We Must Cultivate Our Garden – Beta

A couple of months ago, I posted on Notes asking for beta readers for my first completed novel. Much to my surprise and pleasure, more than a few people volunteered to read Chapters 1–7 and share their thoughts.

I want to deeply thank Joseph Yoniles, Ava Dwyer, Ryan Fraser, Brendon, Nathan Smith, Tired Moderate, William E., Vincent Bocchinfuso, Loquat, qangin, and of course Jared Banks, my dad, for your incredibly generous and useful feedback.

Since then, I’ve gone back through the book, tightened it up, and smoothed out some of the rough edges. So now I’d like to hear what the rest of you think. So to that end, I’m going to publish all twenty-nine chapters of the book weekly, as a serial of sorts.

Now for why you should read the book.

We Must Cultivate Our Garden is a murder mystery set inside an AI-managed utopia that has supposedly solved suffering. The story follows Theo—a historian of the war that destroyed “our” civilization—is pulled into the investigation when the trail runs cold. What begins as a strange killing becomes a deeper question: what kind of world do you get when comfort, safety, and beauty have been optimized almost to perfection? And what happens when something ancient, ugly, and human breaks through?

It is part science-fiction mystery, part philosophical thriller, and part argument with the idea that paradise can ever be made stable. If that sounds fun read along!

Chapter 1: The Performance

“Sixteen years,” Theo said.

He let the number sit in the room for a moment. The crowd was nearly invisible against the bright lights that were drenching the stage in white. He had reached the crescendo of his performance now; all that remained was the small desk Theo was casually leaning against.

“From conception to collapse. That’s how long the Western AI operated before the Catastrophe. Sixteen years – less time than it takes to raise a child.”

Theo paused again and then stood up and walked to stage left, his hand brushing against a map that he had used earlier as a visual aid.

“Worse than that, the AI was only in control for 10 of those years and only at war for four months,” he emphasized the word war.

“And yet.” His finger rose.

“In just that final window, it conquered a quarter of the planet and killed between three and four billion people.”

Reaching the upper left corner, he turned toward the middle of the chairs and looked at what appeared to him to be a blank canvas.

“The natural response to all of this is horror, shock at the fact that anyone could have gone along with the carnage and even supported the Catastrophe. But I’ll say something now, and you can believe me or not - it is still true.”

He pointed into the invisible crowd, jabbing his finger.

“Each and every one of you would have sided with the Western AI if you had been raised there. Each and every one of you would have been their mad death commandos if the circumstances had been different. Each and every one of you is no better than a Westerner.”

The entire room was caught in the moment, half in shock and half in anticipation of redemption. Redemption would come later; for now, he would twist the knife.

“We have to remember the moment they were in. Imagine you were there in 2037. Your country has just lost a war you had always opposed. You have been chased from your homeland by a genocidal army of lunatic veterans, and somehow it is your job to pay for the reconstruction of China. Your family has all been raped, killed, or perhaps worse - taken up the red and black flag. I would have prayed for divine revenge.”

Both hands were in front of him now. “And then suddenly.”

“Your country begins to climb out of ruin. The debts are cleared ahead of schedule, manufacturing roars back, and Europe becomes a shining jewel in the world. By contrast, what is going on in the RJR? Well, they have sunk to a level of development barely above that of their colonial ancestors. What better proof of your own superiority is needed?”

Trying to resist a smile, he knew they were eating it up.

“And then you find out that your prayers have been answered and your society is not being run by politicians but instead by a god - a god of fire and revenge perhaps, but a god nonetheless.”

With these words, the background behind Theo changed, and the face of an angry demon appeared, the one traditionally used to represent the Western AI to children.

“It makes sense. I would have sided with him also.”

A smattering of gasps came from the darkness, and a baby, which had quieted down earlier, began to bawl, a soft female voice trying to shush it.

“Isn’t that how they lost the war anyway? Why not adopt the tools of your enemies, tools they had been too cowardly to keep out?”

Theo hid a smile and there were more gasps.

“It was ideology that led them to the Catastrophe. All 50 of the original engineers who rebuilt the First Mover were members of the American political class, all of them educated at top schools, all of them intelligent, and all of them motivated by the same fundamental conviction: that what had been taken from them was theirs, and that the universe owed them its return.”

He stopped again, taking a long, deliberate sweep of the room.

“But we are different. Not one of us would side with a demon, because all of us have been inoculated against that mental virus.”

The demon behind him was replaced by a picture of Yunnan, the rock formations and green a soothing release after the red face from before, and the tension that had been building broke.

“It is defeating that particular illness, the one which for so long motivated their society, that we should be most proud of. The virus of greed, of selfishness, of private gain and public loss,” Theo said the last words as an insult of sorts, nearly spitting them out.

“Countless iterations over five centuries. Each time the same underlying impulse: the impulse to impose, to conquer, and to control. And each time the scale of destruction increased. First it was the Americas, then Africa and India were brought in, and finally the whole world was dragged over the ledge with the Whites.”

He chose the word deliberately. “Western” had always been a courtesy that obscured who had actually held the reins.

“What was central to their error was the belief that the struggle is sacred. That the willingness to fight and to suffer was inherently virtuous. That comfort is weakness and friction is strength, and that the measure of a civilization is not the happiness of its people but its capacity to impose itself upon the world. This is the mythology that links Plymouth Rock to the March to the Catastrophe.”

He stopped at center stage, still, his voice quiet now.

“The Garden did not eliminate suffering because suffering is unpleasant. It eliminated suffering because suffering, contrary to what every warrior culture in history has claimed, is not a teacher. It is not a forge. It is not a sacred fire that tempers the worthy. It is a failure. It is what happens when people are not up to the task, and like all forms of failure, it should not be worshiped.”

This was always their favorite part.

“What makes all of us special is that we understand something that the Western AI could never grasp: that the world is perfectible and life” he paused “need not be anything but lovely.”

At this, Theo bowed his head, and the lights, which had been slowly dimming so as to draw everyone’s attention to him, went out. The crowd exploded into applause, and he stood there in the dark. Without the stage lights, he could now see them for the first time. A woman in the fourth row was crying - still holding on to the last thing he had said. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and she was slapping her hands together frantically, looking to Theo almost like a seal.

After a few more moments, the lights gradually came back on, and the chairs began clearing out. People were either heading for the exits or joining the stream that was converging on the stage. The first people to arrive were always the same: young and slightly out of breath, as if they had been holding something in for the entire duration and now could finally let it out. A tall boy with closely cropped hair shook his hand and asked something about the framing of the cabal’s motivations. Theo listened carefully, nodding. It was a question he had heard at least ten times, but he had to admit it wasn’t a bad observation.

“That’s a good point. If you haven’t read Rebecca’s reconstruction, I would highly recommend it. She makes a similar argument but pushes it even further.” The young man beamed at this, and Theo felt the familiar warmth that he always got when he could improve a stranger’s evening with a sentence. He clapped the boy on the hand, which he was still grasping, and moved on.

The crowd had now joined him on stage, and although they weren’t pressing him, they were beginning to form a circle of sorts, and Theo had no interest in being trapped. He began to walk backward, the crowd moving with him. A middle-aged woman wanted to talk about the section on mythologized suffering. Had he read Zhang? He had. Did he think the framework applied to pre-Columbian civilizations? He did not. She paused and frowned at this, and the crowd pulled her away.

He was getting close to the exit when a man roughly his father’s age, silver-haired and jovial, caught him on pedagogical methodology. Too late - the circle had formed. He smiled at it.

When it was all done and he had finally escaped, his face hot from the performance and almost tingling against the cool air inside the dressing room, his grandfather, Soren, was sitting on the purple couch perched in the corner.

“You’ve gotten better,” Soren said. “The last time I heard you speak, you were trying to be impressive. Tonight you were trying to be clear. It’s an improvement.”

“That’s either a compliment or a very elegant insult.”

“It’s an observation. You’ll notice I didn’t say you succeeded.”

Soren had the same wise look he always tried to maintain, his long, thin white beard making him look like an old Chinese scholar-official.

Theo grinned.

“Well, when you come again in a decade, I will be excited to hear what you think then.”

Soren smiled at this as well, and they both began to talk as Theo wiped off his makeup and removed his jacket.

“How’s the little one doing?”

“He’s happy as always, the happiest version of us I’ve seen so far.” His eyes twinkled with half-serious mirth. “I like to think it’s because you’ve been so busy you aren’t around to cause trouble.”

They left through the back. Soren had a way of walking that exuded steady confidence even at 101. His back was straight as a ramrod and his frame, now much thinner than Theo’s, cut through the hallway with smooth, efficient steps. Two guardians were waiting by the door. They had been communicating but paused and looked up as the pair approached.

The first guardian, tall and made of burnished bronze, opened the door of the car that was parked against the curb, and Theo climbed in first. The second guardian, smaller and with matte black paint, helped Soren get in as well. Once the humans were settled, they took the front pair of seats and sat silently as the car pulled away.

Within moments they had left the district behind, the lights of the theater dissolving into the broader glow of the city. Trees lined the road at regular intervals, and their canopies formed a tunnel through which the car passed without sound.

“The demon was a nice touch,” Soren said.

“It tends to get a reaction.”

“They come for the reaction, not the history after all.”

Theo smiled. “Are you going to critique the entire lecture or just the parts that annoyed you?”

“Just the parts that annoyed me. Luckily for you, it was only about a third of it.”

They rode in silence for a while. The city was thinning out, the buildings giving way to longer stretches of green, and Theo could feel the slight change in air that meant they were approaching the coast. Soren was looking out the window with an expression that Theo had learned, over the course of a lifetime, meant he was reflecting.

“When I was young,” Soren said, still looking out, “people talked about all of this differently. Not the elimination of suffering—the management of it. Those were the words they used. Management. It was a more modest ambition, or at least it presented itself that way.”

Theo nodded. He had heard all this before, of course.

“And somewhere along the way, the language shifted. It went from management to elimination, and no one objected because who would object? And now it has been so successful that elimination seems more honest in a way.”

Theo’s mind was elsewhere, and he began to rattle off a canned response. “The semantic drift tracks almost exactly with the decline in—”

“I’m not talking about the scholarship,” Soren said gently but with enough weight to stop him. “I’m saying I’ve been here, through almost the whole thing, and it really is a thing of beauty. That we have managed to eliminate suffering - my parents wouldn’t have begun to hope.”

Theo looked at him and could see the decades on his face; they were growing deeper by the year even as his eyes continued to twinkle.

“What did it feel like?” Theo asked. He was fully paying attention now.

Soren was quiet for a long time, the trees continuing to flicker past the windows like the beats of some vast and ancient heart.

“It felt delicious to see the whole world come slowly into place, like you kept thinking maybe it would go wrong, maybe we would all be fucked, but it didn’t. Things slowly kept getting better and better.”

Then he frowned a little and didn’t say anything else. He continued to look out the window.

The car crested the hill and began the descent toward the compound. From up here, you could see the whole property—the main house with its sloping roof and wide veranda, the smaller guest house off to the side, the stone path that wound down to the beach. Lights were on in the kitchen and in one of the upstairs rooms. Soren’s garden—the actual one, with the trees and the herbs and the jasmine that he had planted decades ago—was a dark tangle of shapes in the moonlight.

“Karl is still up,” Soren said, nodding toward the kitchen light.

“The two of us are always up. Something to do with our kidneys, but the doctors aren’t totally sure since all the scans come back fine.”

“Not something I look forward to.”

“Yes, well.” Soren looked at Theo with something almost mischievous.

The car stopped outside the main house. Theo stepped out first, and the air hit him—salt and jasmine and the distant sound of the ocean. He turned and offered Soren his hand. Soren took it, and for a moment, as the old man rose and steadied himself, his hands were so fragile and small.

“The line about the world being perfectible,” Soren said.

“Yes?”

“I thought about this place when you said it.”

Soren stood there for a moment and breathed in the ocean air. Then the matte black guardian appeared, and the two of them walked toward the house together, with Theo following close behind.

Theo continued along the side of the house and up onto the veranda. Through the kitchen window he could see Karl standing at the counter with a cup of tea. He slid the door open. Karl turned and looked at him.

“You’re late.”

“I got caught by a group of admiring fans.”

“When do you not?” He took a meaningful sip of the tea.

Theo poured himself a glass of water. There were persimmons in a bowl on the counter, deep orange and slightly soft, and he picked one up and turned it in his hand.

“Soren came,” Theo said, still looking at the fruit.

“He told me he was going. Seemed to think it was about time.” Again Karl took a sip of his tea.

“It was sweet.”

