Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (5.4)

5.4 Chain-Following

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


And with that realisation everything tumbled into place.

Because if somebody else was changing the future, then the odds were heavily with those left-handed chaps. After all, they’d been the ones who’d busted in on my dying body and placed the memory transmitter on there. Sent the future memories back to my bronco-busting present.

Sure, it was possible that the Good Stuff guys had memory transmitters also. I’d follow that path of reasoning later. I’d be impressed if it came up with something that tied as neatly together as the theory that it was left-hand-only technology.

Because if I followed it through, this is what I got:

The southpaw society let me live through a future where I could see the clones of me, the Good Stuff experimentation and the prowess of their battle suits. They’d then blown me up, leaving just enough time to send the memories of the future back to the present.

Why?

Because they wanted me to change the future.

But if they had the technology to see futures and change them, why did they need lil’ ol’ me to change it?

Obviously, because I was the only one who could. After all, if they could have, they would have.

And they’d specifically led me into a place where I got a glimpse as to why I was so important. I was the key to the virus that killed left-handers.

Why attack me with prototype battle suits that didn’t work properly?

To lead me to the deduction that my mind had moved in time, not to a different body.

And why kill Bonnie?

To show me the future could be changed? And to lead me to this very chain of reasoning that I was currently working through?

If I was right, the society of southpaws were leading me somewhere. Subtly leading me, to be sure, but leading nevertheless.

I wasn’t sure I liked the thought. After all, in the future these guys were not particularly nice. They’d kidnapped Akira, attacked me, commandeered Bruce to betray me and blow me up. Sure, the guys they were working against didn’t seem particularly nice either, what with the development of the leftie-lethal germ warfare.

But, as my mother always assured me, two wrongs don’t make a right.

And killing an innocentish receptionist just to suggest a particular line of reasoning? They had to know that kind of lack of niceness in the present wasn’t something I could support, either.

And yet they’d done it.

I thought a little while longer. Tapped a query into my phone. Thought about the results they returned.

I stood up.

“Done with your sit down then, Miss Wittgenstein?”

“I am.”

“And where to now?” asked Orlando. “Off to catch a flight to Sydney perhaps? Shoot out from the airport to Hyde Park for an afternoon siesta? Or perhaps we’re off to Salzburg for a picnic brunch? I hear the hills are alive this time of year.”

I smiled. “No,” I said. “We’re off to see sinister1.”

(to be continued)