Caught in Rain

III.

The hard drives reappear on our doorstep a week later. Wiped clean of course. I'm surprised they're even returned at all, but I guess it shows how little I know about anything. Nana is still weak, so she watches from the couch as I reinstall them, mumbling a few instructions. Before long she is back in her chair, her eyes simultaneously slack and cognizant, scrolling past the meager recovery data she can dig up. She gives no sign of happiness or relief.

I'm not sure if she's fully present or not. She hasn't said much since I brought her home, and even then her voice will barely rise above a whisper. I'm not sure what she thinks of all this. She won't answer any of my questions, and she's in no condition for an interrogation anyway. She's spent the last few days on the couch, doing nothing in particular, occasionally watching shows on our dusty old video console. She never used to watch television before.

One morning I come out of my bedroom to find her sitting at her monitor bank, leaning forward on the edge of her chair, her fingers battering the keyboard into submission. It's startling to see her so active all of a sudden, and hard to look away from. I watch her for a while, but she doesn't seem to notice me. I want to ask but I'm afraid of what will happen if I disturb her; I don't want her to go back to watching videos like a catatonic patient. So I leave her alone and go get some breakfast, and wait for whatever's happening to take its course.

I can see a flurry of activity on her screens, but I'm wary of getting close enough to see what's going on. I lay on the couch and watch covertly, pretending to play a game. She works for several hours. My attention starts to drift, until suddenly she simply stands up and walks away. She goes into the kitchen, heats up some food, and takes it to the couch with her, where she turns on the video console to whatever she had last been watching and begins to eat deliberately.

I look at her in disbelief. She glances at me, then back at the video. Her hands shake as she lifts the food to her mouth. But her eyes are calm like tempered glass.

She goes to sleep early in the evening. As soon as a comfortable buffer of time has passed I go to her chair and turn her computers on. They fill the room with colorless light, like moonlight.

I'm greeted by pages upon pages of new files and folders. They fill the screen and take several minutes to load properly. There are exponentially more than were here before. More than could be downloaded or created from scratch during the short time Nana was working. I peer through the first page. They contain material I recognize, dates that have passed. The realization dawns on me, uncertain but growing more apparent the more I read. This is the data the Municipality thinks it erased. She's recovered so much of it, maybe even all of it. A smile breaks out on my face.

I've never been huge on data or research, but tonight I stay awake the entire night, combing through data sets, text files, dense piles of code. For some reason I'm sucked into its vortex, every piece of information I can comprehend compelling me to read two more. I understand only a little of what I find, but the little that I do follow feels like treasure, and gives me hope that I can unlock the bigger picture behind it all. Nana's even grouped many of the files into neatly arranged folders, which in spite of their ambiguous names give me even more insight into the patterns connecting all this information the Municipality wanted to hoard for itself.

The night is not nearly long enough to make any kind of dent in the documents. Especially because much of it is encrypted, which I have little experience with. But I have taken some notes, have started to form an idea of what's going on. It gives me a slight adrenaline rush which, combined with my lack of sleep, makes me feel as if I'm running in a dream, the edges of my world hazy but my purpose clear.

I sleep just before dawn. When I wake up in the afternoon Nana is back on the couch. As I come up behind her I see that she has something in her lap. I come around to see her face screwed up in concentration, staring down at a small bowl full of iridescent water. Her fingers twitch like spider legs. I receive no acknowledgement from her, that water is her only world right now. There are little splashes on the surface as her trembling body shakes it. I want to offer her words of encouragement, or tell her that it will all be alright. I want to do this badly but I can't, I'm just too afraid to. It might have the opposite effect. I don't want to risk acknowledging to her that it might not work at all anymore. I don't want it to seem like I'm even entertaining the possibility. Her face is turning white, and she's hunching over the bowl as if she were about to dive in. The tendons on her neck bulge and strain. She's been through too much already.