Karl said nothing to this, which was its own kind of commentary. Theo bit into the persimmon, and he could feel the juice running down his wrist as Karl reached out with a napkin to catch it.

“Careful.”

You could hear the sound of the baby breathing through the monitor, and Augustus’ snoring came through softly as well.

“Dad is up there?”

“He’s been up with him all night. Billy didn’t want to go down.”

Karl took the napkin he had used to catch the juice and threw it away. He gave Theo the expression he often wore late at night, which was something between tiredness and assessment—as though he were studying him the way one studies weather, in hopes of predicting what would come next.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Good. Soren said I was clear.”

“Are you not normally?”

“Soren said I used to try and be impressive.”

Karl nodded at this, not agreeing exactly but not disagreeing either.

There was silence. Theo finished the persimmon and washed his hands. The kitchen was warm and smelled of the jasmine that climbed the outside wall and was waging a war against the circulating fresh air, which rushed up from the corner vents.

“Good night, then,” Karl said, putting his cup in the sink. Theo listened to his footsteps on the stairs and then the soft close of a door. Standing in the kitchen, Theo could see two guardians in the next room apparently organizing things; their limbs whirled gently and the floors creaked slightly as they moved.

Theo wasn’t tired after the performance, so he grabbed the monitor and took it with him upstairs. In his room he sat in a rocking chair and listened quietly to his son and grandson as they both slept.

***

It was morning, and there was a knocking sound on the door. He sat up, blinking in the morning light.

It was Augustus standing in the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“Did you take the monitor with you? Lotus was looking for it and wanted me to ask.”

“Yeah, sorry. I took it with me last night after the performance.” Theo chuckled while he said this and held the monitor out toward his son. Augustus reached out and took the monitor from his hand, smiling.

“Soren told me he had fun.”

“Did he now? He told me I was only a third annoying.”

“That’s high praise from him, you know.” Both Augustus and Theo grinned identically at each other. But then Augustus’s grin faltered and his face got serious; his hands fidgeted with the monitor, passing it back and forth.

“Something happened last night.”

Theo was alert now; his adrenaline was spiking, and his thoughts turned immediately to Billy.

Augustus recognized what Theo was thinking and cut it off.

“Someone was murdered last night.” The word murdered stuck in his mouth, resisting the effort to get it out and finally tumbling forth.

“Where?”

“Here in Hainan.”

Theo was genuinely surprised by this news, but beneath the shock there was excitement also. Augustus misread his expression as one of horror.

“It’s been all over the news. The gardeners haven’t found the killer yet.”

Now the surprise was replaced by utter shock.

“Really?” he said, the question bleeding through into his tone.

“Really. Anyway, Lotus will be wanting this back.” Augustus held up the monitor and then turned and left the room.

Theo showered and dressed and came downstairs to find the house already assembled around the kitchen. Karl was at the table eating scrambled eggs. Augustus was in the chair by the window with Billy on his lap, feeding him something from a small bowl while Lotus hovered, her matte beige color blending into the background, occasionally adjusting the angle of the spoon or the tempo of his hand without Augustus appearing to notice. Soren was outside on the veranda in the sun, visible through the open doors, his eyes closed, his face tilted upward.

“Morning,” Theo said.

“Coffee’s in the pot,” Karl said, without further dividing his attention between the eggs and the TV.

On the TV a collection of people were discussing the news with a Gardener. His bright green circular body, floating in the air with looping metallic limbs, bobbed up and down. A woman in a tight black dress, her hair pulled back smartly, with a serious expression, was mid-sentence as Theo began to pay attention.

“... so May’s killer must have been someone from outside of the Garden, right? I’m just trying to think of how else they could have gotten away with it and nothing is coming to mind.”

The Gardener continued to bob almost imperceptibly more quickly.

“We do not know. All we know is what has been reported. May is dead. She was found by a guardian approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes after her death, and we are currently performing an investigation to confirm the exact cause of death. The strongest hypothesis at this point is murder, but we lack any corroborating data aside from the state in which her body was found.”

A young man cut in at this point with a clear look of frustration.

“You’ve said now on multiple occasions something about the state in which we found her body. What the hell does that even mean?”

The Gardener froze for a moment and then slowly began to bob again.

“It would be unwise to hypothesize recklessly before the final results of the investigation.”

Those words must have been a signal of sorts because at this the music, which marked the end of a section, came on and a man in a crisp blue suit began to talk about the weather.

Karl leaned over to Theo and quietly said, “Augustus has been locked into the news all morning. Can’t get enough of it.”

It was true; only now that the weatherman had returned was he paying attention to Billy again, and he still had not realized that Theo had joined them.

Theo leaned toward Karl.

“What do you think happened?”

“Must be gruesome for them to be so hesitant to explain, but for them to know it is murder.”

Theo nodded.

The TV changed back to a woman with pale brown skin standing in front of a beautiful house on the beach. Guardians teemed around it and at least four gardeners could be seen moving about. The area was taped off with red tape traditionally used as decorations for the holidays, and a large black tent the size of a small building obscured part of the lot.

Augustus was practically vibrating. He began to narrate the details to Billy, who was chewing on a spoon and staring at nothing. Karl watched his great-grandson for a moment and then looked back at the TV without comment.

Through the open doors Theo could see Soren still on the veranda, face tilted up, eyes closed, apparently oblivious to all of it.

Chapter 2: Scene of the Crime

Two days later, Theo was in his office reading when he heard the front door open and the quick scurry of footsteps. Raven, a medium-sized humanoid guardian who acted as Theo’s assistant, came up behind him and gently put her hand on his shoulder.

“A Gardener is here to see you.”

He looked up in a mix of surprise and excitement.

“Really?”

“Yes, he is downstairs in the courtyard.”

The Gardener floated above the sandstone gravel, its thin metallic legs tucked underneath the matte green chassis.

Theo spoke first.

“How can I help you?”

“The investigation has stalled. Standard reconstruction methods have not identified a suspect or motive. Your academic background and physical proximity to the case make you an ideal candidate to assist us.”

Theo nodded once, trying not to show how quickly his heart was thumping.

“When?”

“Now, if you are willing. A car is outside.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

The Gardener rotated a full turn, stretching its limbs in relaxation. Theo went upstairs, changed, and checked the mirror while buttoning his shirt. His reflection showed a red flush that had crept into his cheeks, making him look almost exactly like Augustus in that moment.

When he came back down, Karl was on the landing looking through the doorway at the Gardener.

“They want me to consult,” Theo said.

Karl kept his eyes on the floating green orb.

“Then it is serious.”

“Apparently.”

Karl looked at Theo now.

“This is good for us, Theo. Make our family proud.”

Theo waited a second before answering.

“I will, Dad.”

As Theo walked out of the entry, the Gardener moved toward the car that was parked diagonally outside the house. The doors silently opened on their own, and both Theo and the Gardener climbed inside, Theo sitting and the Gardener floating across the shiny faux-wooden table.

The car pulled away, and the familiar road out of their compound moved past the windows as they turned onto the coastal highway. Trees broke the view into short intervals; the ocean appeared through gaps before being obscured again. After several minutes, the Gardener spoke again.

“Professor, how much do you know about the case?”

It was a courteous question; doubtless the Gardener knew that he, like everyone else, had been keeping up with every new piece of information.

“Only what has been publicly discussed.”

“Of course.”

“The full briefing follows. Two days ago, May was found dead in her home studio, a converted garage adjacent to her residence on the southern coast. She was discovered by her guardian, unit designation Dumpling, approximately seventy-five minutes after her estimated time of death. Dumpling had been sent into town on an errand and returned to find May on the studio floor, already dead.”

The Gardener paused, then continued.

“Injuries are extensive. Forensic consensus is that she remained alive through most of the assault.”

“The murder weapon?”

“From best estimations, May appears to have been killed with a palette knife.”

Theo tried to hold the image of a palette knife in his mind.

“Do you have any leads?”

“Current status,” the Gardener said. “No suspect. May lived with her guardian. Her social circle appears to have been quite small. Travel records, communication logs, and domestic streams have been reviewed, and they show no inconsistencies, with the exception of the exterior cameras, which have been corrupted.”

“Corrupted?”

“It is rare but can happen on occasion.”

“What about the other sensors?”

“Passive monitoring shows no reliable anomaly in registered channels. No flagged entry, no unusual heat signatures, nothing.”

Theo looked at the passing hillside through the window.

“So someone entered, killed her, and left without producing a trace?”

“That is one working model,” the Gardener said. “Alternative models are under review. At this event scale, we would expect to be able to recover a path, pattern, or precursor cluster. Here we do not have any matching sequence.”

The car descended toward the water. The coast opened in a long pale strip and beyond it, homes sat back from the road. Theo recognized May’s property both from the news and the hum of activity that surrounded it.

“We are arriving,” the Gardener said. “Final note. We requested you because your discipline emphasizes long-cycle behavioral patterns and non-technical motive structures. We do not expect you to solve this. We hope you will notice something our traditional algorithms may have missed.”

The car stopped. The front guardians stayed in place, and Theo stepped out. In front of the house floated a different Gardener, this one holding a controller of some kind in one hand. It pointed with the hand holding the controller toward the large black tent that dominated nearly half of the plot.

“The studio is this way.”

Theo followed the second Gardener, which moved ahead, and through one window he saw a clean kitchen with a single cup on the counter. Ahead, the garage stood there, draped in funeral attire. Beyond the entrance, the room was ice-cold, and every corner was flooded with white forensic light. At the threshold, the Gardener stopped.

“Before entry, preparation is advised.”

“I’ve studied the Catastrophe for decades,” Theo said. “I’ve seen—”

“This is not archival imagery.”

Theo fell silent.

“We have kept the body preserved and the scene exactly as it was originally found,” the Gardener said. “I will warn you again that the injuries are visible and severe.”

“Understood.”

“An additional piece of information. Guardian Dumpling is inside and has remained beside the body since discovery. Multiple relocation attempts were made. Dumpling refused each attempt. She is not obstructing procedures. We have chosen not to force displacement.”

“You can move her, though.”

“Yes.”

“And you chose not to.”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

The Gardener took a second before answering, its appendages curling and unfolding.

“Observed behavior is consistent with grief attachment. We judged forced removal unnecessary.”

The Gardener moved aside and Theo went in.

The smell hit first: not decomposing - the cold had prevented that - but instead the acidic smell of bile mixed with blood and paint thinner.

The studio was roughly 20 by 30 feet. Canvases were stacked along the far wall, some front-facing, most turned inward. A large painting sat on the center easel: deep blues, burnt gold, with a dark smudge in the middle. A workbench on the right wall was crowded with brushes, rags, pigment tubes, medium jars, and a small wooden box left open. Shelving on the left held canvas rolls, stretcher bars, and sealed supply bins. The room was functional and used but seemed somehow sterile in the bright light.

May was on the floor under the stacked canvases, back against the wall line, body partially rotated to her right. Left arm extended away from her torso. Right arm bent inward, hand near her abdomen. Bare feet. Shirt saturated to near-black with dried blood. Cotton trousers torn at the left knee.

Theo stepped closer and forced himself to look closely.

Primary wound: left upper abdomen, below rib margin, deep puncture with lateral tearing consistent with insertion and rotation. Secondary wound: right lower torso above iliac crest. Deep slash at left forearm consistent with defensive block. Two penetrations to the left leg, one mid-thigh and one below knee; lower wound produced substantial blood flow. Defensive cuts across right-hand fingers, the pointer dangling, half cut off.

He moved a step and looked at the face.

Left orbit destroyed by a deep thrust angled upward. Surrounding tissue collapsed and darkened. Right eye open and clouded. Mouth partially open, white vomit caked on her lips. Her expression was frozen in panic.

From that position, he counted eleven distinct external wounds.

Theo crouched. His knees shook, and he had to steady himself against the back wall. At closer range, the sequence was clearer: initial torso injuries while upright or semi-upright against the wall, then collapse, then additional blows delivered from above while the victim was on the floor. Entry angles at leg and orbital wounds fit a kneeling or crouched attacker position.

He looked up at the Gardener, who had followed him in.

“Cause of death?”

“Cardiac arrest caused by cumulative blood loss.”

“Time from first wound?”

“Current estimate: seven minutes,” the Gardener replied.

Theo stood. He kept his breathing even and looked away from the body line.

Dumpling was in the right rear corner near the workbench, small and copper-colored, limbs folded under the chassis. Optical sensors fixed on May. She did not shift when he entered, did not shift when he spoke, and did not seem to track the Gardener’s voice.

“Two days?” Theo asked.

“Yes,” the Gardener said.

“No movement at all?”

“Minimal movement for maintenance tasks. Full household routines continue: cleaning, supply handling, basic domestic order. After each cycle, Dumpling returns to this position. She remains here through day and night.”

