Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (4.10)

4.10 Clarity Begins To Hone

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


He wasn’t. Orlando and I galloped off, away from the pursuing battle suit. To safety.

Such as it was.

Once we were far enough away, I ‘whoa’ed to a halt and we dismounted.

“So, can I assume that those were the battle-suited gentlemen to which you referred earlier?” he said.

I hesitated.

“Not… quite,” I said.

These battle suits didn’t seem to have all the features of the earlier ones. Unlike my previous encounters, where they’d been fast, strong, capable of invisibility and who knew what else, these ones seemed to be one thing, and one thing only.

The invisible one wasn’t strong enough to hold me.

The strong one wasn’t fast enough to catch us.

The fast one… well, the fast one was just plain out of control, it seemed.

I’d assumed in the heat of fleeing that I was simply dealing with inept users. But now another thought struck me. And the more I thought about it, the more sensible it seemed.

These guys weren’t necessarily inept. Perhaps they were just using an earlier prototype of the battle suits. Ones that didn’t have all the features built in. Just one feature each.

And, changing trains of thought for a second, I’d assumed that the multiple versions of myself and Orlando, and possibly Bruce, had to do with cloning. Which made some kind of sense, but in no way explained how the death of one clone had allowed the transfer of memories to the other one.

Clones couldn’t magically share memories. I remember them placing some kind of device on my head shortly before I ‘died’. Presumably that was the memory transmitter. But how had it known where to send the memories? This version of me didn’t have any kind of memory receiver. So how had I received my other version’s memories?

Now, maybe the memory-swapping technology was more sophisticated than I understood. Almost certainly was, in fact. But I still liked to think it had to obey some kind of laws of logic. And I was beginning to develop a completely new, clone-free, theory.

One that also explained why my email to sinister1 from the rodeo had bounced back. Why the rodeo battle suits were so inferior to the ones I’d faced in Akira’s massage rooms. And why, according to the magazine on display at the newsstand, Kate Beckinsale was safely in London, non-vampiric and possibly sporting a ‘baby bump’.

“Are you okay, Miss Wittgenstein?” said Orlando.

“One minute,” I said, holding up a finger.

I allowed myself to enter a slight self-hypnotic state. Relive some of the other me’s events. In particular, sitting at Bonnie’s computer, sifting through her email.

The memory started to gain clarity. Details began to fill in. I could see it just as I had experienced it previously.

There.

The dates on the email.

They were dates from two years in the future.

I wasn’t remembering the last two days in the life of a clone of me. I was remembering the last two days of my life.