She ran system diagnostic first. Su-Yong Shu looked remarkably good today, if anything. More neural coherence than they’d seen in months.

Had Chen done something? Had he tried some last ditch effort to try to bring his wife back from the brink?

Li-hua shook her head. It didn’t matter. Whatever he’d tried would be in the logs they’d snapshot with Shu’s brain.

She placed the equipment bag beside her and opened it. Inside the bag was a sealed electronic key which would activate the data output systems of the quantum cluster. Next to it, nestling in their separate cases, were four perfect diamondoid data cubes, each almost the size of her fist, each a marvel of high precision multi-layer carbon deposition – their structures more flawless than any diamond ever found in nature – capable of storing hundreds of zettabytes of data in laser-etched holographic form.

Three of them were for the three copies that would be made of Shu’s mind. The fourth was pure redundancy, in case of a problem with any of the first three.

Li-hua lifted the key out of the case, broke the seal with her finger, then slid it home into the appropriate slot in the console. The crimson orb of a retinal scanner came alive before her, and she held herself still as it played its red laser across the back of her eye.

A moment later, status messages appeared on the display:

USER ACCESS GRANTED.

DATA OUTPUT SYSTEM ACTIVE.

LOAD OUTPUT MEDIA.

Li-hua played her fingers across panels to the side of the main console, and three compartments opened, ready to accept the diamondoid data cubes.

She reached back into the equipment bag, lifted the first data cube out of its case and then into the console compartment. She did the same with the second, then rubbed a spot behind her ear with her finger for a moment, reached into the case for the third cube, and smeared that finger across the face of it, leaving a nearly transparent smudge across the diamondoid surface.

Transparent in the spectrum humans could see, at least.

Li-hua took the smudged third cube, seated it in its compartment to the side of the console, and tapped in commands.

DATA I/O TEST

DATA STORE 1… OK

DATA STORE 2… OK

DATA STORE 3…

DATA STORE 3…

DATA STORE 3… ERROR CANNOT WRITE

Li-hua frowned. “Jingguo,” she said aloud. “Can you come here for a moment?”

She re-ran the I/O test as the other researcher approached.

DATA STORE 1… OK

DATA STORE 2… OK

DATA STORE 3…

DATA STORE 3…

DATA STORE 3… ERROR CANNOT WRITE

“Hmmm…” Jingguo said. He was in his fifties, white-haired, fatherly, but keenly intelligent. She was in her mid-30s and had eclipsed him – a rare feat in a China still more ageist and sexist than it cared to admit.

She deserved more.

“I’m going to use the backup data cube,” Li-hua said. “You concur?”

Jingguo nodded slowly. “I concur.”

Li-hua nodded herself. “Thank you, Jingguo.”