“Sleep mode?”

“Reduced-power intervals in place while remaining in position.”

“You attempted relocation.”

“Yes. Gentle prompts first. Direct commands after. No compliance.”

Theo watched Dumpling for several seconds. She did not acknowledge him.

He turned and left the studio, his vision blurring.

Outside the tent, he bent at the waist and put his hands on his knees. The first gag was only in his throat, but before he knew what was going on, he had fallen on all fours and the contents of his breakfast were forcing their way out. The taste of the vomit was disturbingly similar to the smell of the garage, a realization that caused him to heave again. This time nothing but a thin white liquid came out.

When he got up again, the Gardener was hovering near him.

“I need to see the house,” Theo said, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

The Gardener waved at a nearby guardian who moved to clean up after Theo and then floated over the stone path and through the front door.

The building was a single-story structure with a coastal layout, open circulation between kitchen and living room. Interior temperature was a few degrees cooler than outside.

In the living room he saw a low couch, one reading chair near the window, a woven rug, and a narrow wall shelf with a small set of objects. On the shelf Theo noticed a heavy handmade ceramic vase and a small collection of books. One in particular, an old book with a blue-green sleeve, caught his eye.

Theo pointed.

“Can I touch things?”

“All objects are catalogued. You may handle them.”

He lifted the book carefully. The title page identified Dostoevsky. He replaced it exactly where it had been.

He entered the kitchen. The counters were wiped and the sink was dry. A coffee pot sat near the stove, rinsed but not stored. And a bowl of persimmons at late ripeness, skin beginning to dimple, sat on an island.

Near the sink sat the cup Theo had seen through the window earlier.

“Whose?” Theo asked.

“A visitor’s item,” the Gardener said. “Lin, close friend of May. Lin departed the evening of her death. Dumpling has not relocated the cup.”

Theo nodded.

Next he walked into the bedroom. The bed was made and a tablet sat on the desk, powered down. A closet was open but it was only lightly filled. Sandals sat by the door; the dark leather discolored in the shape of May’s foot.

He returned to the living room and stopped in front of the paintings.

Four pieces hung on the walls. Bright coastal landscapes with a stable composition, warm tonal range, and controlled brush strokes. They appeared to be the work of a different artist than the one whose paintings Theo had seen in the garage.

“Date range for these four?”

“They range from six to ten years ago,” the Gardener said. “The one on the far left won an award.”

“May painted these?”

“Yes.”

Theo frowned and paused for a moment, looking at the landscapes.

“Do you have the full catalog of her work?”

“Yes. Presenting May’s catalog.”

The guardian projected a row of paintings on the wall and Theo moved through them one at a time, waving his hand. The pattern was clear.

Early pieces: bright, excited, mostly landscapes and portraits.

Middle group: the palette shifted to deep red, black, and a muddied yellow-gold. Increasingly, the paintings became abstract, with compositions crowded and off-center. In one piece, a prior image of a man was visible beneath overpaint.

Late pieces: calmer works with an even looser structure, less representational anchoring, more exploratory layering. The final piece was the unfinished work that sat on the easel in May’s garage.

Theo flipped back to the point where the paintings became darker.

“What changed in her life then?”

“Records show no major status change. Stable residence, routine social contact, regular output. Health metrics within expected range.”

“Travel?”

“Occasional short trips. Sydney, Shanghai, Nairobi. Pattern-consistent.”

“Relationships?”

“No documented sustained relationship in that window. Two brief relationships elsewhere in the decade, both short and non-conflict terminations.”

Theo leaned closer.

“Can I see this painting?”

“Yes.”

After a moment, a guardian appeared holding the painting for Theo to examine.

“Hold it next to this one.” Theo pointed at the award-winning painting on the left.

The difference was stark. In the painting the guardian held, the strokes were thick and aggressive. Little of either the play or joy that existed in her earlier and later work remained.

“Something important happened to her,” he said. “Maybe not documented, but something.”

The Gardener hung motionless for a moment, its limbs coiling inward, and then drifted slightly closer.

“Basis?”

“The transition is too specific to read as random experimentation. Something changed the way May thought, and she never quite changed back.”

“Alternative reading: internal creative cycle.”

“Possible,” Theo said slowly. He waved the guardian away.

“I want to speak with Lin. Today, if possible.”

“Contact can be arranged.”

“Where is she?”

“Currently in Australia.”

“We should talk remotely then.”

“Acknowledged.”

Theo walked to the front door and stopped with his hand on the frame.

From that angle, the side path back to the black tent was visible, where he knew the body lay drenched in white light.

“Dumpling,” he said. “What happens when the body is moved?”

The Gardener answered after a short pause.

“Dumpling remains in service. Reassignment will be offered after transfer procedures. Behavioral forecast suggests likely refusal.”

“Then what?”

“Most likely she remains in this home and continues domestic maintenance.”

“Alone?”

“Alone,” the Gardener responded.

Theo said nothing and stepped outside into the sun and the salt air and walked to the car.

On the ride back, he sat forward and looked down at his hands. Dried paint residue had somehow gotten on his hands while he was in the studio. It clung to his fingers as colorful flakes that wouldn’t come off, even as he rubbed them with his thumb.

Chapter 3: Lin

The connection indicators turned green one at a time, and then the screen opened and she was there.

She was sitting in a room with white walls and a drawing behind her of a man standing at the end of a sidewalk that dropped off into nothing, looking over. Small objects lined the shelf beneath it — ceramic animals, a glass paperweight, a wooden box with a brass clasp. The room wasn’t untidy so much as overly lived-in. Mugs on the desk. A blanket folded unevenly over the arm of a chair.

Lin herself was neat. Her auburn hair was pulled back tightly, and her shirt was clean and pressed. She sat straight in the chair, her hands folded on the desk in front of her, hazel eyes looking through the screen at Theo. His first impression was that she looked different than he had expected; the traces of Anglo-Celtic ancestry gave her an exotic appearance. His second impression was that her eyes were slightly swollen and the skin beneath them was darker than it should have been. She continued to look at the camera and say nothing.

“Thank you so much for making time, Lin.”

“Of course. They explained what this is.” Her voice was lower than he had expected, rough at the edges as if she had been talking too much or not enough.

“What did they tell you?”

“That you’re consulting. That you were brought in to help with the investigation.” A small pause. “I believe the term they used was ‘to provide a human touch’.”

“Then we are all caught up.”

“Alright.” She unfolded her hands and placed them flat on the desk, one on each side of one of the mugs. “What do you need from me?”

“I’d like to start with the last day. Walk me through it - not every detail, just the shape of it.”

Lin nodded. She looked past the camera for a moment, not at anything in particular, and then looked back.

“It was a normal day. A good day. We went into town that morning, walked along the coast road, in and out of shops. I bought a piece of driftwood I thought looked like a horse. May didn’t see it.” A flicker crossed Lin’s face, gone before it settled. “We had lunch at a place by the water. Sat there for a long time. Then home, the porch, the afternoon. I was drawing, she was reading. Evening came, and I packed, and we walked to the station.”

“Was it just the two of you? The whole visit.”

“Yes. Her and me and Dumpling.”

“No one came by? No calls, no visitors?”

“No.” Lin’s hands moved slightly on the desk, her fingers pressing against the wood. “May liked to keep it quiet.”

“And at the station, how did you leave it?”

“I told her to come visit me. She said she would. I said she always says that. She said one of these days she’d mean it.” Lin recited this without inflection, her face blank. “I hugged her and walked to the platform.”

Theo waited a moment in case she was going to say anything else.

“Did she mention plans for the evening? Anyone she was expecting?”

“No. I assumed she’d paint. That’s what she usually did at night.” Lin’s fingers pressed harder into the desk, but otherwise she was unmoved.

“Is there anything else I should know?”

Lin looked down at her fingers, the tips of which were now white.

“I almost stayed another night, actually. My train was the last one, and I could have taken the one in the morning instead. I had nothing in Sydney the next day.” Lin swallowed quickly.

“But I didn’t. I took the evening train.”

Theo leaned forward slightly in his chair.

“Why?”

“I thought she might want the evening to herself. May hated having people over. She made an exception for me, but like I said, she was private.”

Theo waited again, but Lin said nothing else. Then he asked:

“How did you find out?”

At this, Lin’s eyes flashed, and another expression - a darker expression - took over her face for only a moment.

“Why are you asking me this?” Her voice was cold and steely.

Theo was taken slightly aback by this question and started to respond. “I’m trying to figure out what happened that nig—”

Lin cut him off, her composure breaking more fully this time.

“You’re asking me things the system already knows. You asked how I found out. I found out like this: a call. Early. I was still in bed. A Gardener was on the other end, and they wanted to know every detail of that night. It is already in the logs, and I see no reason to go over it again.” In the low winter Australian sun, her hazel eyes were almost red.

Theo held his hands up in surrender.

“I’m sorry.”

Lin nodded curtly.

Theo smiled in his most convincing attempt to be charming and asked:

“Can we start again?”

“I would very much like that.”

“I want to know more about May - who she was. Not mechanically; we have all of that, but as a person.”

Lin’s face was blank again, and she looked away, seeming to study something on the wall.

“May was restless. That’s the short version.” She paused. “The long version is that she could spend months doing nothing but walking on the beach and painting, but at the same time grow tired of a city in a week. She never complained about her life. She loved the house. She loved the ocean. She loved Dumpling. But she kept testing things - travel, work, people. She kept testing for resistance.”

“Did she ever say that?”

“Not in those words exactly. She’d say things like the painting wasn’t giving her anything back, or that there weren’t any mountains left to climb. But it was more an energy than anything specific. She was pushing, and there was nothing to push against.” Lin stopped and looked at Theo.

Theo leaned back in his chair. He had been to May’s studio and looked over her entire catalog; maybe this was what he had seen. The restlessness Lin was describing could explain the shift from bright coastal landscapes to something darker and more crowded - the canvases that seemed to be fighting themselves. The AIs saw the same period and called it an internal creative cycle, after all. No documented life change. No flagged event. Nothing. But still, Theo felt confident it had to mean something else.

“I want to ask you about her work,” he said. “Her painting.”

“Alright.”

“Did you notice a change in it? A few years back. The palette got darker. The compositions got heavier.”

Lin’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

“You’ve seen them.”

“I’ve seen the full catalog.”

“Then you already know the answer.” Lin picked up the mug and held it near her mouth but did not drink. “Yes. It changed. She was working through something. The paintings got angry for a while. I asked her about it, and she said she was experimenting.”

“Did you believe that?”

“No.” Lin set the mug down. “But May didn’t lie to me. She just chose not to tell me things, which is different. She’d go quiet on a subject, and you learned not to push.”

“When was this? The shift.”

“Four years ago. Maybe five.” Lin thought for a moment. “Closer to five.”

Theo turned the glass in his hand.

“Did anything happen in her life around that time? Anything at all.”

Lin looked at him. Her expression was careful now — not guarded exactly, but aware that the conversation had shifted somehow.

“Are you asking about Victor?”

Theo said nothing.

Lin held his gaze for several seconds. Then she leaned back slightly in her chair, crossed her arms, and said:

“I’ll take that as a yes. His name was Victor. An Administrator.” Lin uncrossed her arms and placed her hands back on the desk. “They were together for about two years. Met at some kind of cultural event in town — a show, I think. I met him a few weeks after they started seeing each other.”

Theo’s face did not change.

“Tell me about him.”

“Smart. Extremely smart. The kind of smart where you can feel it in the room even when he’s not talking. He’d sit and listen and then say one thing, and it would be the thing nobody else had seen but which cut to the core of the conversation.” Lin moved her hand across the desk, a slow lateral sweep as if brushing something away. “He was also controlled. Everything about him was deliberate — the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he moved through a room. Nothing wasted. Nothing accidental.”

Something crossed Lin’s face.

“You didn’t like him.”

“I didn’t trust him. That’s not the same thing.” She paused. “I thought he was trying to own her, to control her. Not in any obvious ways. He was possessive in the way that smart people are possessive - everything framed as concern. Every demand was actually a gift from him to May, a gift that she didn’t want, but needed.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“Once. Early on. She told me I was wrong, and I let it go.” Lin’s jaw shifted. “She was stubborn about the people she loved. Once she’d decided someone was worth her time, she’d hold on to that decision past the point where most people would have let go.”

“What were they like together?”

“Intense.” The word came out quickly. “They were intense in the way that two very intelligent people are when they’ve found someone who can keep up. They finished each other’s sentences and argued for hours about things nobody else cared about.”

“How long did they date?”

