The Escapement Mechanism, Part 23
The first thing Wemly did was run a control to ensure the device was working as she imagined. She hastily scrawled “the snow doesn’t melt if it’s frozen in place” at the top of her lab book, then deactivated the escapement mechanism.
Wemly considered her lab book. She wanted to write something out of the ordinary to make sure the device was functioning as she imagined. As she contemplated, her arm fell naturally from her neck, as if she had been scratching an itch. Wisps of memory, a fragment of cold, and then it was completely gone from her consciousness.
She knew. She had already run the test and had no memory of it. Nothing definite remained, just the vague emotional echoes that she had grown accustomed to from extreme events. Still, she was certain that Utsab had a working model; it just wasn’t on the device. She compared the hash of the model file on the mechanism to the one on the server. They were different.
The more she rolled the ramifications of that over in her mind, the more concerned she grew. The model on the device had the same modification date as the file on the server, but no new functionality. It meant that the old model had recently been transferred to the device. Utsab hadn’t mentioned anything, so she drew the worst conclusion: he had a working model, had verified it, and then removed it from the escapement mechanism to keep it from her.
It was ridiculous. True, she had tried to keep it from Utsab initially, but had told him everything in the end. Brought him on board as a complete partner, and they had tried to crack the problem together.
She stood up with such force that her chair went wheeling away and crashed into the wall behind her, and she marched into the lab like a profane Archimedes.
“You fucking traitor!” Wemly hovered over Utsab, but he was still lost in the word economy of a hard limit abstract.
“Huh?” He turned to face her, his headphones around his neck like a pillow on an airplane---one Wemly would have used to suffocate him, or staunch whatever lies were about to spew forth from his mouth.
“Fuck you.” Wemly expected Utsab to fight back, but he seemed genuinely taken aback.
“What are you on about?”
“The model. The one that works.”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Then what did I just find on the computer?”
“Does it really work?” Utsab sat up. “Can I try it?”
“You know it doesn’t!” spat Wemly.
“Then what are you talking about?”
“The file on the server.”
“What file?”
“The one that has the working model.”
“But you just ... Look, I haven’t even touched the device in a few days.” He jerked his head towards the abstract in explanation. “The last I tried was manipulating some of the variables to see if I could modulate the effect at all. But you know how that turned out.”
It was true. They had thoroughly exhausted every possible permutation and combination.
“Really? Then come explain this.” Wemly offered her hand and practically ripped Utsab from his seat.
They ventured to the server room. She fumed, and he fiddled nervously with his watch. There could be no compelling explanation for a file of the exact size and modification date as the one on the escapement mechanism.
But there didn’t need to be. The file was gone. It had only been a few minutes since she had seen it there.
Wemly’s mouth was dry. “I. I don’t ---“ Had it been a different directory? She furiously hammered out search patterns. Nothing matched. She was certain the file had been in the shared folder.
“Let me see your folder,” Wemly said.
Utsab looked at her as if she had asked him to take off his pants.
“Do it.”
“Are you okay?” asked Utsab, but he sat down in the proffered chair to comply.
“Let me do it,” Wemly said as soon as Utsab had entered his password. She pushed his chair to make room and took over.
“Holy shit,” Utsab said as she searched, but found nothing. “Seriously, what the fuck? You think I’m hiding something from you?”
“I... no ... I mean. Sorry. I thought one of these files...,” she searched again for any filename matches to “results” or those over 10TB. Only a few small files from unrelated projects came up, and none had been recently modified.
“Huh. I know what I saw,” Wemly said, more as reassurance to herself than condemnation of Utsab, but she was sure to her core that Utsab had deleted the evidence; she just wasn’t sure how he had done it. She closed the terminal.
“Well, too bad, I hoped maybe you had gotten that thing to work finally,” said Utsab. “But I need to get back and check the comments on that paper before we submit.”
“You’re ready to submit?” asked Wemly.
“Yeah, I mean, almost. Just got a few comments to address.” It didn’t make any sense. He had just started drafting the Discussion earlier in the day. There was simply no time.
And Utsab looked tired. Haggard even. Even if he could pull an all-nighter to finish a paper, he couldn’t do the same between coffee break and lunch.
A sudden weariness descended on Wemly. She felt worse than Utsab looked. Maybe she was just tired. But the file had been there. The memory was tangible; she could roll it around and examine it as easily as the way her morning coffee had warmed her icy hands after the drive to the lab.
“Okay. Sorry. I just --- I saw something. I just need some more sleep.”
“I hear you,” said Utsab. “That goes double for me. But rest and the wicked and all that.”
“Yeah,” said Wemly, and sat in a daze as Utsab walked out.
She ran the checks a last time. Everything in the shared folder. She tried to access Utsab’s personal folder, but lacked the credentials and cursed not keeping the session open. She entered her own and mindlessly browsed the contents of her private directory. There was a single file she didn’t recognize, created moments before based on the timestamp. Its name concerned her. In all capital letters it read, “WEMLY.DO_NOT_DO_IT_AGAIN.YOU_WILL_REGRET_IT.PLEASE.”
The file was a few megabytes in size. She dumped the contents to the terminal, and the words “THIS IS NOT WHO YOU ARE” scrolled in an endless shifting diagonal down the screen. She had no memory of doing it, but Wemly knew she was communicating with herself.