been heartbroken if he knew the real reason. They killed me because I killed them. They were killers, traffickers, and, well, one micro-explosive device left them all dead. I didn't count on them coming back. Resurrection tech is supposed to be limited, but I guess in the underground, anything is possible. A week later, they assaulted and killed me.

Some days I just wanted it all to end, but I'd received word we were now being hunted by a government official. They were called Hunters, and they had the freedom to do as they wished to find their targets. The law went out the window for them. Hunters were judge, jury, and, in some cases, executioners. This was, in truth, one of the inequalities I was fighting against. The world had been upside down for far too long, and even if those against the status quo were in short supply, I had been fighting for so long I didn't know any other way.

I walked the streets, always looking over my shoulder. Of course, I'd been wrong sometimes—taken down by a sniper, a mugger, two guys we won't talk about, a bomber, a car bomb. Unfortunately, in my line of work, murder was my most common cause of death. I even inadvertently blew myself up once when I ruptured a gas main trying to take down a police officer. That sucked.

I crossed the street and ducked into an alleyway. The light was dim, and the bitter taste of chemicals hung in the air. It was from the heat; the chemicals in the floor and the buildings all mixed together and, after years of exposure, had been proven to be lethal. A combination of meds could be used to treat it, but they were incredibly expensive and regulated. Most doctors wouldn't prescribe them because, in reality, drug companies don't want people to get better—otherwise, where's the money? The National Medical Service wasn't exactly loaded, so it was rare anyone was given them.

I pushed open the heavy metal door and slipped inside, the echo of my feet on stone resonating through the empty building as I crossed, ducking through the old abandoned cafe and then into the basement. The soft hum of the machines greeted me.

"Hey Terra, you ready?" Joseph, tall, smart, and bald, was our tech guy and the reason we could keep coming back. He ran our resurrection machine.

"No, but needs must now we have a Hunter on our asses," I replied as I sat in the rather uncomfortable chair. Joseph strapped me down and placed the cranial reader on my head. The machine beeped, and then the low hum began as it did its job. Another backup of my mind. On average, I'd only ever lost twenty-four hours, and I backed up every three days. It wasn't technically smart, but it was needed. I couldn't afford to lose more than that, else entire plans could go to pieces. I never gave my team the whole picture; it's hard to interrogate people when they don't know the whole plan, so we'd divide it amongst us, plan various parts, and then fill in the people required.

The machine hummed as the high-pitched whine of the crystal being written filled the air. I enjoyed watching the little blocks on the screen. Joseph said it looked like an old defrag program from some operating system of the late twentieth century. I thought it was just pretty. I didn't really get the reference. Watching the blocks go from green to blue and the progress bar climb was mesmerising. The strange part was trying not to think too much, as it could trip the machine up if the mind was too active.

"You OK, Ali?" Joseph's voice cut through my train of thought.

"Yeah, just hate not thinking, drives me mad," I replied.

"Almost there," he said with a chuckle. The whole process takes about ninety minutes. There were tales of it being done while the person being copied was asleep, but those were the high-tech machines. Ours couldn't tell an active mind from a subconscious one. As a result, we had to be awake and actively stop ourselves from thinking. Such were the joys of stolen technology.

He removed the cranial reader and unstrapped me from the table. That was the other thing: we had to remain perfectly still to stop the reader from shifting, which could result in inaccurate blocks of data and screw up your mind when you were resurrected with that copy. I watched as Joseph pulled out the crystal disk. They were small, about 50mm in diameter and 10mm thick, but they could hold the entire human mind. Scientists theorised the human mind to be around 2.5 petabytes, but we've come to find it's closer to three. A diamond disk storage device can, in theory, hold up to five petabytes of data. This includes everything you could ever know, from how to breathe to every memory in your head. This was the basis of the system we had long ago hacked and copied for our own purposes.

"OK, I'll get this to the vault with a runner, should we need it," Joseph said as he tucked the disk into a velvet pouch and placed it in a locked drawer. I didn't know who he used to protect the disks—it was better that way—nor did I know where my mind's backups were kept. I had three, all in different locations, and the backups were rotated in case any of the storage sites was ever breached. Protecting the resistance was paramount. I'd survived five decades this way.

"Did you get me the info I asked for?" I looked at him now, my eyes level and my tone direct. I had no intention of indulging his usual array of joviality. I'd given him a task to figure out who was hunting us. He was good at his job and by far the best web scraper in the entire resistance; if anyone could get that information, it was Joseph Turlington.

Joseph looked at me with a look I seldom saw. Whatever he was about to reveal couldn't possibly be good, but the fact was I needed to know. I nodded, and he tapped a few keys. The screen went dark, then flickered before the information came up. My heart stopped, or at least I swore it did, or it leapt into my throat so hard it physically hurt.

"It... can't..." I stammered, tripping over my words as I stared at the screen. I knew who was hunting me, and my heart broke. "Alex..."