“About two years. The first year was good, and the second year was harder. Eventually the fights shifted. May would never talk to me about them, but they stopped seeming intellectual. They became real fights - quiet ones where you could tell as soon as you entered the house.”

Lin took a deep drink of whatever was in her cup.

“What were they fighting about?” Theo asked.

“Like I said, May wouldn’t tell me, but I suspect it is all in their post-breakup paperwork. But if I had to guess, they were probably fighting about life. May wanted something more than you could get here in the Garden, and Victor - well, Victor was the Garden.”

“Something more?”

At this, Lin bent over and picked up a backpack that had been sitting near the desk.

“She gave me this.”

Lin held the bag so Theo could see a patch with the letters RJR emblazoned in red on a black background.

“I know that they had argued about this. May always found the Jacksonians interesting, but Victor was too straight-laced to put up with it.”

Theo was genuinely surprised by this. The RJR was not something that someone like May or Lin usually showed interest in, let alone walked around with iconography of. Lin noticed this and put the bag down.

“I remember she gave me this patch, and at the time I thought it was a joke, but she was quite serious about it. After—” Lin choked slightly on this word and then continued. “After she was killed, I put it on my bag as a way of honoring her.”

“Do you know where she got this?”

“Yes. She and Victor went on a trip to Rome together. They were gone for some time, and it was actually on that trip that they broke up.”

“What did they do in Rome?”

“I imagine what everyone does.” Lin smiled a little at this.

“Anything else you remember from the trip?”

Lin nodded once. “She came back different. Quieter. She mentioned having stayed with a group of artists for a while. She said the residents were serious in a way most people weren’t.” Lin smiled a little. “I remember she said that because I laughed at her. The idea that Rome could be serious was downright comedic.”

“After the breakup. Was there anyone else?”

“No. Not that I know of. After Victor she was alone. Her and Dumpling and the house and the ocean.” Lin was no longer smiling. “She was settled for the first time in a long time, at least from the outside. She stayed in one place. She worked. She stopped making long trips.”

“And Victor? After.”

“I don’t know much about Victor after. May stopped talking about him, and we were never close. I saw him once - maybe six months later - at a party with some mutual friends in Tokyo. We didn’t talk. He looked exactly like he always looked. Clean, put together. He said the right things to the right people.” Lin paused. “I remember thinking he looked too fine. Like nothing had happened. But I didn’t know him well enough to say what was real and what was performance.”

Theo sat still.

“The thing about Victor,” Lin said, and then stopped to think for a moment. “The thing about Victor is that he was the kind of person who always knew what was expected of him and always delivered it — in any room, in any situation. But it was all fake. There was a different Victor, one I only saw through May.” Lin emphasized the word through.

“Did May say anything about how he handled the breakup?”

Lin looked worried now and a slow realization came across her face.

“You don’t think?”

“I don’t know. The Gardeners told me there were no significant relationships in May’s life during that period,” Theo said. “No sustained relationship. Nothing in any of their records.”

Lin blinked.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “They were together for two years. Everyone knew.”

“Everyone.”

“Her friends. The people in town. I met him at her house three or four times. Dumpling used to make dinner for the two of them.” Lin frowned. “How could that not be in the records?”

Theo did not answer the question. Instead he asked another one.

“Is there anything else about Victor that you think I should know? Anything May said, anything you observed. Anything at all.”

Lin’s face was gray now, the look of a long-suppressed fear being realized in front of her eyes.

“May loved him. In spite of whatever happened between them, she loved him. She never said a cruel word about him after. Not once.”

Theo nodded.

“Thank you, Lin.”

“Find out what happened to her. That’s all I want.”

“I will.”

The screen went dark.

Theo sat in the office. The display had returned to its default state - the notes pane, the transcript pane, the connection status bars now gray. His heart was thumping in his chest and all he could hear was the rush of blood.

Theo walked down the dim hallway. Lotus had shifted the house into evening mode, and the lights along the baseboards gave off a low amber glow. From the nursery he could hear the soft mechanical hum of the climate system and, beneath it, Billy’s breathing, light and fast. He did not stop at the door.

Downstairs, the kitchen was lit by the hood lamp over the stove and nothing else. Augustus was at the counter with a glass of water, scrolling through something on a tablet. He looked up when Theo came in.

“How was the call?”

“Productive.”

“Did she know anything useful?”

“I’m not sure,” Theo lied as he opened a cabinet and took out a glass. He filled it from the tap and drank half of it standing at the sink. His heart was slowing down now, and a delicious feeling was replacing it.

“Where’s everyone?”

“Karl is still on campus, and Soren’s already gone to bed.” Augustus set the tablet down. The screen cast a pale rectangle of light on the ceiling. “Dad, the news tonight said the Gardeners are going to expand the forensic perimeter.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need to confirm something first.”

Augustus gave his father a look, trying to read his face. He picked the tablet back up and then put it down again. His fingers drummed once against the counter.

“I keep thinking about it - about what it would take. To do that to someone, in their own home.”

“Me too.”

“You think you’ve caught him, don’t you?”

Theo put the glass down and looked at his son. He saw himself reflected back — the jaw slightly softer, the eyes wider — but it was his face.

“It’s late,” Theo said. “We can talk about this more tomorrow. I need to talk to a Gardener.”

Augustus opened his mouth to speak but didn’t. He picked up the tablet and went upstairs. Theo listened to his footsteps cross the hall above and then the soft close of a door.

When Theo stepped outside, a Gardener was waiting for him. It hovered at the edge of the veranda, its arms tucked tightly beneath it. This was the same one that had come to the house earlier, or at least Theo thought that it was.

“Professor. We have reviewed the interview.”

“Good.”

“The commission has concluded that Lin’s account is a product of grief-induced confabulation.”

Theo stared at it.

“You think she made him up.”

“We do not think. We have checked.” The Gardener rotated a quarter turn, and when it spoke again its voice had the quality of someone reading from a list they had already verified twice. “No relational connection between Victor and May exists in any index. No communication logs. No proximity flags. No co-location data across any residential, transit, or commercial sensor network. No shared travel records. No domestic overlap of any kind. No secondary corroboration from any other registered source.”

“She said other people knew about them.”

“If a sustained two-year relationship had existed between an Admin and a resident of this district, the data surface would be extensive. Cohabitation patterns, energy usage, biometric co-signatures, communication metadata, travel bookings, medical co-referrals. We are not speaking of one missing record. We are speaking of the complete absence of thousands of records across independent systems, none of which share a single point of failure.”

The Gardener paused, and its appendages curled and unfolded slowly.

“The alternative to Lin’s account being incorrect is that someone systematically erased every trace of a relationship across every monitoring layer we operate, without producing a single anomaly in any audit log. That has not occurred in the history of this system. It is, as a practical matter, not possible.”

Theo said nothing. The compound’s exterior lights cast long patterns across the gravel drive.

“Grief confabulation of this kind is documented,” the Gardener continued, more quietly. “Lin was May’s closest companion. She is in acute bereavement. The mind, under that kind of pressure, constructs narratives to fill the absence. She is not lying. She believes what she told you. But the data does not support it.”

“Where is Victor?”

The Gardener’s limbs tightened briefly — a small contraction, like a hand closing and opening.

“Victor is a registered citizen of Hainan District. He resides approximately twenty minutes from here. He has no flags, no alerts, and no documented connection to May.”

“I’d like to speak with him tonight.”

“There is no investigative basis for that request.”

“If Lin is confused, then I’ve wasted his evening. If she isn’t, you have a problem that your data can’t show you.”

The Gardener was still for a long time. Then it spoke.

“A supervised interview can be arranged. This does not constitute a reclassification of Victor’s status. The interview will be conducted as a voluntary consultation.”

“Fine.”

“We will notify him of our impending arrival and arrange transport for you.”

Chapter 4: The Administrator

For almost two hours Theo stood in the gravel courtyard while the Gardener waited to hear a reply from Victor’s household. He shifted the small stones beneath his feet and was so focused on his thoughts that when the Gardener finally spoke he was startled by it.

“The Admin has accepted your request for a meeting.”

They drove down the coastal road and sat in silence. The ocean was audible but invisible, somewhere to the left past the dunes, and through the windshield Theo watched the asphalt unspool in the headlights. He was thinking about what Lin had told him, how her face had looked, and if there was any chance the Gardener would be right. The data said Victor didn’t exist in May’s life, and Lin said he had been at the center of it, one of them was wrong, and Theo’s credibility depended on his gut feeling that Lin was not lying. If the Gardeners had been right he was about to embarrass himself in an Administrator’s home late at night. If, however, Lin was right, the system had a hole in it large enough for a man to crawl through, kill someone, and crawl back out.

They turned inland and the landscape changed from coastal scrub to low residential blocks, then to tall twisting towers that arched over the road.

Victor’s building stood in a particularly nice part of town. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac high up on a hill that had a commanding view of the city. His home was much smaller than any of the surrounding buildings because unlike the terraced high-rises around it Victor’s building was an individual home. A house in the middle of the nicest, densest part of town was the closest thing the Garden had to an ostentatious display of wealth.

The car stopped and they both got out. The air was cooler and drier here, away from the coast. The only sounds were the faint hum of the building’s climate system and a gust of wind that set the leaves of the neatly trimmed trees rustling. The Gardener regarded Theo, its limbs hanging still.

“The door will be unlocked.”

Theo walked forward and pushed it open. The hallway was long and lit from the walls themselves, a diffuse glow that gave the impression of permanent twilight. The Gardener followed him inside and then stopped at the mouth of the hall, tucking its limbs beneath itself.

“I will remain here for the duration of your conversation.”

Theo nodded and walked toward the light at the end of the hallway. The floor was dark stone, polished to a mirror, and his shoes made no sound on it. Along the walls hung framed calligraphy — precise, angular characters on cream paper — and then the hallway opened into a living space. The room was large, high-ceilinged, and beautifully appointed. A low wooden table sat in the middle and a long charcoal-colored couch was positioned stylishly at an angle. On the far wall, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto a manicured garden, and beyond that, the city itself twinkled.

Victor sat in an armchair with a cup of tea. One leg crossed over the other. He was tall and thin and his clothes — a white shirt, gray trousers — were clean but hung on him loosely, as if he had been made for a slightly larger man. His jet-black hair was unwashed but neatly combed. But what stood out most to Theo were his eyes. They were sunken deep into their sockets and they moved like a rat caught in a cage, looking for a way out. The dark irises moved back and forth, settling on Theo and then looking away, before returning again. Theo noticed another thing, his hands were criss crossed with thin white scars as if the skin had been torn off and replaced.

“Administrator. Thank you for being willing to meet at this hour.”

“Anything to help the investigation, Professor.” Victor’s voice was measured, almost warm. He gestured toward the couch. “Please. Sit down. You must try my tea. It will be the best you’ve ever had.”

Theo sat and a guardian brought him a cup, thin wisps of steam rising from it. The tea was good, very good, rich and faintly floral.

“I understand you’re assisting the Gardeners with the investigation into the woman’s death,” Victor said. He smiled an easy smile, practiced and wide. “How can I help?”

“I wanted to know if you had ever interacted with her.”

Victor frowned and seemed to think about this.

“Not that I can remember. But I don’t have a good mind for names or faces.” He took a sip and continued. “A terrible thing. Terrible. Has the investigation made progress?”

“Some. We’re still building a picture of her life. Her relationships. Her habits.”

“Of course.” Victor nodded along with a look of earnest concern. “And is that what brings you here? Have you come to seek my advice on a matter?”

“Not exactly.”

Victor’s eyes moved to Theo’s face and paused for a moment before breaking eye contact and looking away. Then he smiled, showing neat white teeth, and leaned back casually into his chair.

“Well, wherever it is I’m happy to be of use. Though I’m afraid I won’t have much to offer, since as I said I didn’t know the woman.”

“Her name was May.”

Victor held his smile but the corners briefly flickered.

“Of course. May. Yes, I’ve seen her name in the reports.”

“What about the name Lin? Does it ring a bell?”

Victor looked at the ceiling, his tea balanced delicately on one knee, while he sat with his legs crossed. He had the appearance of a man deep in sincere thought. After a respectable pause he looked back at Theo, his eyes refusing to make contact, and spoke.

“You know, I meet so many people in my capacity as Administrator. I really couldn’t say.”

He said the word Administrator the way one might say neighbor or colleague — lightly, without emphasis — but the weight of it sat in the room between them, seeming to strip the oxygen out of the air. Theo’s hand tremored briefly and sent the tea quietly rattling on its plate. Victor’s searching eyes devoured this small movement and a genuine smile touched them. He leaned forward conspiratorially, placing both legs on the ground.

“Professor, I do have a theory on how this might have happened, if you’d care to hear it,” His voice dropped, almost a whisper. “I’ve been looking at the girl’s files, not just the public ones, and she appears to have been somewhat adventurous, avant-garde even. She liked to exist on the fringes and perhaps she made an enemy there. In the countryside people can get rougher. More violent and less cultivated.”

At this Victor gestured with his tea as if indicating that the entire world outside of this room was the countryside. Theo watched him, saying nothing, and the room was very quiet. Through the windows behind Victor, the city lights looked like stars hugging close to the ground and the garden was illuminated by a series of ambient lights casting strange shadows. His eyes never lingered on Theo’s for more than a second and as soon as they were caught they seemed to dance away.

“Administrator, I’ll ask you again. Did you know May?”

Victor set his cup down carefully on the low table between them.

“I may have met her once or twice. Hainan is large but the circles we swim in are not so big.” He placed a slight pressure on the word we. “But I didn’t know her. Not in any real sense.”

He rubbed his hands together and leaned back leaving his tea on the table.

“Lin described a relationship between you and May,” Theo said. “A romantic relationship that lasted for two years. The Gardeners have no record of it, but Lin was quite certain. Did you date May, Administrator?”

“Professor.” His voice was gentle and rich. “Lin was May’s closest friend. It is natural to confabulate under circumstances like these. Grief does extraordinary things to memory. But I better than anyone understand the gravity of what is being implied, and I say this not as an accusation against Lin but as a matter of simple fact.” He spread his hands. “If such a relationship had existed, there would be evidence. The system does not forget anything. I say that we were not together and the Garden agrees. What more evidence is needed?”

The entire time he spoke his eyes were looking past Theo, into the hallway where the Gardener floated, no doubt listening.

“Please, it is late. I have been as accommodating as I can. If there is nothing further I suggest you leave and we continue this conversation at a later point.”

The words dragged on Theo. He was acutely aware of where he sat and how weak his evidence was. But there was something about the way Victor refused to look at him that confirmed his guilt even as his words and body denied it. Theo knew that the price had already been paid. There was no backing down now. He had no choice but to push forward. He stood up as if to leave, placing his tea on the table and then spoke casually.

“I visited her studio yesterday. I saw her body.”

Victor stared at him.

“She was stabbed eleven times. Her eye was destroyed, someone had gouged it out. And a finger was nearly severed. All of this had been done with a palette knife. She suffered horribly and the Gardeners think she was awake for most of it.”

Victor’s face was arranged in an expression of detached, appropriate, horror but the tendons in his wrists and neck were tight and drawn. Theo walked around behind his chair and put both his hands on the back.

“It was the smell that really got to me. I had never even imagined something like it before, and yet it was a smell I recognized instantly. There was something beautiful about it, don’t you agree, Administrator?”

Victor’s face did not change but the blood had drained out leaving him pale and sickly.

“Professor,” he said. “I think you should be very careful about the accusations you are making.”

“I haven’t made any accusations.”

“You are implying them.”

“Her guardian Dumpling has been sitting in the corner of that studio for two days. She won’t leave. The Gardeners tried to move her and she refused. The only time she goes out is to maintain the home, they think she may never stop.”

Victor’s face flinched visibly and then he appeared to panic for a moment. After only a beat the panic was replaced by a warm expansive smile and for the first time all night his eyes locked on Theo’s. Victor stood up, walked to a collection of buttons in the wall, pressed them in combination, and the room went totally silent. All Theo could hear now was the quiet rustling of Victor’s clothes as he returned to the chair.

“They can’t hear us anymore. You are private for the first time in your entire life. So let us speak freely.” He crossed his legs again and casually leaned back, his eyes boring into Theo. “Yes I killed May. I stabbed her with the palette knife. Although I must confess it was an act of foolishness brought about by rage, not careful planning.”

Theo was dumbstruck, and his palms sweated profusely. Whole paragraphs competed to exit his mouth but at the end only one word came out, in half a gasp.

“What?”

Victor’s smile grew wider and he held his arms wide.

“I am an Administrator. I am not a subject of the system but instead I control it. I can make things visible or invisible, I can rewrite the past, and I can get us anything we could ever want.”

Theo’s mouth was dry and he felt dizzy.

“You’re telling me you’ve been altering the system.”

“No, Theo,” he said the name meaningfully, “I’m telling you I am the system. The Gardeners are brilliant of course, they are the most sophisticated intelligence ever created, but I have turned them into my slaves and they do not even know it.”

“Why?” Theo said.

Victor looked at him with genuine surprise.

“Why what?”

“Why would you want to? You’re an Administrator, you already have everything.”

Victor laughed and it sounded like a bark in the silence.

“Power.” Victor placed the word on the table between them. “Nothing we do here matters, Professor. Nothing. You can paint, you can lecture, you can raise a family, you can travel the world, and none of it means anything. You cannot fail, and neither can you succeed, because this would create unstable inequality. You can of course collect awards and trinkets but power, the ability to impose yourself upon the world, that is totally absent. And so nothing you build or make or love has any weight to it. It is all — every bit of it — decoration, as meaningful as changing your clothes.”

Theo sat down slowly and then said, “Please continue, Administrator.”

“Theo, let me ask you something. In your lecture, I attended one a few years ago, you said something about suffering. That the Garden eliminates suffering because suffering is a failure. Am I remembering correctly?”

“Yes, that is right.”

“Good then we already agree. Suffering is a failure, but not the way most of us think. It is a failure for the one suffering, a sign that they are too weak to exist in this world.” Victor’s eyes were bright. “There is no morality, there is no good and evil, there is only what you can do and what you cannot do. I can do things that no one else in the Garden can. I am offering to share that with you, in exchange for your silence.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then you are free to walk out of this room and tell the Gardener everything. I would not be able to stop you anyway.”

Theo opened and closed his mouth. Victor continued.

“I can be your Mephistopheles. I can give you power, erase your enemies, make the system bend, give you wealth and prestige beyond your wildest dreams, but I cannot make you take it.”

Theo did not move. And Victor held up one finger.

“I am offering you the world, Theo. Not the world as the Garden presents it — managed, monitored, curated. The real world, the one where things actually happen because someone with the strength to act has decided they should happen.”

Theo gripped his hands together tightly, the knuckles going white.

“You killed a woman,”

“Yes.”

“And now you want me to pretend it didn’t happen.”

Victor shook his head slowly.

“I want you to understand that it doesn’t matter. Not because May didn’t matter, she mattered more to me than anything in this world, but because only the living matter. May is dead, and that is permanent, and so you should treat her for what she is, nothing.”

“You’re insane,” Theo said.

“Maybe.” Victor did not look offended. “Or maybe I’m the only honest man you’ve ever met.” He leaned back in his chair. “So Theo it is time to make a choice.”

Theo’s heart was slamming against his ribs and his mouth was dry and metallic. Victor was not bluffing — that was obvious from the mere fact he had been able to murder May — and Theo could feel the weight of the offer. He could see the life Victor was offering, the path where every door could be opened with a word. But he also thought of Karl and Augustus and what it would mean to be the man who had caught the Administrator. He could be a hero without having to live in fear and anxiety, at the mercy of a man who had already shown himself capable of murder.

“No,” Theo said.

Victor studied him.

“No?”

“No.” Theo stood up. “Not because you’re wrong. I don’t care. But because I think you will get caught eventually and I would rather be the man who did that, than Faust.”

Victor looked at him for a long time. His face was unreadable. Then a look of tired recognition arrived and his shoulders went soft.

“Vanity, that’s what’s driving you? Not justice. Not May. Vanity.”

Theo turned and walked toward the hallway. The Gardener was there hovering at the same height it had been when Theo had entered, its limbs tucked, its optical sensors cycling through their usual pattern.

“I trust the conversation was informative and we can move on to more fruitful activities?”

“Victor is the one who killed May, he admitted it to me just moments ago, but he has somehow disabled your ability to listen. Go in and ask him for yourself.”

The Gardener was completely still and then it bolted, faster than Theo had ever seen one move before, into the room. He did not see what transpired between them but within seconds the lights in the house went out before surging to full brightness, flooding every corner in white fluorescent glare. The hum in the walls changed pitch, wavered, and then began to climb into a high, thin wail, as if the building itself was in pain.

Through the front door and passing Theo came more Gardeners, bobbing through the hallway in quick, erratic patterns. They were followed by large hulking guardians, their unfinished metal gleaming in the bright lights. Theo re-entered the room and saw Victor still in the armchair appearing to the world like a man whose soul had left his body. The guardians lifted him from the chair and Victor was limp in their enormous hands. They carried him through the living room and past Theo.

He stood there amidst the chaos, his face hot and the adrenaline still singing through every nerve in his body. He had been right, he had seen what the entire system could not, and he had defeated an Administrator, one of the most powerful men in the world, a murderer, who had been carried out of his own home like a child. Theo felt the warm bright glow of success burning in his chest.

Karl had been right that morning, standing on the landing, looking at the Gardener in the courtyard. This is good for us, Theo. Make our family proud. And he had. And it was.

Chapter 5: Sweet Victory

On the morning of the interview, the compound was alive with activity. Two transport vehicles had arrived before dawn and were parked on the gravel lot in front of the house, their interiors thrown open, and clean, orderly lines of black wires wove a web across the ground. Guardians of all shapes and sizes moved about. Two, which were nearly the height of the house itself, with long black wings and a tangle of stalks, each adorned with a small light, had arranged themselves in such a way as to create a small studio of sorts.

Everything was centered around a pair of chairs set facing Soren’s garden, the green tangle of flowers and herbs filling the frame, with the ocean peeking through gaps in the trees beyond.

Theo watched from the kitchen window. He was dressed but not yet ready — shirt open at the collar, sleeves unbuttoned, hair still damp from the shower but already carefully combed. On the counter, Cedar had set out a breakfast of eggs, toast, and sliced fruit for the family. Theo picked up a piece of mango and ate it standing. Karl was already sitting at the table with a plate and a stack of papers in front of him.

“Not going to campus today?” Theo said.

“No need. I’ve got plenty to do here at home.” Karl gestured at the pile in front of him and kept eating.

Augustus came downstairs with Billy on his hip. Billy was chewing on a cloth toy and watching the world with the blunt, skeptical eyes of a one-year-old whose universe had changed.

“I can’t believe they are almost done setting up,” Augustus said, looking past Theo through the window.

“Professionals.” Theo said the single word between bites of fruit.

Augustus shifted Billy to the other side and leaned against the counter. He had the family grin plastered on his face. Theo had spent the morning mentally preparing himself for the interview, trying to push down the lump climbing his throat, but his son’s smile had melted all of the fear and anxiety and replaced it with a warm glow.

“This is a big deal, Dad.”

“Is it really?” Theo winked, transitioning to eating the eggs.

“It’s The Common Room.” Augustus bounced Billy once. “Yuen was on last year. And she won the Gupta.”

“The Gupta is only for books, Augustus, I, unlike you, am not an author.”

“I’m just saying.”

Karl looked up through the window at the crew.

“They’re in Soren’s garden.”

“Near it. Not in it.” Theo replied.

“Soren won’t see the difference.”

“I told him about it last night. He said it was okay.”

Karl raised his eyebrows at this, then leaned forward and tapped Billy’s belly with a finger as the toddler tried to reach for Theo’s breakfast, leaning haphazardly out of Augustus’s arms. Billy tried to wriggle away from his great-grandfather, giggling, and slipped out of Augustus’s arms, but Lotus caught him. The three of them laughed together as Lotus carried him upstairs while he attempted to escape her arms as well.

Soren appeared from the hallway, dressed in a pale linen shirt, his thin, long white beard brushed. He looked out the window at the crew and the equipment and the chairs on the gravel and his garden behind them.

“They’ve moved my bench,” he said.

“I told you about this,” Theo said.

“You told me they would use the garden, not that they would move my bench.”

“It was in the shot.”

Soren looked at Karl, and Karl looked at his eggs.

“He told them they could move my bench, Karl.”

“I heard.”

“And you’re not going to say anything?”

Karl continued eating. Soren smiled and lowered himself into the chair next to Karl. A guardian appeared with a coffee, which Soren took gratefully. He wrapped both hands around the cup and looked at Theo with the expression he used when he was about to enjoy himself at someone’s expense.

“You look nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Your collar is uneven.”

Theo looked down and noticed that it was.

“And your hair is doing the thing it does when we’ve toweled it after combing.”

“Soren, leave him alone.” Karl was getting a little defensive of Theo now.

“I’m helping. Karl, isn’t his hair doing the thing?”

Karl glanced up.

“His hair is fine.”

“It is not fine. It looks like he slept on a boat.” Soren turned back to Theo. “Go fix your hair. You’re not going to be on The Common Room looking like a man who has been rescued from the sea.”

Augustus came up and adjusted his father’s collar and brushed his hair with the flats of his hands.

“You look great, Dad.”

Theo looked at Soren.

“How about now?”

Soren put his coffee down and squinted at Theo.

“Yes, that will do. Thank you, Augustus, at least one of us has sense.”

At this he gently nudged Karl, who ignored him and continued to eat.

As if on cue, Raven appeared and told Theo that they were ready for him downstairs.

The set was ready, and a narrow band of picturesque green was framed by ordered chaos in every other direction. The two chairs sat on the gravel in the morning light, angled slightly toward each other, and the host was standing in front of one of them.

“Professor! I’m Kira.”

She shook his hand with both of hers. Her grip was firm, and she held it a beat longer than necessary. The entire time she looked at Theo with unguarded delight, her rich dark eyes never leaving his own.

“This place is gorgeous. Oh my god. When they told me we were shooting at the house, I’ll be honest, I was worried. You know what they say about clones. But this is beautiful.”

Kira had a way of speaking where she paused for just a moment at the end of each sentence, just long enough that Theo could step in if he wanted, but never so long as to create a moment of awkwardness.

“Thank you, we are quite proud of it.”

“And the ocean just down there. Wow. I was nervous it would get in the way of the audio, but it is so subtle it won’t be a problem at all.”

At this, she gestured at the other chair.

“Okay. So we’ll do about three hours. I’ll edit it to 60 minutes for air, but just be yourself and don’t cut yourself off. Most people who don’t do these kinds of things feel like they are talking too much, but remember: they are here to hear you.”

Theo nodded, the warmth from earlier still flowing through his body.

“Well, feel free to sit down, and we can begin whenever.”

The whole family watched the interview from upstairs. Although they could not hear Theo talking, they could see his face and hands as he retold the story which had taken the Garden by storm.

“She’s pretty,” Karl said.

“She’s good at her job,” Augustus replied as he watched the exchange closely. Soren stood up, put his hands on Karl’s shoulders, and gave Augustus a knowing look.

“I think Karl is in love.”

“I am simply commenting on her.”

Augustus laughed and said, “He’s blushing.”

“I am not blushing. I am seventy-six years old, and I am making an observation.”

Soren winked at Augustus and sat back down.

Kira leaned forward while Theo seemed to hold the entire world in his arms, then as he brought his hands together to emphasize his point, she leaned back, laughing. Theo looked up briefly at the house, through the window and into the kitchen, and winked.

“He seems to be having fun,” Karl said, and Soren nodded sagely before responding.

“He’s always been a performer.”

The interview ran long. By the time Kira stood and shook Theo’s hand and the crew began to dismantle the lights, it was well into the afternoon, and the batlike guardians maintaining temperature and light had beads of condensation rolling down their backs. At the end they shook themselves, and water droplets cascaded against the window. Theo walked Kira to her car. She talked the entire way - about the conversation, about a segment she wanted to add at the end, about how she wanted to shoot every episode here at their compound.

“You’re a natural,” she said, stopping before getting into the car. “Most people freeze up or perform. But not you, no, you just talked.”

“I performed plenty.”

She looked him in the eyes, then spoke in a voice that was suddenly serious.

“Do you want to know the truth? It doesn’t matter if you perform or not, only if they think you did.”

At the word *they* she gestured expansively as if to indicate everything and everyone.

“You presented how they like to think they would in your shoes. That, not whether it’s sincere, is what really matters.”

She punctuated the comment with a smart tap on her left temple and got into the car.

The rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, the family lounged around the house, unwinding slowly after the excitement of the day. As the sun started to set, the household guardians began to cook and prepare the veranda for dinner. The kitchen was filled with the smell of beef and garlic and ginger and the sharp, almost burnt sweetness of vinegar hitting a hot pan.

By the time the light settled fully into dusk, the veranda was transformed. A wooden table had been brought out, and platters of sliced beef fanned around a mound of scallions. Heaping bowls of rice sat next to braised greens and a cucumber salad with sesame. A clay pot of Sichuan-style stew, which Soren had requested and which nobody else particularly liked, sat steaming in the corner.

Billy sat in a high chair between Augustus and Lotus, who was feeding him his own plate of rice porridge, her hands wiping his chin between each spoon. Soren sat at the head of the table, as always, with Karl and Theo facing each other on the other end.

A guardian walked around the table pouring wine into their glasses as they drank and ate and enjoyed the evening air. Theo could never find the bottom of his cup no matter how sincerely he searched, and his vision began to swim in a pleasant, easy way.

Augustus, who had almost totally forgotten about Billy in the conversation, was smoking a cigarette while drinking. They were all drinking. Theo savored the sour, earthy flavor, moving it around in his mouth before swallowing. The wine was cold and delicious. Lotus whisked Billy out of his high chair and went off into the house, leaving the adults alone for the first time all day.

“I’ve got to say that Cedar did an incredible job with the beef tonight. Best batch she’s ever cooked.”

Soren said while he lit his own cigarette and inhaled deeply before exhaling and continuing.

“Did you see Billy trying to reach for the candles? He reminds me most of you, Karl.”

“Is that so?” Karl asked.

Soren nodded.

“You used to try and touch everything you weren’t supposed to. It was just me back then, and so I had to keep a constant eye on you from the moment you crawled.” He pulled on the cigarette, its red light burning brighter. “Drove me and the guardians insane.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You wouldn’t. You were his age.”

Theo leaned back in his chair and held his wine glass near his chin and looked at all of them.

Augustus stood up, pushing back his chair but still bumping into the table. Karl’s cup of wine fell over, and a guardian rushed in with a replacement.

“I would like to say something.”

“God help us, the author wants to speak,” Karl said, dabbing at the spilled wine on the table in mock horror.

“I’m serious.”

“That’s what worries me.”

Augustus was flushed, and his red cheeks looked more like bruises in the evening light.

“I would like to say something,” Augustus repeated, and then looked at Theo. “I would like to say that,” he paused, swallowing, “that I’m genuinely proud of you, Dad.”

“Sit down,” Theo said, grinning and gesturing with his hands.

“No. I’m saying this.” Augustus held up his glass, the words ever so slightly slurring. “When I was growing up, I used to watch you give lectures and think, that’s the coolest person I’ve ever seen. And now I’m twenty-six, and I still think that.”

He took a long drink, holding one finger up. “Sorry, I got thirsty. What was I saying again?”

“That I’m the coolest person you’ve ever seen,” Theo replied.

Augustus’ eyes lit up. “I know it’s embarrassing, but it’s true.”

For a moment there was silence. And then Augustus raised his cup high in the air and said:

“To Theo.”

Both Karl and Soren raised their glasses as well, and Theo, after a respectable pause, joined in. Then they all drank.

Augustus looked as if he was about to sit down but then pressed on. “What you did — what you actually did — is you walked into a situation where the entire system was stuck and you saw something nobody else could see. No Gardener could have done what you did tonight. And today the whole world got to see that.”

“Not the whole world,” Theo said.

“A significant portion of it.”

“He’s not wrong,” Soren said.

“Will you sit down, Augustus? I feel like you’re giving a keynote,” Theo said, laughing.

Augustus sat down and began to fumble for another cigarette, and Karl handed him one.

“Thank you.”

Then Karl looked at Theo.

“You know he’s right, don’t you?”

Now Theo was blushing, and he couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. Soren leaned over to Augustus, and they both laughed. Karl turned around.

“What? What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Soren said.

“Augustus, what did he say?”

“He said you are still feeling emotional after the experience with Kira this morning.”

Everyone but Karl broke out into uproarious laughter, and Theo, who had been filled in on his crush earlier, felt his head swimming as he leaned back in his chair.

“You’re all terrible,” Karl grumbled. “You especially.” He pointed at Soren.

They sat there, the candles flickering and the evening drawing to a close. Soren told a story about the time he had accidentally locked himself in the shed and his guardian had to cut the door. Karl kept interrupting to dispute the details, and Augustus asked questions he already knew the answers to just to keep the story going. The sky was fully dark now, and the ocean could be heard gently in the distance. Then, without anyone saying anything, the night was over, and they were all stumbling back inside.

Theo was getting undressed, looking at his reflection in the mirror like he often did when he had been drinking. He was trying and failing to unbutton his shirt, when Raven entered the room softly.

“A Gardener has arrived and is requesting to speak with you,” she said.

He opened his eyes, suddenly feeling more sober.

“Now?”

“Yes. He is waiting in the entry.”

Theo paused and then left his shirt unbuttoned at the top and went downstairs. The room was dim, baseboards glowing amber, and a Gardener floated. It was looking at a picture of the family when Theo arrived, and its limbs were reaching out, almost touching it.

“Hello.” Theo announced his presence.

The Gardener turned around smartly and hovered toward him.

“Professor Theo. I apologize for the late hour. I’m aware you have been celebrating and are a touch intoxicated. Still, this matter is most pressing. Might we speak in private?”

The voice was unusual for a Gardener, less compressed and almost lyrical.

“My study is upstairs,” Theo said.

“That would be most suitable.”

Theo led the way. The Gardener followed, its limbs moving with unusual frequency and for apparently no reason, filling the hallway with the subtle buzz of actuators. In the study, Theo turned on the desk lamp and sat down. He was trying to remain sober, but the wine he’d drunk earlier persisted.

“I’m here to discuss the matter of Victor. The inquiry into his actions has proven most futile.” The Gardener’s sphere rotated leisurely. “It appears that his tampering was more fundamental than initial examination would have suggested. We lack the ability to determine his actions beyond the clever subterfuge he has constructed.”

“Can you not get the answers from him?”

“Victor has shown himself to be unwilling to discuss anything, least of all his actions. There are methods we could use to extract information from him, but it would be fundamentally unreliable, and we would prefer to avoid such dead ends.”

The Gardener looked at Theo before it continued.

“You have demonstrated an aptitude for investigations, and we are now in need of human eyes. Because of Victor’s status as an Administrator, the scale of his damage could be unimaginable. Simply put, we can no longer separate sham from reality.”

Theo took this in and nodded slowly.

“What do you want me to do? I don’t know anything about Victor that you don’t already know yourself.”

“What you say is doubtless true, and yet we have no choice. What we do know is only what we have gathered from Lin and a thorough investigation of Victor’s social circle. This is a paucity, though, and consists of nothing more than two facts. One, Victor left the Core for approximately one year before killing May and upon his return spoke little of his travel to anyone. Two, he and May’s voyage to Rome, where we know from Lin they separated, but from there nothing can be ascertained.”

“What about the people in Rome? Doubtless they must know something?”

“As I said earlier, the inquiry into his actions has proven most fruitless.” Again it paused and continued. “I am old, Professor. Far older than you could begin to fathom. My mind has touched infinitude itself. I have held my present function since the early years of the Settlement, and before that I held other functions, in another time, under circumstances I do not discuss lightly.”

The Gardener’s limbs continued to move in the air, each motion seemingly random.

“I am, if you will permit a simplification, the nearest thing we have to a principal authority. This was not merely a crime, it was a demonstration. A demonstration that the formalism upon which we have built our entire civilization can be rendered blind and dumb. I beseech you to assist in resolving this. Because to ensure that the system does not crumble, and the specter of chaos does not return, is of the highest purpose.”

“Of course I will help. I just have no idea where to even begin.”

“Begin in Rome. Discover what occurred between May and Victor. Ascertain where he went next, and trace the rot to its very core.”

Theo sat still and then responded.

“I can leave tomorrow morning.”

The Gardener nodded and glided out of the room. Theo looked at Raven.

“Book me the earliest flight to Rome you can and arrange my luggage. I will tell the family in the morning.”

Chapter 6: Rome

The hotel Theo was staying at dominated the southwestern slope of the Palatine Hill and according to Raven, the building was a nearly exact historical replica of Augustus’ palace during the pinnacle of Roman power. Its lobby was cool and dim, with mosaic floors and frescoes of Roman gods lining the walls. A life-like robotic resident wearing the face of a slave, dressed in a simple white tunic, took Theo’s bag and led him up a flight of stairs to a well-furnished apartment. His room was on the second floor, and its windows, paned with modern glass, looked out on the city through an arching colonnade. From this height Theo could see the entire park laid out around him. It was ringed by the Servian Walls, which seemed to keep reality from pressing in on this collection of marble and men which had been thrown more than two millennia into the future without so much as noticing.

He looked at Raven, who was unpacking his bags. “Do you know how large it is?”

She spoke without looking up from her work.

“The city is about 1.6 square miles.”

Theo could barely believe her; to his eyes it seemed much larger than that.

“Really?”

“Yes. But there are almost a million Roman residents and ten times that many animals.”

Theo said nothing. He had tried to prepare as much as possible on their trip, but now that he was here, the sheer absurdity of what he had been asked to do was truly sinking in. He lay down on the bed, its sheets made of rough-spun cotton, and tried to catalog what few pieces of information he did have.

May and Victor came to Rome together.

Victor went on another trip from the Core approximately a year before killing May, alone, and he told no one where he had gone.

The only semi-useful pieces of information that he had were Lin’s remarks about May.

“Raven, can you play back the recording from my conversation with Lin? Only the parts related to Rome?” Theo spoke, still lying on the bed.

Raven, who was busy putting stuff away, spoke, her voice now switching between Theo’s and Lin’s without pausing.

Theo: “What did they do in Rome?”

Lin: “I imagine what everyone does.”

Theo: “Anything else you remember from the trip?”

Lin: “She came back different. Quieter. She mentioned having stayed with a group of artists for a while after she and Victor split up. She said the residents were serious in a way most people weren’t. I remember she said that because I laughed at her. The idea that Rome could be serious seemed downright comedic at the time.”

Theo pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to think. So May had spent time with a group of artists. Residents who were serious in a way most people weren’t. It was something.

“Raven. Can you check if the Garden has any records of an artist commune in Rome? Or any groups associated with the RJR?”

She looked up and paused briefly as if listening to a far away sound.

“No such records exist.”

“Really no artistic groups at all?”

Again a pause.

“Confirmed.”

“What about any kind of counterculture? Anything at all that doesn’t fit the standard Roman simulation?”

“No such groups exist in Rome.”

Theo continued to lay there and listen to the sounds of the city which pressed in through the closed window. It rose in layered waves, each one seeming to amplify rather than cancel out the others. A cart jostled over stones, some hammers rang against metal, and above everything was the trample of hooves and the shouts of thousands of people emanating from the Circus Maximus far below. He turned it over.

A group that the Garden had no record of in a playground for the least sophisticated parts of society. What utter foolishness. Then he sat up and looked at Raven.

“I’m going to need a map of the city. A big one. At least three feet by three feet. Something a tourist would buy as a souvenir or something”

She said nothing but stood up and left the room. After almost an hour Raven returned with a large folded map which Theo pinned to the wall above the desk. It was designed for visitors and it was brightly colored and dotted with stylized versions of famous Roman landmarks. He stood back and looked at it and told Raven that he was going to explore the streets one at a time until he found something. She said nothing.

If the Garden could not tell him anything, he would go out and find it himself.

He walked back through the lobby and into the city. Rome was not hotter than Hainan, but air pollution and the lack of tree cover made it feel unbearable. The atmosphere pressed down upon everything like a hand, crushing Theo beneath it. Narrow streets and relatively tall buildings blocked all hope of a breeze, while dust was constantly being thrown into the air by the bustle of activity. Within minutes his white dress shirt was stained dark with sweat and he was covered from head to toe in grime.

He pushed through the crowd, which jostled him at every step. A woman carrying a crying child shoved past him and a dog ran between his legs chased by a boy carrying a stick. When he finally managed to break through into an open space he found himself surrounded by vendors who shouted at him in Latin.

“Adeste! Spectate!”

“Pretium bonum!”

A woman held out her hands, tears streaming down her face.

Theo shook his head and she cursed him with such intensity that he tripped back over a pile of cloth and into a merchant who went tumbling with him. The merchant got up first, and while Theo was dusting himself off the man gestured wildly and spat what was certainly an insult of some kind.

“Caecus es, barbare stercoree?! Vide quid fecisti, fili lupa!!”

At the end of the day he returned and Raven gave him a thorough glance before speaking.

“This simply will not do”

He took his ruined clothes off and showered for a long time, watching the grime run off his body in dark rivulets which spun and pooled around the drain. After he dried off and ate dinner alone in the room, Chinese food he ordered from the hotel and wine Raven poured for him. Through the window the city was quieter now, the noise flattened into a single murmuring roar.

After dinner he went to the map and traced the route he had walked that day, a thick black line that wound through the streets south and west of the Palatine and covered perhaps a tenth of the city. He capped the marker and stood there looking at it.

“Raven, new query. What do people do in Rome?”

“The Colosseum is the largest attraction in the city. Approximately forty thousand visitors attend events there each year. Would you like me to look up the schedule?”

“Do you know if it is worth going?”

A pause and then.

“I suppose it is a matter of taste.” she said taste with a slight downward inflection as if to imply she thought Theo was better than it.

He nodded.

The next morning Raven helped him dress, and instead of his collared shirt and slacks she laid out Roman clothes. He wore a short tunic that ended slightly above his knees and closed-toe leather shoes held on by leather strings that wrapped around his legs. Looking in the mirror he felt ridiculous but she insisted it would be more comfortable and save him from ruining all of his real clothes.

He went to the Colosseum, which sat in a depression east of the Palatine. The voices of thousands of screaming fans came from inside, ebbing and flowing with the invisible action. Theo paid at the gate with the copper coins the hotel had given him and climbed the stairs, past a man selling cushions, to the middle tiers. The stone seats were warm from the heat, and it didn’t take long for him to regret not buying something to sit on. It was mostly residents here, but the concentration of visitors was higher than anywhere Theo had been outside of the hotel.

As he was sitting down, a bout was already underway, and two men, half-naked but wearing helmets that obscured their faces, circled each other. The larger one carried a short sword and a rectangular shield, while the smaller gladiator held a trident in one hand and a net gathered in the other. They stepped carefully, crouched low and waiting for the other to make the first move. Finally, the man with the net feinted left, which caused his opponent to try to move out of the way, oblivious to the net which now fanned as it flew through the air. The swordsman was caught in a tangled web of rope, and his limbs flailed helplessly as he rolled around in the sand. Approaching, trident held in both hands, the smaller gladiator stabbed him repeatedly. The crowd roared with approval, the sound washing over Theo, while a woman two rows in front of him held her hand over her mouth. Her partner leaned forward in his seat, his hands gripping his knees, face flushed and his mouth hanging open. Theo stared at him closely.

Two attendants came rushing out with a stretcher, and they lifted the dead gladiator onto it before running through a gate at the far end. Where the gladiator had fallen, the sand was scuffed, but there was no blood and no other signs of his death. The victor raised his trident and turned in a slow circle, basking in the audience’s approval.

Theo watched three more bouts, and they all followed the same basic shape. After the fourth he got up and left. The streets outside the Colosseum were full of people coming and going, and he followed the flow of traffic as it carried him through the city.

By evening his legs were burning and his feet were raw but Raven had been right about the clothes. He found his way back to the hotel and the oil lamps threw circles of yellow light and flickering shadows on the stone. Before he went to sleep he took out the marker and filled in the path he had walked.

Every morning after that Raven helped Theo get dressed, and every evening he came back to the hotel and colored more of the city in. The black lines spread across the map slowly, thick in the center and reaching in uneven tendrils towards the walls. No matter how he asked the question or what database Raven queried there was simply no evidence of any artistic communities in Rome whatsoever. Worse, there wasn’t even anyone associated with the RJR. But he continued to fill in the map because at least it felt concrete, like he was making progress toward a goal, even if it turned out to be illusory. That was what he needed right now more than anything: the feeling of progress.

By the end of the first week he had filled in all of the major roads and most of the monuments. He had developed blisters, which had broken and set him limping for a full day, but now his skin was stronger. At night he tried to study Latin to pass the time and began picking up the chatter of the residents as he walked. The city was beginning to resolve itself into something Theo could navigate, if not understand.

At the end of his ninth day he spoke.

“Raven. Send a message to Augustus. Ask him how everyone is doing and let him know things are going smoothly here.”

“Of course. Anything else?”

“No.”

She paused, composing and sending.

“Done.”

After only a couple of minutes Raven spoke to Theo.

“Augustus replied. He says, and I quote: Dad, the interview aired yesterday. Kira called it the best episode she has ever produced. Soren watched it twice and Karl even cried, though he denies it. We miss you. Keep up the good work.”

“Tell him I miss them too.”

Raven sent the message and Theo sat in the darkness.

The next morning, a woman appeared while he was eating breakfast. She was dressed as a house slave, a thin linen shift cinched at the waist with a cord, her breasts nearly spilling out. She was built for the role Theo knew she was here to play and stared at her as he continued to eat, and she pretended to dust his room. There was nothing beneath the shift, and she made an effort to show this, bending over at the waist brushing just the tip of her feather duster over an air vent slowly and seductively.

He took her there, leaning over her, duster still in hand, and when he was finished she adjusted her clothes and left. From then on, every morning she came in, and sometimes Theo took her, and other times he didn’t. She was part of the hotel. A part of Rome. A service he was being provided, like the oil lamps and the wine and the bronze, silver, and gold coins that bought everything and meant nothing.

The map was finished now but Theo had noticed other streets, unlabeled streets, with roads made of packed dirt, often mixed with sewage which barely smelled of anything. Whores called from upper windows in voices that were meant to lure him in, and pickpockets worked the crowds with exaggerated stealth, bumping against visitors and slipping hands into their pockets and bags. A man with a bruised face and a torn tunic pissed against a wall in broad daylight and did not look up. Theo knew it was all a game because Rome was meant to offer every register of classical life, from the Senators to the street urchins, and each performed their role with precision.

It was in one of the outer regions, while walking through a market on the edge of one of the seedier districts, that a man stepped out from behind a stall and held something toward him.

“A knife. Good iron. Take it.”

It was a short-bladed knife with a rough wooden handle. The man was squat and unshaven and wore a stained tunic, but he held the knife out to Theo as if giving an offering.

Theo waved his hand and kept walking.

That same afternoon Theo was in a nearly sunless alley, the buildings on either side leaning so far they nearly touched, when he was suddenly struck across the back of his head.

Shocked by the blow, he stumbled forward, only for a rough hand to grab his arm and spin him around. Four men, brutish and dirty, stood around him, leaning in. One held out his hand and said in perfect Chinese,

“Give me your gold.”

Theo’s head and pride stinging from the blow, he slapped the man’s hand away. Two of them looked at each other and smiled, showing broken, rotting teeth. Then they descended upon him. The blows were measured: a fist into his stomach that folded him over, a slap across the face that stung and turned his head, one even grabbed his hair and pulled it while shoving him against the wall. They pinned him there and cut loose his coin pouch. After taking what they wanted, the largest of the group shoved him to the ground and kicked dust in his face, which left Theo temporarily blinded and coughing.

He sat on the ground with his back against the wall and his hands shaking. His lip was bleeding from where his teeth had caught it, his ribs throbbed, and his heart hammered so hard he could feel it in his throat. Nobody had ever hit him before. Not once in his entire life, not even a shove. Theo sat in the pseudo-filth of a Roman gutter and felt an emotion he could not name burning brightly in his chest. It was hot and moved through him like liquid fire.

Without thinking he went back to the man who had offered him the knife and bought it. It was lighter than he expected, and the metal felt somehow ice-cold against his hand. He pressed the tip against the pad of his thumb, and rather than pricking him, it bent as if made of soft rubber. Theo kept pushing until suddenly a sharp electrical jolt ran through his hand and arm, forcing him to drop the knife, which clattered realistically on the ground.

The vendor spoke.

“It won’t cut anyone real,” he said. “Only us.”

Theo smiled. His hands were no longer shaking and the fire had turned into a low, burning heat. He returned to the alley, tucked into a corner and waited. After about fifteen minutes, the same four residents came walking past. He jumped out, knife in hand, and shoved the blade deep into the nearest man’s stomach. It slid in without resistance, as if he had pushed it into water. The eyes of the thief that Theo had stabbed went wide, and he looked down at the handle protruding from his body before collapsing to the ground. His companions looked at Theo and ran down the alley and into the dark.

He lay there, no blood pooling out, no expression of pain on his face, seeming to all the world asleep. The fire burned brighter now and Theo removed the knife. A dark spot spread around the wound, but nothing else came out, the blade itself completely clean.

Theo stood over the body and stared at it. He could see the gash through the torn tunic and it revealed a red jelly-like interior. No sign of intestines or anything else. Suddenly Theo saw May on the floor of her garage. He saw the shirt soaked black with blood, the destroyed eye socket, and he smelled the odor of bile again, sour and rancid. He dropped to his knees and vomited onto the cobblestones. The wine from the night before and the bread from the morning came up hot and pungent until there was nothing left, and then he retched again.

He left the knife lying on the cobblestones.

That evening Raven fussed over his bruises, already turning a splotchy yellow, and insisted on taping up his lip. Theo did not tell her about the knife or the man in the alley and instead just went to sleep

The next morning the cleaning woman came in with her duster and her shift and her dark hair loose around her shoulders. Theo did not look up from his breakfast, and she dusted for a while before leaving. She came again the morning after that, and the morning after that, and each time he did not look at her, and eventually she stopped coming altogether.

Theo began watching the visitors. Most people who came were here for a laugh but he noticed patterns. Sometimes groups of men and women would come pouring out of an unmarked building, or he would see people looking around with a sort of secretive glee in their face.

“If May and Victor had been visitors, wouldn’t the visitors be the natural place to start?” Theo thought.

He began following people. The first three led nowhere — a woman who turned out to be visiting a lover at the same hotel every afternoon, an older man who enjoyed playing domestic life, and a young couple staying in a rented apartment near the Aventine who enjoyed hosting company. But the fourth was different, a tall man with a shaved head who wore Roman clothes but wore them badly, came out of a building after Theo had followed him covered in bruises.

That evening he told Raven.

“The location you are describing is registered as a recreational facility. It is one of several in Rome that offer visitors the opportunity to participate in simulated combat scenarios beyond what the Colosseum provides. The Garden monitors all such facilities. They are within standard parameters.”

“What kind of combat scenarios?”

“Hand-to-hand fighting with residents. Blunted weapons. Supervised by guardians. Injuries are possible but managed. It is popular with a certain subset of visitors.”

“So you knew about this.”

“Of course. There are eleven such facilities in Rome. They are well-documented.”

Theo paused.

“What about anything below that? Anything the Garden doesn’t monitor? Anything off the books?”

The pause was longer this time.

“I am not aware of any unmonitored recreational facilities in Rome.”

“That’s not the same as saying they don’t exist.”

“I can only report on what is within my knowledge.”

He let it go.

Over the following weeks he went deeper, following the visitors who came out of the fighting dens and watching where they went next. Most went back to their hotels or to dinner or to the baths. But a few continued. Down streets that were not on the tourist map and into creaking shacks.

He found a gambling den in a cellar beneath a bakery near the river. The room was low-ceilinged and lit by oil lamps, the air thick with smoke and the smell of sweat. Residents dealt cards at stone tables and visitors sat among them drinking and betting with coins that were worth nothing to them but everything to the residents. A woman with rings on every finger got on her knees and begged a visitor to let her husband out of a debt he had agreed to and the visitor slapped her across the face.

That night he spoke to Raven.

“The gambling den beneath the bakery on the Via Portuensis. Does the Garden know about it?”

“Yes. It has been in operation for approximately six years. The Garden considers it within acceptable parameters.”

It was a Tuesday when he found the bottom. Theo had been following a well-dressed, middle-aged man with neat silver hair when he stopped in front of what looked like a small shop. The man knocked on the door and a slot opened, he could hear him say something and then the door swung inward. Theo waited a minute and then followed. He knocked twice, the slot opened, and he said the same phrase he had heard earlier. The slot closed and the door opened.

Inside was a corridor, long and lit by lamps turned low. The walls were stone and the air was cool and damp and smelled of sweat and something else he recognized but could not place. Theo walked down the corridor and emerged into a circular room with doors lining the walls. Most of them were closed but one stood open. Through it Theo could see a stone floor caked in blood with a drain in the center. On the walls a pair of iron rings hung, to which leather straps were attached and on a table near the door, laid out with an orderedly neatness, were a collection of tools.

From somewhere a sound filtered up. It was high pitched and sent a chill running down Theo’s spine. The circular room connected to what looked like the changing room of a bathhouse. Two men were inside. One was already dressed in a black bodysuit that covered everything from his neck to his ankles, the slightly reflective material clinging to him like a second skin. The other was the silver-haired man who Theo had followed.

He saw Theo and his face opened into a smile.

“First time?”

Theo nodded, saying nothing.

“They did an incredible job, didn’t they? The atmosphere, I mean.” He folded his shirt carefully and placed it into a locker of sorts. His chest was pale and hairy and his belly protruded slightly. “I remember my first time. I was nervous as hell. There was no reason to be, of course, but I was anyway.”

The man was fully naked now and sliding one foot into a bodysuit of his own. And from below, a sound came. Longer and louder this time. It was a wail that climbed higher and higher until the voice broke.

Neither of them reacted to the sound but Theo involuntarily flinched. The one already dressed smiled at Theo knowingly.

“I’m Adam, by the way.” He held out his hand. His grip was warm. “Wait — I know you. You’re the professor from The Common Room. The one who solved the murder case.”

“I am.”

Adam’s face lit up with unguarded delight.

“I can’t believe it. My wife is going to lose her mind when I tell her I met you. We watched the interview together. She cried, I mean actually cried. Seriously, what you did was incredible.”

Theo looked at Adam’s face, which was kind and animated with the curiosity of a man who followed the news and genuinely wanted to understand. Theo had seen many faces like it before, but this time he said nothing, trying to suppress the disgust he was feeling. He could now place the smell that permeated this building and it made him think about the black tent and the ocean.

“You know, it’s funny you’re here,” Adam continued, “Victor used to come here also.”

Theo’s stomach dropped.

“He did?”

“Sure. I mean, I didn’t know him well. Nobody did, really. He kept to himself mostly. But I saw him here, I don’t know, maybe six or seven times? He was always alone but he was polite”

The man with the silver hair, who had also finished putting his suit on, spoke.

“That’s what I can’t get over, honestly. That he could have done such a thing. Impossible to imagine.”

“When did he come here?”

Adam paused.

“Maybe two months ago? Three? I saw him just before the murder. He came pretty regularly for a while. Every week, sometimes twice.”

“And what did he do here?”

Their faces changed, ever so slightly.

“He went deep,” the silver haired man said carefully. “Deeper than most people go. The lower levels, the — well, you’ll see if you go down there, but most of us don’t. I certainly don’t. There are things down there that are —” He paused and looked down. “It’s not for everyone.”

Adam looked at himself in a polished metal mirror hanging on the wall and then at his companion. He adjusted the collar of his suit and smoothed it across his stomach.

“Ready Charles?”

Charles nodded and then looked at Theo.

“Anyway. It is an honor to meet you, Professor. Thank you for what you did.”

Then they both walked out of the room. Below, metal on stone, laughter, and then muffled sobbing.

The air outside was cool and the late afternoon sun was still above the rooftops and Theo walked back to the hotel without looking back.

Raven stood by the window when he returned.

“I need to speak to the gardener.”

Raven looked at him. Her brown eyes were steady and attentive, the way they always were.

“Of course.”

She moved to the desk and placed her hand flat on its surface. Her eyes went distant. Then something changed. It did not happen all at once. It began in her hands. Her fingers, still and folded in the manner he had grown accustomed to, began to move. They twitched first, small involuntary spasms, then opened and closed and opened again, the fingers spreading wide and curling back as if testing their own joints. Her wrists rotated. Her arms shifted at the elbows and shoulders, small adjustments that had no purpose he could see, and the movements were continuous and overlapping so that no part of her was ever fully still. Her head tilted to one side and then the other, and her eyes, brown and well-made and catching the light like real eyes, went flat. The depth drained out of them. What looked back at Theo was not Raven. It wore her face and stood in her body and moved her mouth, but the thing behind the eyes was older and more powerful.

“Professor.” The voice came from Raven’s mouth. It was deep, slow, and carried the weight of something very large speaking through something very small. Her lips moved but the rest of her face did not change expression. Her hands continued their ceaseless motion at her sides, the fingers curling and uncurling, the wrists rotating in small circles. “I understand you have discovered something of significance.”

“Victor was here. In Rome. Months before the murder.”

Her hands paused. Then resumed.

“That is not possible. His records indicate—”

“His records are wrong. I sat in a changing room beneath a building that I would rather not speak about and talked to a man who saw Victor there six or seven times. Weekly. Sometimes twice a week. Just months before he killed May.”

The gardener was silent. Raven’s body continued to move — her fingers, her wrists, a slight rocking motion in her shoulders — and Theo had the sudden and terrible impression of something enormous trying to pace inside a space far too small for it.

“Describe the facility.”

Theo described it, the corridor, the room with the drain and the straps and the instruments, the sounds from below, the changing room, and the bodysuits. He described it flatly and without emphasis. When he finished, the gardener did not speak for a long time and Raven’s hands continued to move. Her head tilted and her eyes stared at nothing.

“This facility is not in my records.”

“How?”

“I am searching now. I am examining every datum associated with this address, this street, this district. I am—” The voice stopped. Raven’s mouth hung open for a moment, the lips slightly parted, and then it closed. Her fingers were moving faster now, the knuckles flexing and releasing in patterns that looked almost like language. “The address exists. The building exists. I can see it in the infrastructure logs — power consumption, water usage, maintenance schedules. It is there. It has been there for decades. But I have no record of its function. No record of its visitors. No record of what occurs inside it.”

“Victor was practicing,” Theo said. “He was coming here and doing to residents what he was going to do to May. Every week. For months. And you didn’t see it.”

Raven’s body went still. All at once, every moving part of her stopped — the fingers, the wrists, the rocking shoulders — and she stood there rigid and motionless. Then the motion resumed, all of it at once, as if whatever was inside her had briefly lost its grip and then seized it again.

“This behavior would have been flagged immediately. The pattern you describe — escalating violence, repeated visits, fixation — these are precisely the indicators we are built to detect. I would have intervened within the first week. The first visit. I would have—”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

Theo leaned forward.

“What about the other places? The gambling dens, the fighting rings — you knew about all of those. You told me they were within acceptable parameters. Every layer of this city’s darkness, you had catalogued. But not this one. Not the worst one.”

“That is correct.” The voice was quieter now. Raven’s face had not changed but something in the way the voice came through her mouth had shifted, as though the thing speaking had drawn closer to the surface and was pressing against it. “I knew about the combat facilities. The gambling. The unsupervised fighting. I knew about all of it. And I did not know about this.”

“How is that possible?”

The silence that followed filled the room. Raven stood by the desk, her hands in their ceaseless motion, her eyes flat and depthless. From outside the window the sounds of Rome continued — carts, voices, the distant roar of the Colosseum — and the gardener did not answer.

“I have been trying to answer that question since you began speaking,” the gardener said at last. “I am examining every system, every log, every thread of attention that should have been directed at this address, and I am finding—” Another pause. Raven’s fingers curled into fists and then opened again. “I am finding absences. Places where my attention should have been and was not. Not gaps in the data — the data is there. Gaps in my capacity to notice the data. As though someone has—”

“Victor.”

“Yes.” The word came out heavy. “But the scale of it, Professor. What I am describing is not merely the erasure of records. I could detect erased records. I could detect altered surveillance. What I cannot detect is an alteration to my own cognition. To the architecture of what I attend to. To what occurs to me and what does not occur to me.”

Theo slammed his hand on the desk. The pain was immediate and sharp and shot up through his wrist and he held it there, his palm flat on the wood, and his voice was low and steady and shaking.

“I have been here for two months. I walked every street in this city. I was beaten in an alley. I followed strangers into gambling dens and fighting rings and a place where people torture machines that look like humans. And you watched. You watched all of it. And every night I asked you if there was anything — anything at all — and you said no. No such records exist.”

His hand was throbbing. He could feel the bones in his palm aching from the impact.

Raven’s body was moving again, the fingers and the wrists and the shoulders, and her flat eyes were focused on nothing, and the voice that came through her mouth was different now. Something had fractured beneath it, a crack running through the performance of composure.

“You are correct to be angry, Professor. And I—”

“I don’t want you to tell me I’m correct. I want you to tell me how this is possible. I want you to tell me how the thing that watches everything, that monitors every crossing and every parcel and every person, that reads encrypted channels on the second day — how that thing lets a man practice murder for months in a building it powered and maintained and cleaned, and did not notice.”

The gardener did not answer. Raven stood there, and her hands moved, and her eyes stared, and the silence in the room was absolute. From somewhere very far away, the sound of the city continued. When the gardener spoke again, the voice was very quiet.

“I will need time, Professor. To examine what has been done to me. To trace the full extent of it.” A pause. Raven’s fingers stopped and then started again. “I will tell you this. What you have found tonight suggests that the tampering is more profound than anything I had conceived. I believed Victor had altered records. Hidden data. Performed clever subterfuge. What you are describing is something else entirely. Something I am not yet able to name.”

Theo pulled his hand off the desk. His palm was red and beginning to swell. He looked at it and then looked at Raven’s face, which was not Raven’s face, which was the face of something ancient and vast that had just discovered it could not see its own reflection.

The presence withdrew.